^ very interesting analysis! I'll run this on gui's PLO100 database and report back.

+1 on what eldodo said.

Regarding bias, I think the best way to avoid it, assuming there is one, is to a) increase your sample size and b) use datamined hands as opposed to hands you played/observed.

I've had access to winrates over samples 150K+ hands. I'm really not sure how reliable the data is though. Some tight and loose guys were winning before RB. But from what I've seen, or remember of it, when people have huge winrates they tend to be loose players and the tags have much more conservative winnings. Anyways, unless the hand samples are huge I personally see 0 reason to put any weight in them.

Wow,i suspected that the rake was way too high but the numbers posted are shocking!

Thanks for shering the analyses!

End of June PLO player meeting:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=609

Now, who exactly will be going?

I will (l0ve2playu). On another topic Shane reported he is invited back. Napsus is invited but is trying to clear his agenda, so not certain yet as far as i know.

More important than this IMO is... what will be accomplished?

It would be nice if Poker Stars Reps and Player Reps could agree to specific outlined discussion points BEFORE the meeting. Those could be made public to everyone. Then after the meeting both player reps and PS reps could report their summary and progress of the meetings for each specific discussion point.

e.g.

PLO Tournaments
(player representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)
(PS representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)
PLO rake
(player representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)
(PS representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)
PLO game changes
(player representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)
(PS representative cliff notes of what the meeting accomplished and what changes will be made)

etc, etc, for each individual discussion point. I think this would be an awesome way to actually make some progress and keep the people being represented as in the loop as possible. Each discussion point could be a thread on it's own.

Thumbs up!

Pretty sure Shane is going, hope Napsus can make it as well.

Napsus said he can't make it.

I've been invited (possibly based on his recommendation) and will be going.

I'll open a special thread to ask for help in preparing for the meeting and for anything people want me to bring up.

From my perspective, I think the main questions we should discuss in that thread are:
1. what amount and distribution of rake do we consider "fair"?
2. how does the poker ecosystem work and how does rake affect it?
3. We've all seen that stars isn't thrilled about decoupling PLO rake from NLH rake, and they don't seem to want to decrease rake in general. What other solutions would we be happy with? (As a simplified example: would automatic supernova-level rakeback for all PLO hands make us happy?)

I hadn't finished crunching the numbers yet, so I actually don't yet have a good enough answer on how many players are "true winners" in PLO100 games. (I'd have loved to have another month to work on it before the meeting.) But, regardless, everyone knows (and stars seems to concur) that there is a problem with pre-rakeback winrates in micro- and small-stakes PLO, as well as some other games such as fixed-limit holdem and CAP no limit holdem (not to mention the dreaded CAP PLO). And we know that as the games continue to get more solved, this problem will only become worse.

Thus, clearly, our task in this meeting is not only to talk about rake as it is now, but also to develop a methodology for setting rake in the future, hand in hand with the games getting tougher (and setting rake for new games as well). I think this is the main task here: to understand how rake should be determined so that both the site can profit fairly, and that the poker ecosystem thrives in *all* games. I actually have my own suggestion for this (which I'll outline in my thread), and I'd of course love to create a discussion on this subject.

*And not to mention split pot games, which get raped super hard.

Awesome and A+ work on organizing the meeting.

V glad you are going eldodo, someone who has a real grasp on the numbers should be great

The root of low winrates is SNE encouraging grinders to play more hands and play tighter. Even if you cut rake by half, the winrates will drop quickly.

Please address rake in split pots. At the lowest stakes a split pot causes both players to lose more than the big blind (or a lot more).

Thanks for the support everyone! I really appreciate it.

I'll be sure to bring it into discussion, but from what I've seen stars people say publicly in the past, I very much doubt it'll be resolved. It's a real shame: from what I understand, PLO8 and stud8 are both fantastic games, but there's almost no way to climb up the stakes in them because of the way they're raked. (Am I wrong? I really haven't played either)

The truth is that I'm not sure at all how this can be solved, rather than abolishing rake on split pots or something of the sort.

