You're comparing apples and pears: a 2bb/100 winner at Stars 25NL should be capable of at least 5bb/100 at Unibet.

I don't understand why you have changed the amount raked between the 2 charts.

What value have you added for missions?

With this new model I get 7265 players (290610/40e per player) times by 15e(3 months x 15e / a third = 15e)

Thats 7265 players x 15e = 108975.

I get the missions alone are earning more than you are saying the rakeback and missions together are earning together.

Also looking at the penny rakers, you say we will get 163006 back from 290610 rake paid.
Thats over 50% rakeback.
Do stars pay over 50% rakeback to people who rake 40e a month?

Just doesnt seem right to me.

You need to provide all figures used to show that this is an accurate chart in my opinion.

Regardless of any figures from experience my money goes a lot further on unibet than it has on any other site.

Unibet isn't for people like you and it never will be, hopefully.

The goal of poker should be for people to enjoy themselves and have a positive experience playing the game so that the industry can retain players and grow.

Players need to have a chance of some decent upswings, some value of entertainment, and over a decent amount of time, which cannot happen when sites charge too much.

My discrepancy is that Unibet has proposed this rake model which butchers anyone playing regularly at NL25+ and claims this is necessary to pay for 'beginner rewards' when I believe this is a pretty small figure relative to the total rewards they give out. It just doesnt justify the high rake and 11% rakeback chasm in the middle that alot of players will fall under.

Don't be sad to talk about pricing. Poker sites are businesses, and will take off the poker tables as much money as they can before players become aware and seek better value.

Might I add to this discussion that it's not all about rakeback but also about rake? On unibet you can play 5 man stt's with 7,5% rake on all stakes while on ps they charge like 15% for microstake stt's. Also NL10 on unibet has only 3% rake, and the banzai tables have 1% rake at all stakes. You need to count that in if you are going to criticize the rakeback. I personally love the place, even though I'm in the category, that would get the least rakeback.

Let me explain how I got these figures.

Using excel I have a column for:

- rake steps (ie 10e, 30e, 50e, 100e -> 100,000e)
- No of players (ie 10, 5, 20)
- Unibet rake% (ie 4.5, 1.5, 0.5, 0.3)
- Stars rake%
- Test rake%
- Unibet-rake-paid (ie 200000e)
- Stars-rake-paid
- Test-rake-paid

Basically I have been distributing 100 players over the rake steps ie 10 players raked 10e, 15 players raked 30e, 10 players raked 50e etc.

I did this 4 times skewing the players around different rake steps to see the affects this had on the sites' rewards.

This link below shows the excel sheet with all the figures plugged in for the 'Good rakers' player distribution.

http://tinypic.com/r/ipoc2b/8


edit: To answer the original question, the raketotal was different because I didn't save exact the player distributions so was working from a new set. It still shows pretty much the same reward returns though.

Could you post a pick of the penny rakers please?

That way I can see how you got to your figures and compare to my own data.

Its confusing me a bit because your graph shows Unibet paying out a lot more in rakeback early on, but this is the opposite in the table.

I am easily confused sometimes though.

+1

All this rakeback discussion is upsetting to hear. People should look more into increasing their win rate than rakeback.

I agree with you joggle.

The figures posted by POW make it look like what Unibet take in rake does not get redistributed to new players, so I would like to do my own figures using his figures as a base.

I wholeheartedly believe Unibet is the best site for new players and a great place to play.

The discussion about rakeback/bonuses is important to me because I think these are the things that keep new players at Unibet.

If it was not for the promos/missions/challenges I may have given up on poker.

At the beginning of April I had a bankroll of 0, and was thinking that was enough of poker for me(even though it was not poker that got my balance to 0).

Then I saw the Twitch promo and gave it a go, managed to get a 25e shared win as a viewer, from there I have built a nice little BR.

The point being because of what I feel are good value bonuses/missions/challenges I have managed to stay around long enough to build my bankroll and I am sure I am not the only one.

Hopefully with what the bonuses etc have done to keep me in the game, I can now concentrate on improving my winrate and have less concern for what the rakeback is, but if it was not for these things in the first place I may not have made it this far.

I will always remember the fact that the bonuses etc kept me in the game and when I reach the stakes where the rakeback is a little less, I will be happy to know that little extra is being redistributed to new players to give them a chance to move up the ladder.

why, because i bought a tracker program and played 100k hands lifetime and actually won some money?

