Quote:
Originally Posted by 39suited
Poker ecology question for you: If you don't give any rewards to low limit players and thus killing them off quickly, where are the players coming from that move up in the limits to feed the almighty sharks like you? And why are most poker sites these days rather feature a recreational model and don't want to cater too much to rake back grinders?
Looking forward to your explanations.
Its not beginners you want to reward, it's DEPOSITORS. Whether that depositor plays 10 hands, 1000 hands, nl4, nl200, sites should be flooding these accounts with merchandise, tickets, anything to make them feel good and rewarded for playing poker at their site.
Rewarding BEGINNERS is in the right direction, but you're still wasting promo money on small-time sharks and debit-card-nits, whilst letting good depositors get butchered because they wanted to play some higher buyins or a few extra hands that month. It's 2015, NL50 on any site is still going to be tough.
My gripe with Unibet's model is that it takes a big cut of rewards from a large range of high-raking customers (compared to other sites), which is all meant to subsidize the few euros given to beginners.
This graph shows Unibets rewards vs Stars. There's a few biases such as:
1. Unibet's lower rake at nl4+nl10
2. Unibet's higher rake at nl50+
3. Pokerstars' large freerolls have been omitted.
4. Unibets rewards reset quarterly, Stars is annually.
5. I used highest rewards possible for both sites.
Stats were taken and recorded by myself from Unibet site and Pokerstars.com.
http://tinypic.com/r/rwthfp/8
https://www.pokerstars.com/vip/tiers/
I believe Andrew when he says unibet give away more revenue/rewards than other sites but I think its because the player base is currently low volume and low stakes as the software is still taking off.
This is a great situation for beginners punting a few euros now, but when the the site grows, the 5.5% rake with 9% rewards and 2015+ skilled players is going to make for many more butchered/disheartened players in the future. I just don't think this is a healthy model for the current state of online poker.