In fact, another solution is the one I'm going to propose, which will resolve all these issues once and for all: an opt-in system, where a player who has opted in gets 100% rakeback (rakeback on won hands, not weighted contributed), and instead pays a constant percentage on his winnings when he withdraws (say 50%). This will eliminate the phenomenon of unbeatable or barely-beatable games, will cause money to flow up the stakes much more easily, and in general seems like a great system to me. Stars can throttle the withdrawal-tax (the 50% from above) according to how much profit they want: this will never make a game unbeatable, unlike what happens when you raise rake. This will also solve the issues of PLO, split pot games, CAP, fixed-limit holdem, etc. . I'll write a whole thread about this later today and post the link here.

New rake suggestion here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15.../#post39046088

Should I cross-post in the "internet poker" forum or something?

I think one can make a strong argument that split pots, or split portions of pots, should not be raked. Because what is rake? Essentially it's a sort of arbitration fee or facilitation fee to the site for enabling players to make and settle wagers between themselves. If the wager ends in a wash, it seems reasonable that that fee would be waived or at least reduced. I've posted about this before and called it 'soft rigging'. What if you're playing hold'em and the board deals out broadway? What if that happened hand after hand? Unlikely yes, but possible. Where is the skill? What goods or services are you receiving in exchange for your rake in this situation?

Sounds nice in theory, but Pokerstars would never do this. Their revenue would tank.

Why? Can you detail how you reached this conclusion?

No cash out, no revenue ?

This system would be a bit pyramidal. Most people would hold on their cash out and climb the ladder as much as they can instead of cashing out and losing 50%. Galfond and his superhero friends would end up with all the money.

For a variety of reasons, but chip dumping would be a big one.

Serious?
Decreasing rake by 50% would certainly decrease revenue.

Also have you considered MTTs?
What if you win the Sundays Million, you only win half now?
Obviously there would be mass chip dumping.


These meetings are repressive tolerance and PR most of all.
Not much will change untill we get organised or PS gets real competition.

For winners, the more obvious effect is people cashing out by transferring at a discount to people who need to deposit.

For losers (even they do cash out sometimes), they are confronted with the costs of playing poker right up front, discouraging action even more.

You don't need this. The SNE grind has already created the toughest tables online despite the relatively low rake (see PTR, PStars rake is very competitive)

If you really want softer games, ask Stars to lower amount of time players have to think, limit number of tables someone can sit at, and generally make it difficult for mass tablers makes the games a slow and tight grind.

Well, these superheros do need to withdraw their money from the site. At withdrawal they pay 50%, so the rake is paid in the end. It's true that the rake might take some time to get paid, but if the change between the current system and the new one is done in a laddered-enough way, then it shouldn't create cash flow issues for stars.


I assume you're talking about the same thing. Well, the system is not as susceptible to chip-dumping/grey-market-depositing as you think:

Suppose Alice has a million dollars on the site that she wants to withdraw, and Bob has 0$ on the site and wants to have 1000$ on the site. One way to obtain these 1000$ is to buy them, and the other way is to ask Alice to transfer 1000$ to him, and pay Alice only 750$ for them. Suppose Bob then goes and runs up his 1000$ to 2000$. In the first approach, he gets back 1500$ in his bank account. In the second method, he had the 250$ he saved, and he gets back 1000$, so he ends up with 1250$ in his bank account: he'd have been better off just buying the money directly from stars.


This is true. My approach actually calls for keeping the current rake system alongside the new system, so everyone keeps paying according to the current rake structure by default. I hope this will avoid most of the effect you describe. Everyone keeps talking like rake is secret, but I'm not sure that bad players are oblivious to its existence as you say: they just don't care about it much. And they won't care about it much if some other people are under a rake-on-winnings system, either.


My goal wasn't to try to make games softer. My goal was to make sure that rake is distributed among players fairly, and that all games are beatable. From what I understand, this is our goal in the meeting: to talk about how the rake is affecting the beatability of PLO.


I think you didn't understand the system. Try reading my post again. I don't agree with the rest of your stipulations as well.