Cliffs: give your ideas about rake and rakeback with any context/pretext you prefer to use.

I realize at various times this was discussed to exhaustion, however, historically I think the context was always quite limited. The major discussions about how to most favorably structure rake happened at the times when Poker Stars made widely unappreciated changes to their policies (I'm careful not to say “unfair” changes because I don't support the view that a business is morally obligated to be fair).*

These events caused the players to divide the discussion between what the most favorable policies might be versus whether or not it was moral for the operator to make changes at the expense of the players base (and whether or not such changes were actually detrimental to the professional or recreational players base or both).

I have not seen the community discuss, en mass, the different possibilities and historical attempts to provide a sustainable rake program, and with emerging crypto sites and p2p projects the dialogue is becoming increasingly more important and relevant.

I've researched every emerging project I can find. Something noticeably missing from virtually all of them is a rake structure. Always these projects put off statements on these policies I think often because they don't understand the industry, but also because they do not have empirical data to make such decisions. Galfond explains this to Joe Ingram here:



But being proper game theory enthusiasts we can philosophize about the different possibilities. What would be optimal from the players perspective? What would be optimal from the sites perspective? If it's a zero sum question then understanding what is favorable for sites would help a player make a better decision as to where to best spend their money (as if the decision as to where to play is a game itself and requires its own strategy).

Some rakeback policies favor the grinder, some are aimed at negating the high volume players. What is best for the short term wants of the operator versus what is best for the sustainability of the industry?I've heard of negative rake, subscriptions, and failed no/low rake (perhaps advertisement) based models. What models favor the professional players and what models favor the recreational players? Do they have contrasting wants and is there a balance that can be found between the two?

I also know of a few novel ideas and have some specific ideas myself. I'm curious if the community can come up with the many different possibility and make any inferences on them. I think ultimately we might be able to come up with an equilibrium definition between the operators and players which could be useful in the analysis of different possible rake structures that are offered today or in the future.

It is a thread I will send the many emerging projects to so they might better learn the players wants.

Lastly, just as a general comment and overview, I think that rake should be structured (with obvious considerations to cost/profit of the operator) such that it fluctuates with the overall average skill levels of the players. That if the games are more difficult they should be raked less in order to salvage some of the profitability, and conversely if the games are soft then the operator should be incentived somewhat for keeping that way.

Thoughts?

*they did however renege on promises and fail to deliver future ones.

optimal rake = no rake

/thread

You might even consider a site with no net rake leaving the player pool (although its not really feasible for obvious reasons) but there could still be the consideration of redistributing some of the entries/money such that recreational players receive bonuses etc. (ie you would take rake but all of it stays with the players, so you would still have considerations).

No rake would never work players need some sort of rakeback/reward, it gives losing players a sense they are winning something.

Cash game rake, when raking every pot, is the one of the biggest con tricks ever.

Paying only for table time (e.g. an hourly/number of hands table charge), or only the winners paying a rake on their net (set number of hands) session profit, with no individual pots raked, both would be much fairer and logical systems.

After all in an MTT the pot (effectively the prize pool) is not raked in every hand, there's just the one time rake (juice).

I envisage some of the new blockchain crypto sites adopting a net profits or pay to play rake model.

The pay to play could look a bit like what you see with antes. As the hand is getting dealt you "ante" pay a certain amount to poker site for each hand played.

It depends on business; if it would run like most other gaming businesses, the rake would be 10 to 50 euros per month. Whatever more it is more, is about the operating costs and promotions.

Yes a per month or quarter pay to play any amount of hands subscription fee is also a very sensible method, with different subscription fees for different game sizes.

Paying $3 per pot in a 50c/$1 game and the same, $3 in a $1K/$2K HU 2-7 game also makes no sense. So much of the current on line poker rake structure convention is really strange.

The $1k/$2K HU rake is about right but the 50c/$1 rake should be about 80% to 90% lower IMO.

Rake in any game should never be higher than the total of the blinds/antes.

The short answer is rake should be different for every game type and any given game type should allow good players to be able to make a respectable profit after rake/rakeback/bonuses are factored in.

2% of pot up to $1 max in full ring and $0.25 max heads up.

Well you can spin it off and change the perspective little bit with asking why even bother to rake in a first place?

There are already very succesfull sites that work with no rake model for cash they just charge you 5% of the winnings after you leave the table or table closes after agreed amount of time. Current model is disastrous for recreational players where they get double raped by rake first and then by the regs.

People don't even think how insane the current model with raking every pot is. I mean unless you play midstakes plus you end up paying between 5 and 10 bb/100 in rake to the site and end up giving between 1/2 and enitre buyin to the site every 1k hands.

You can have very succesfull poker room and ecosystem with no rake model and just taking % from the winnings. Better for everyone (except for greedy scumbags that currently run the biggest sites on pokerscout).

There are at least two reasons for rakeback.

One is to encourage players to effectively act as props, starting and maintaining games. Another is to redistribute wealth from the good players to the bad players, to keep the latter in the game longer.

So, I would consider ideas for rewarding players who are willing to play on less juicy tables to them open and for giving some sort of loss rebate to losing players. The latter is easy to calculate. The former may require more creativity.

Whatever the fair amount of rake is, double it and give 50% rakeback.

Peeps will gobble up that ****.

Remember the 6max hypers on stars started out rakefree with no takers.

Only when they introduced rake and the elite fpp whores started playing them did they take off.

Rake is going to be a thing of the past once they start letting you buy better powerup cards as microtransactions.

The enormous rake is part of what makes online poker noncompetitive.

After tons of data, regs have realized playing other regs loses money in most formats.

If you remove the rake, it becomes sensible to go after thin edges again.

I think a model where only net withdrawers pay rake makes the most sense.

+1
Pot rake is terrible.
Charge people who cause games to run more to play than nits.absurd.

rake should be progressive based on your winnings.

if you are a loser then you do not pay rake.

if you are a small winner you pay a small % of rake.

if you are a big winner you pay a slightly higher rake.

Is this socialism? Is this comparable to taxation schemes?

tax yes

Yes it is, but a sensibly graduated system of taxation doesn't kill growth or ambition so can work alongside a Capitalist model.

Pokerstars are using Marxist economics by taxing the top out of existence, taxing the middle into near poverty, but adding stealth tax (the lure of casino and low skill poker games) to the bottom.

This progressively destroys the top of the pyramid, ultimately resulting in one sole horizontal ground floor of misery, which Pokerstars want to stretch around the world in order to prop up their share price, service the huge debt they have and pay shareholders' dividends.

A rake system that rewards play by decreasing the rake based on amount of hands played / rake collected makes the most sense.

Encourage grinders to play more by having a discount on rake once milestones are reached.

Yes generally, but the trouble with this is that it discourages regs from battling (and playing short-handed to get tables open).

The net rake% should be based on the ratio between net rake$ paid so far and net winnings$ so far in order to aim for a particular ratio between those two numbers.

So charge the winners more but only charge them for winning, not when they are doing the things the site actually wants them to do.

I am aware of underground poker rooms that takes a percentage of what you buy in with (give them $1100 and get $1000 in chips...not sure how much they take), so what if online poker did the same thing and charged players a fee to put money on the table instead of taking rake?

small amount of rake (fraction of current system)
monthly fee (?)
charge for cashouts
free deposits

add ons for emotes/avatars/skins/etc.