What I meant is that I would think most people who PLO would suspect that the top 3 earners at each limit from 200 - 1K PLO would all be beating the games at over 10bb/100, especially since the player pools at 400 - 1K have a mixture of players that includes a fair bit of players that win at 10/20+

besides stars,i've huge number of hds only for ipoker and ongame....
ongame's essence is basically a scam...imho.
not too long ago..i compared stars with 40%RB vs ipoker with 70%RB (*cough*)...playing at ipoker would save me 2bb/100.....

Does that mean the 27% rakeback at FTP is almost impossible to win against? The 100plo rush games absolutey died there the last two weeks...I wonder if this thread is the reason why. (I quit playing there too)

...and ipoker is realy 70% RB? Wow!!!!

ballpark 65-70%...yes
but therefore you play on a crappy software...the playerpool is tiny...
linedrops are frequent.....and security is non-existant....
stars is easily worth those 2bb....

it's not only stars that rake plo small stakes far too much...
but stars is the only company that might come up with a better solution...

try do discuss with ipoker,etc...

overall stars is doing an excellent job...and they are about to correct that
misleaded RB at ftp....

nevertheless...
i feel sorry for all players below plo 200...you guys are fighting windmills!

I also think the Ongame Essence model is dodgy. FWIW I think the culprit is bwin. The moment they left Ongame and merged their player pool with Party Poker, bwin.party introduced the player pool segregation, to I believe NLHE stakes at .5/1 and below (maybe 1/2 and below), effectively making it such that there are less big winners and more rake has to be paid to generate the same amount of winnings. This is their idea of keeping the player pool healthy.

I honestly think nobody should do business with bwin.party. Party management consistently manages to betray people's trust and that is just huge in and of itself. I think it is a problem when a company tries to raise prices behind customer's backs and yet still manages to have the 2nd highest traffic on the internet: http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-dep...t-party-poker/ and http://pokerscout.com.
Their recent player pool segregation was also without any information to the public and had to be found out as did the rake changes.

Sorry for the slight off-topic, but I think this tells us something about the current poker economy:
The percentage of the player population that is aware of certain issues is small and/or people who are aware of the issues either do not care or do not want to take action. I think that's an important point, because at the end of the day people may complain, but what threat is there to the actual poker sites? In essence I'm trying to emphasize how strong an argument has to be for Stars to actually reduce current rake at PLO and that it is not an easy task. That being said, I think it's great that Stars holds player meetings and is generally concerned with poker community as a whole. I think a lot of people ITT do not realize that literally no other company does that (to my knowledge).

the money lost by loosing players is distributed to rake/winning players...
@plo200 68/32
@plo400 58/42
@plo 1k 35/65
@plo 5k 10/90

i ofc don't know..what kind of deal stars has with moneybookers,neteller,etc......
but i can't even imagine they make profit at plo 5k+...
imo those tbls are pure advertisement/marketing...
guess,that's why party stopped them...

considering our sense of fairness...do we demand higher rake at those limits aswell?

can only imagine how happy they would be if stars takes up to $280 out of their pots
at plo 10k

wow, what a life

I'm not saying u should post it here but u need to see the equiv ratios for Holdem and compare. Also, money won or lost per stake (depends on how u view it) gives your 4 waterfalls a cliff to fall off


Nothing is fair in poker... Your figures prove that. It's not like 90% of fishposits at 5k+ spunkflood down the limits... It's spunked on bitches and crack!!!

Interesting numbers. I think it should be even more distorted after rakeback as players at higher limits also receive more rakeback on average due to more absolute rake and thus higher status in the vip scheme.
I agree that 5k+ is mainly publicity/marketing. It fits into Party's rake scheme to remove all tables above 5/10 so that liquidity is circulated for as long as possible to maximize rake collected.
Is this really about fairness? I think we agreed to present an argument that was convincing from Stars's perspective and not to pleed "fairness" so that players can line their pockets with more winnings.

I have a question about live PLO and rake. Does this translate to live? I talked to a reg who said that small stakes live PLO was the worse game to play (1/2). I didnt believe him but after reading this, he might be right.

All live poker rake sucks. Low stakes really sucks. But does PLO rake hurt more than hold em?

My logic may be flawed, but... If this thread makes some regulars give up on PLO, wouldn't it make the game fishier? Which in turn would make it beatable again? And then these regs would come back. Vicious circle.

As others have mentioned, you need a pretty solid mathematical proof that it really is in Stars' best interest to lower the rake. I have no background whatsoever, but my logic would be to study how much an average reg is worth to Stars as well as what the consequences of him quitting would be (less overall rake paid, effect on the rest of the player pool's winrates etc). And somehow find an approximate number for how many players would have to quit for it to be a serious issue for Stars. Also, as the number of regs decreases, it would be interesting to see who would benefit from it, the remaining regs or the recs. I'm not sure how to put down my thoughts exactly, but maybe you get some of it.

Thinking about it a bit more, it's likely that the worse regs will be the first to quit, making the games even better for the stronger regs. We need some serious number crunching to find out if we have a case at all. You would have to foresee the effect of keeping the current rake structure. If PLO has been growing the last years, it becomes even more difficult to make the argument.

Live rake is almost always higher than online rake.

this discussion is going in the wrong direction in my oppionion. Its not our job to prove to stars that lowering rake would be in THEIR best interest even though it probably is. We are their customers and they rape us with the current rake structure so we need to unite together and CREATE a scenario where leaving the rake like it is would be worse for stars than lowering it. By creating a scenario where plo players unite and threaten to leave stars if they dont act we could actually do something that would force them into our direction. Proving to them that lowering plo rake just how it is should be next to impossible. My proposition is we found a group called "PLO Players United" and then start with things like everybody in that group not playing on stars for a day etc. so that they know we have a powerbase that can hurt them.

