I'm not sure I can dumb it down enough. Try this...

The only people who let regs take money off a site or who pay rake to a site are the players who lose that money.

They pay all the bills. Your rake shows up in your tracker but the REAL money for that comes from depositing players, not players taking money out of the bucket.

You cannot get round the ownership concept. If I win money from a player, that money is now legally mine. I can spend it however I want. I can quit poker and spend it on a burger, or I can continue to play some more poker and pay some rake to the site with that money. Hence why you haven't really replied in a detailed way, and are just stubbornly saying that you are ''not sure you can dumb it down enough'', nice cop out.

All players pay rake (out of their own pocket), get used to it. The way you have thought about poker in the past has been wrong.

Several people have replied in a very detailed manner to explain to you why a site doesn't take any money from you if you withdraw money from the site.

I have a question for you though:

Your mom gives you 10 dollars, but says you can only have it if you go give 3 dollars to your brother. If you try to somehow not give your brother his money, she will know 100% of the time and beat your ass. In other words, the only way to get any money at all for yourself is to ensure that your brother gets his money. In the end, you are +$7, your brother is +$3 dollars, and your mom is -$10 dollars.

Does your brother like you more for doing what your mom told you to do, or does he like your mom more for giving him $3?

Also, immediately preceding the exact moment you hand the $3 to your brother, who owns the $3?

What is this analogy you are using? Are you another person that believes that all money deposited on a site belongs now to the site, and the players are lucky if they get to withdraw anything.

I'm pretty sure that is wrong and the players can withdraw every cent of that money if they want to. The site has no right to any of that money until they rake hands.

I honestly am interested in your answers to the questions I asked.

One more regarding this last post:

Can a winning player in fact be a winning player without playing any hands?

But I don't see how relevant your analogy is so what does it matter?

A winning player has to play hands first. They need to pay a service charge for these hands if they play online or in a casino.

Okay, so if a winning player must play hands to win money, and the site has a right to money once hands are played, would you agree that the player and the site have a mutually beneficial relationship? That is to say, that both parties benefit from the actions of the other?

The winning player is decided after the hands are played.

A winning player today could be a losing player tomorrow, and vice versa with a losing player. Winning players are always relative.

All players pay a service charge to play poker, just like people pay to play online RPG games.

Okay, I understand that. So then winning players are indistinguishable from losing players from the site's point of view, as they might win or lose on any given day?

Yes, the site does not distinguish between winners and losers, but they do distinguish between the players that play a lot, (as these players pay them more), and the players that don't play much (as these players pay them less), and so they reward these loyal customers more.

Would you agree that you can't play poker and pay rake without depositing money into a poker site?

For goodness sake - the players that pay both the site and the winning players are the player who lose money and deposit.

Just how hard is that to grasp - the losing players pay for both!

Correct sir.

You can't do any of these things without an electronic device like a computer, mobile or tablet either.

So given that this is one of the caveats of playing, then a poker site must surely keep track of who is depositing how much, and when, and who is withdrawing how much, and when, correct?

Ok, what about a rec-only site? Where the only players were people willing to deposit from their day job, regardless of whether they were plus EV or not under the playing conditions of the time. Would such a site be possible?

Actually my position is not as far away from you as the above would seem. I actually think winning players are important because they are part of the sell that brings the recreationals in. But that's why what the regs are doing should look like what recs are doing, i.e. playing, just with more skill - not lobby-botting, table selecting, team-playing, 57-tabling etc.

In the month of August a site charges 5% rake.

In the month of September a site decides to reduce rake and only charge 3%.

After September, all players would receive more money in their pocket compared to August as a result of this reduction. This surely can only happen if all players are paying money to the site to begin with. If it was only 'losing' players that paid money to the site, then only 'losing' players could benefit from the decrease.

If the amount that a winning player is being charged to play online poker effects what they take home, then clearly they are being charged a fee, which means they are customers of the site.

You are basically saying that winning players are not customers of the site, and I am saying that they are.

If there are two sites with everything equal with the exception of rake being 5% on one site and 4% on the other, then winning players would play where they have to pay less out for the same service, just like customers would do in any other field that you care to mention.

In this context, rec = losing player and reg = winning player.

Therefore 'reg-only' sites are impossible, because they are only defined as such in a relative sense and not an absolute one. 'rec-only' sites are possible until everyone runs out of money paying it all to the site

Doofus??

Yes?