Precisely, the huge rakeback for micros sounds huge, but when you consider it is only for 10e or 30 rake, the reward is not so much.

I'm afraid again I havent saved the 'penny rakers' distribution again *durrr*, but here's a similar one.

http://tinypic.com/r/5r1qb/8

i dont think the difference is that big, but andrew suggested that as well so i might be wrong.


conclusively i'd like to say that right now the players who play ocasional nl50 or regular nl25 have to bear too much burden to make this awesome site sustain in the longrun.

all these graphs and calculation are impressive but meaningless. Unibet have taken the decision to offer a different method of rewards and targetting those rewards at a different sector of the population.

if you don't like what unibet offer play elsewhere. if you do keep playing on unibet

I've done the same (well didn't win as much as I hoped but still...) and I just like that Unibet is taking a different approach to online poker than virtually every other site out there. This rakeback discussion is nonsense.

There are tonnes of things Unibet can fix, like looking over their MTT schedule. Less weird stuff like multibuys where you can buy in for 40% of the gtd (wtf really).

Create variation by alternating stacksize, blind/ante sizes and blind levels, which of course they already have but just add more. There is seriously absolutely NO NEED for more than 3 Ante Up tournaments per day. PokerStars have TWO for example, they're fun but not THAT fun, especially with the weird ass blind levels of 10/20 that messes up the early stages.

O_o Nice one! Best promo evOr.

Its's funny to read how bad Unibets reward system is and then read this.

Instead of 75 Cent I will pay 50 Cent for 10€ SnGs. What kind of rakeback is it? Getting 25 Cent for 75 Cent back - 33% "virtual" rakeback plus normal reward system. It's great.

Would like to see a forum added like sky and PKR have. Can understand the reasoning behind the 'no chat' facility but with a forum you could have moderators. Just my 2 cents worth.

reducing rake always indirectly reduces your rakeback. don't trust rake decreases, it's just smoke and mirrors.

So what you saying, you'd rather the rake be higher so you get more rakeback even though rakeback is only a small percentage of rake that 'you've' actually paid? LOL

heya andrew... recently i got cash game nl4 ticket... but i didnt know it cause i didnt check mail last 10 days... can you extend it because ticket expired before i even knew i have it...
thx in advance... name donbosva...

2 questions:

1. What extra costs does Unibet have over Pokerstars that justifies the much larger expense of using their product for players overall? (Bare in mind their big promos for low-volume players are relatively small)

2. Do any of the 2+2ers here defending Unibet actually reach 4500+ points in a quarter, or are you benefiting substantially from Unibet's high low-volume rewards?

You think reducing rake 33% on 1 table type, of 1 format, on 1 low stake, for a month, makes up for nearly all the other stakes and formats being uncompetitively over-raked and rewarded with a sub-par reward system?

Rake decreases are usually much better value for the player than rakeback increases. Don't think you can call them smoke and mirrors.

I've found an answer by sciolist which is andrew in the old thread:

The cost is pretty tiny since those games don't rake a lot anyway - a bit under 1% monthly GGR, which should be made up by players moving up and staying around longer.

I think if you compare Unibet vs Stars for example, stars is probably better for players reaching between 50k-200k points, maybe even 100k-200k. Look at the June Mission alone; you'll get easy 35€ as a NL25 player.

So because of that i think your 2. question should target players in that area.

POW, are you employed by Stars or are you failing to see the bigger picture?

It's already been stated here that the Unibet games are much softer than Stars and that therefore your RB comparisons are invalid, yet you choose to ignore this.

As others have said, no one's forcing you to play at Unibet - if you prefer the RB nitfest that is Stars, please carry on there. People who play at Unibet are there because they like it, and the site is expanding which I think shows they're doing some important things a lot better than sites like Stars, which has a user base eating itself out of existence.

I agree as a decent winning player, site softness adds value so it may be preferable to lower rake or better rewards. However, how many players are decent winning players? 3% 1%? 0.5%?
The other 97% of players are not able to beat the game/rake so the site's pricing will affect how often these guys go on heaters.

No heaters, no return.

The softness of the games doesn't alter the amount of money a poker site takes from the tables. Soft players still have to pay the good players + the price set by the site and if that price is too high, soft players will have consistent losing sessions and know for sure they are big dogs to the game.

Unibet is a micro-stakes heaven at the moment, but if the traffic starts picking up for NL25+, the players are going to get consistently butchered by the high rake and sub-par rewards.