Well proving them that lowering rake is in their interest as well is our best or at least a very good shot at getting the rake lowered.
Regarding those strikes idk, I'd rather prefer spreading the info like it has been done so far - seen a lot of reg & rec players stating to stop playing
because of the absurd rake - and that's the way to go I guess if stars doesn't change their mind.

Its really not our job to tell stars how to best manage their company. We should spend more time on getting our own interests through. Thinking that stars and players interests somehow overlap is wrong imho. Even though it could be the case. We need to create a powerbase to show them we can hurt them if they dont care about players interests.

Yes, it's competitive. Quick Google shows Cake with 36% rakeback, actually lower than what high volume players get on Stars. The rakeback needs to be ~10% higher on Cake just to make it competitive with Stars, all else being equal. You need even more with Party.

PStars just won't take the threat for players to flee seriously. They don't care if you flee to NLHE... they get your rake anyway. They don't care either if you flee to FTP for obvious reasons. Anywhere else? Well, you pay even more rake, unless you get a backdoor rakeback deal.

That and PokerStars has by far the most traffic. That alone keeps a lot of players around despite tougher competition.

If you are putting in SN+ volume and managing not to go too busto in the process then yeah Stars is a good choice but how many PLO players are SN+?

How many PLO players are SN+? Just about every 100PLO+ reg who has been at the tables for longer than 100 days

It's not a backdoor deal, it's a combination of affiliate races and additional central promotions which contribute to the rakeback. Getting 60%+ on any European network right from the start is a piece of cake and there's nothing illegal about it.

This is the only reason why people at 2/4+ play at Stars. Well, the software and the relative safety as well. But it boggles my mind why the lower stakes guys don't look for an alternative, there are plenty.

The problem is that money doesn't flow upwards. It's all getting raked at the bottom where SN is a tough challenge for most guys. Stars is just grabbing it all before it can reach midstakes.

Yeah I certainly agree with you on that point. I think the rake at 2PLO - 100PLO should be at least in line with 200PLO where the average player is only paying ~8bb/100 or so in rake. Paying over an entire 100bb buyin in rake to play 1000 hands of Poker at any limit is incredibly ridiculous, not to mention paying over two buyins at 2 - 10PLO (correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty sure those limits are paying something like 18 - 22bb/100 hands).

One issue that hasn't even been brought up is how many MILLIONS of dollars PokerStars has made ("saved") by switching to a contributed rake model. I feel that a contributed rake model is the fairest option for giving back in the form of rakeback/bonuses/VIP programs, but the fact remains that they are giving much less back to the community due to how their VIP program is structured.


The old dealt model for a "standard" 2/4 game that raked $6 at the table would be distributed something like:

200K VPP reg: $1 * .41 = $.41
300K VPP reg: $1 * .43 = $.43
500K VPP reg: $1 * .45 = $.45
1KK VPP reg: $1 *.58 = $.58
100K VPP semi-reg fish: $1 * .37 = $.37
50K VPP recreational fish: $1 * .286 = $.286

=$2.53
or ~42.1% collective rakeback for the table.


With the newer contributed model it looks something more like:

200K VPP reg: $1.03 * .41 = $.422
300K VPP reg: $.95 * .43 = $.409
500K VPP reg: $.82 * .45 = $.369
1KK VPP reg: $.75 *.58 = $.435
100K VPP recreational regular: $1.05 *. 37 = $.389
50K VPP recreational fish: $1.40 * .286 = $.40

= $.2064
or ~34.4%


For a game they rake $7 million from per year this is what they give back:
2947000 in effective rakeback for dealt model
2408000 in effective rakeback for contributed model

A difference of $539,000


When you take into account the lower yearly VPP totals for a game like 100PLO, the returns on 7 Million rake are probably something more like:

Dealt = 40% = 2800000
Contributed = 29% = 2030000

= Approximately $770,000 PokerStars has gained by switching to a contributed model that vastly cuts back on how much they are giving back to the community in rewards and bonuses, and this is JUST for 100PLO...

These numbers have to be brought up at the meetings.

The reward numbers I used I got from fpppro.com

How do i get 60% i joined IPoker (titian poker) a year ago and get some points into dollars reward this don't seem it? Can you get the 60% rakeback deal now or is it new accounts only?

Only play at Poker Stars so don't really know much about rakeback with other sites.

Not everyone is a reg, recs make next to nothing in RB. Not everyone wants to be a reg either. Then there are those who are regs who still don't make SN because they don't put in X amount of volume at stakes 100PLO or higher and there is little point putting in so much volume in at stakes below that with the rake as it is.

imo its poss to still get 60 at titan/celeb, if u r interested pm me and i'll ask my affilliate, but no promises. Prolly theyll give u a monthly raketarget to get the full 60, thats all imo.

I dunno what you guys think about SNE, but imo its close to imposs to reach SNE if you arent a bot that has noing else to do than grinding online all day long the whole year.
I play plo200-plo2k, mostly plo400-1k, average 8t up to 15t, I receive more vpps then the most due to higher vpip, and I hardly can reach 500-600k vpp/year what pays about 45% for what you have to hit the final milestone pretty exactly.
If i play some hours 6days a week i prolly get 100k vpp/month if i dont take breaks.
So SNE imo is def just for kids able/willing to sit in front of their pc 24/7/365.