Sites can keep track of who has deposited? Why sure they can. It is prudent for them to keep these kinds of records from their customers. All players in real money games must have deposited at some stage, unless they built their roll from freeroll tournaments of course, but this is rare.

They can also see who has withdrawn. Both winning and losing players can, and have, withdrawn.

Winning players pay nothing to the site - they take money from the site.

It is a bucket. In the top of the bucket punters add in their deposits. That is what fills the bucket.

At the bottom of the bucket there are two holes taking cash out - first there is the sites rake (for providing the bucket) and second there are the winning players taking their stream of pennies.

Now - who is most important to this little closed economy? err the ones pouring the cash in to the top is the obvious answer, second comes the man with the bucket and last comes the reg taking their stream. Without the reg what happens? - Well the recs all keep playing, the rake still gets paid but basically they swop cash around between themselves and the pro stream is reduced. Fewer regs really means more in the bucket for the site.

Those withdrawing cash are not essential, in many ways they hurt the model. There is no reason to have regs grinding volume to earn a wedge for themselves when the alternative is fewer regs and more depositors and more players just passing cash about with just the rake hole draining the cash not the professional player taking cash from the bucket.

OK I know this is dumbing it down but eventually, if I get to banging the rocks together as the analogy he might get it.

The discussion seems to have gone in a different direction, but on the initial topic I don't think anyone really mentioned how decreasing bumhunting increases the barrier of entry to becoming a winning player which will lead to a decrease in the reg:rec ratio. The average reg left will of course be better but in a world where there are plenty of people in the world who's alternative is making $5/day or even less, you don't want it to be easy to become a winning poker player, because then simple economics would push the wage of a winning poker player down towards $5/day over the long run. Obviously even with bumhunting the better players will win more so it won't actually go that far down but if it were possible to teach people to bumhunt and win $10/day relatively easily that would be pretty terrible to anyone making any real money playing poker. I haven't played on the major sites in awhile so I don't know how easy it would be to do this I just thought it was weird that angle wasn't addressed people were just talking about how strong the surviving regs would be. Will regs lose less/enjoy themselves more if they're playing on tables with always 5 other meh pros or with 3 good pros and another rec? 2 good pros and 2 other recs?

You keep talking about how winning players are the same as losing players, and they only way to distinguish between types of players is by how much volume they put in. Unfortunately, you're entirely failing to recognize or acknowledge that the amount of money that a site makes from rake is a function of both hands played and money played with.

You've already acknowledged that the game can't be played without a deposit, yet you keep talking about how only volume has value to a site. When we've already established that volume has no value unless you are playing for money.

Yes, a player's volume is valuable to a poker site, it is only valuable if that volume is being played with real money.

So the question must be asked:

Where does the other half of the site's value come from?

Who is suffering a net loss for the site to make a net profit from having regs play a lot of volume for them vs fish?

Where does the money come from?

But your analogies all collapse when it comes to explaining why rake is taken when there are hands being played between two withdrawers from the economy. The two regs are losing during these hands and just giving money to the site for no reason, only you say that these players do not pay the site. You can't have it both ways. It also falls down because sites wouldn't have an incentive to reward these evil withdrawers from the economy, yet they actually do reward these evil withdrawers in reality with their VIP system.

My 'everyone is a customer' analogy however works just as well for all hands, no matter who is involved in the hands, and also helps explain the existence of the VIP system.

So it seems like you are done here.

From the site's perspective, the money comes from all players. Stars revenue has contributions made to it from every single real-money player on the site.

From the player's perspective, the money comes from:

Money won from players worse than them at poker + loyalty reward money given to them from the poker site - money lost to players better than them at poker - fees paid to the poker site for hosting the games played in

Alright, I give up.

You're refusing to acknowledge that there are players who profit from poker as well as players who lose at poker, just so that your argument makes sense.

You aren't arguing in reality. You seem to have some sort of complex that makes you think that you're so much smarter than everyone else that even when every single person disagrees with you, regardless of qualifications, you still think you're right.

Some players lose money at poker. Like, they deposit $100 that comes out of their bank account and then they play poker for 2 hours. Then they don't have that $100 dollars anymore.

To say that someone who deposits $100, plays for 2 hours and walks away with $190 is somehow paying something is ridiculous.

To claim that player a who has $90 more than they did at the start is paying more than player b who has $100 less than they did at the start is just ******ed.

Are you aware of the definition of the word pay?