I'm writing itt for 2 reasons:

Firstly, I want to bring attention to Unibet's very bad value for anyone playing regularly on NL25+

Secondly, show that a hybrid reward model that mirrors unibet's generosity to low-volume beginners and Stars rewards for middle-high volume players is not that expensive to implement and would be fantastic at welcoming and retaining players whichever stakes they play at, and at whatever volume.

I don't particularly want to post on weekends, but I can't just ignore 50 posts of basically misinformation, particularly as more people are visiting the thread now due to Viktor Blom on Twitch.

So it's possible I'm a bit more annoyed in this reply than I need to be.

But in general - our aim is not to compete with site xyz on highstakes rakeback. Our aims are to make poker fun and to keep new players alive for longer. One of the ways that we do this is to reward players more at the lower end than they're going to get on any other site. That is far from the only way, so it's annoying that one person is pushing his agenda to get us to talk purely about it.

Yeh, it didn't run. When we're back in the office on Tuesday we'll add more low stake satellites to it.

There're no rakeback affiliates. There are indeed affiliates that have small rake races, but I strongly dislike it and if I can find a way to end that without losing the source of new players, I'll be happy.

You can't - we want to keep the client as simple as possible, so we don't have that kind of feature. Our aim is to be accessible.

Yeh, it's fun when other big streamers are talking about tuning in.

I'd be quite surprised with way over 5k though - I think it's only really 2 + 2 or people who read the poker news sites that know what's happening. Most of the big streamers are big because they're there day in day out, so they can acquire an audience.

I can't do this while at home, so I'll save it for Tuesday when I'm in the office next.

That's wrong and it's annoying that you keep posting it. Why do you disregard my replies and simply post the same thing over and over?

You play NL4 and NL10. You are actually doing great from the loyalty scheme, particularly given your low volume and the missions etc.

If you rake > €3.3k per month, you will be on 31% rb. You picked that amount because if you rake > €4k per month, you will be on 41% rb. As I said before, the aim is to give good rewards at the top, great rewards at the bottom, and worse rewards than we did on MPN in the middle:



The aim of our site is not to give 80% rakeback. If you want a site like that, go back to 2010 and look at all the sites that used to do it and that no longer exist, often taking players money with them.

The aim of our site is to keep new players alive for longer, and to make poker fun again. We spend our money on ensuring our games are better, not on huge rakeback deals like used to happen. Talking of which, take a look at the rest of the industry - it's in heavy secular decline:

http://www.pokerscout.com/news/weekl...r=2015&week=20 down 17%
http://www.pokerscout.com/news/weekl...r=2014&week=20 down 8%
http://www.pokerscout.com/news/weekl...r=2013&week=20 down 14%
http://www.pokerscout.com/news/weekl...r=2012&week=20 down 18%

Meanwhile, we're 50-60% up year on year. Advocating for a failed model doesn't seem like a great plan to me.

Ah, sorry - I'll credit a new one on Tuesday morning.

You've made some very bad assumptions in your model. Players who rake under €800 per quarter (your favourite amount to cherrypick as it's the lowest payback stage) account for 40% of the cost of the loyalty scheme, not to mention probably 60%+ of promo payouts.

And how are you paying for that extra 40% cost on PS' loyalty scheme?

What's the value in a model that uses made up data to give you the answers you already want?

Actually, I know the answer precisely because I know what PS spend on loyalty and I know what we spend on it.

Your model is very, very wrong indeed.

This demonstrates how poor your model is. That 40% cost? Negligible apparently.

Benefit by losing money, sure.

It's pretty obvious to you because you made your conclusions before looking into anything at all - just look at your first posts in this thread on this.

How about we take your model seriously though? That would predict that a) we'd be in strong decline and b) our churn rate would be up.

a) we're actually up 50-60% year on year
b) our churn rate is down 8%

Good model.

He took the latter into account and not the former, because how can he comport that with his preconceived results?

Sure, I'll do it on Tue.

He's put something into them, that's for sure.

Exactly - if you want to see someone copying PS and doing poorly, please see the rest of the industry.

Model still out by a factor 2-3.

Model still broken.

You want us to spend 100% of our revenue on rakeback.

Incorrect assumption due to faulty model, followed by offensive speculation.

Says your faulty model.

You don't play NL25, so I don't know why you're commenting on the toughness of those games compared to at PS.

I agree - a big segment of the industry was all about "need more rakeback" for several years. That segment has now basically disappeared because at best it failed. At worse, it stole money from players.

You get a little over 10% rakeback if you rake exactly €1,500 in a quarter. If you rake 2.5k it's 15%. You are looking at the absolute low point of the payout schedule.

You are also assuming the games are of equal toughness between the sites, which is obviously not the case.

It's because he needs a specific outcome so he doesn't care what inputs he adds to his "model".

I wouldn't have said that was exactly true, but it's definitely true that we aren't aiming to attract these kinds of players. They'll come anyway because it's where new players stay alive for longer - that gives good players an obvious benefit.

Well, obvious to MOST people.

Sites have x% of their revenue that they can spend on promos and loyalty (not to mention acquisition, staffing costs, development costs, etc).

We choose to spend that money at a different player segment than a site like PS do. If you happen to be in that player segment, then it's understandable that you prefer PS.

The problem is that you're then overlooking why we're doing it - we keep new players alive for longer, and we make the game more fun. This has clear knock-on benefits for that original player segment.

Only if you make the.... questionable assumptions about site playerbases that you do. It's true that someone who rakes €10 is only going to get €3 of that back, but you can't complain that the euro amount is low! It's the percentage that matters. Is your new plan that we reward those players €100? That's a rather confused argument compared to what you're stating elsewhere.

I think this is a poor conclusion. I also think it's inaccurate in that those games are growing too, while the churn rates are down and the average percentage of pots that are raked is stable. Those are not the signs of an ecology in trouble.

I agree totally with this sentiment.

I don't agree that the calculation is impressive though.

Hurrah!

Yeh, we're pretty weak with MTTs. We're redesigning the tourney lobbies at the moment, but it probably won't be ready until Sep. But more broadly, this is a consequence of being pretty small.

We did it like that because we don't yet have tourney formats like rebuys. And I should point out that earlier in the week we had a request for more regular freezeouts - I think we have about the best that we can right now, and larger improvements will only come as we grow.

I'm glad to hear you like it.

But don't worry, POW will figure out how to add this to his model that demonstrates that it doesn't cost us anything and it's another "smoke and mirrors" promotion.

I agree. I like this thread, except today. It gives us good feedback, lets us chase bugs we're having trouble with, often tells me when something is broken faster than Unibet's service desk can, and it is good to foster a sense of community.

Unibet are talking about doing something along the lines you suggest. It's definitely the thing I think Sky are doing best (along with getting free ads on the TV station, but I can't steal that idea).

We demand 100% rake up to €500 cap and 95% rakeback!

He was making the same point you were.

Sure, but it'll have to wait til I'm next in the office on Tuesday.

Do you not think there are fixed costs for having a poker site? Do you not think that those fixed costs are a bigger proportion of your costs for a smaller site?

Inaccurate and based on a very poor model.

Yes, they do. A couple of the biggest rakers are active in this thread.

NL4, NL10, PL4, PL10, PLO25, HU SNG, 5-max SNG, Banzai.

I have an idea for your next "model" - see what impact reducing rake from 5% to 3% has in PLO25 compared to the difference of increasing from 5% to 5.5% at NL25 has. We can compare that one to my model here too! My model based on actual real world data!

People from PS do read this thread, but all the ones I know would never a) misunderstand it so profoundly, or b) risk their jobs. So I am voting on the latter option, though there's a less kind third.

BUT HE HAS A MODEL!

Hurrah!

Though I actually think PS will be fine - they have such huge economies of scale that it doesn't matter so much if the games are tough. PS have always had the toughest games around, and they grow massively anyway.

These economies of scale also mean they can go around hiring Nadal or Fat Ronaldo or Neymar - I would bet that their acquisition costs are hugely lower than ours are. This means they can balance the faster losing rates of new players with more new players.

I think that in 10 years time there'll be the PS model and the Unibet model.

This is profoundly wrong. I'm not even sure where to start.

NL25+ IS picking up. These games are growing, the churn rate has improved, and the percentage of pots that are raked has remained stable.

You want to bring attention to your fatally flawed model that shows this, yes. It isn't the case in reality though.

"Secondly, a site that spends 150% of their revenue will be fantastic"

OK, are you going to fund it?

Hope you have a nice Sunday still though. Just remember, it could be worse ... like boarding planes shortly and spending the next 14 hours in them.

Don't let a few haters ruin your day off. It is obvious that some people can never be pleased.