Do you really need any math to figure out where $300 is gonna last longer on avg, at 5/10 or 3/6? You'd have to have 67% higher lossrate at 3/6 to lose the money as fast. Sure going from 30bb to 50bb is gonna increase the bb/100 loss of recreational players by a little margin, but I'm quite sure it's nowhere near 67%. I really don't get how you could come up with "you lose X dollars faster by playing lower stakes with it" argument.

I don't think we even need to discuss anything like that in this thread. I'm pretty sure PS has a lot of information on this area, and obviously they rather base their decisions on facts than our speculation here. We should just chime in what we (and by we I mean regular players at all stakes) would like to see happen.

And tbh, I don't think it makes any drastic difference either way. You say that fish losing money faster is a bad thing for poker economy, but especially at small/midstakes that's not really even true. Sure, if fish can keep on playing longer they might be more inclined to deposit more in the future, but on the other hand each extra hand a fish plays means more rake, ie. less money in poker (player) economy. If a fish who deposits $50 manages to keep on playing PLO100 for a few hours before losing it, it means the only one who profited out of his deposit was pokerstars.

A lot of things you suggest seem to be purely on what would be good for highstakes, which I understand as obviously everyone here has their own interest to protect, but you should realize highstakes games are way less than 1% of all games, and rake has significant effect in profitability of games at any other stakes. It's in you high stakes regs' best interest too if the micro/small/midstakes remain realistically beatable.

eg. 30bb buy-ins would probably never kill the profitability of games for 25/50 regs that have an edge on their opponents as rake is something like 0.4bb/100 (didn't even check, might be off a bit), but take something like plo100 where people pay 10bb/100 in rake (or even more at microstakes) and having too many 30bb players will lead to no one winning in those games. Also making it even more unfair, microstakes regulars even with high volume often get like 20-30% rakeback through the vip system, while highstakes reg with any kind of reasonable volume gets 40%+.

Fish losing faster is actually good for economy, money changes hands instead of being raked.

Its better for the poker economy when someone who deposits 700$ goes and puts it all on a 10/20 table then if he would nit it up at PLO25. I guess you cant have it both ways. Like I wrote earlier some 30BB games can exist as long as they are big enough 10/20+ or whatever.

What aboult removing highstakes and most of the midstakes PLOHU tables (1-2 game will be maximum).

Personally i think 40-100bb would be great, also 100-250bb ante is OK.

What about 40bb min buyin in Dollar tables and standard 30bb-100bb in Euro tables?

You only say this as a self serving comment because you don't play hu anymore and just want a larger fish pool in 6max games. What is the point of only having lower limit hu games? These are the worst in terms of the problems people are talking about in that rake just eats up a large % profit.

Maybe if you think the lobbies are a problem then suggest a semi-KOTH structure should be introduced - I guess you wouldn't of liked this back in the day anyway since you were one of the people that contributed to the clogged lobbies. People wan't to play HU though, so don't try and restrict that because it doesn't suit you.

Anyway this is diverting from the thread's topic. /rant

Another assumption

I got annoyed by the rake again with this ongoing discussion, so sorry that I'm slightly derailing this discussion. Below is the graph of my PLO hands on Stars lately. The blueline is 100% rakeback, i.e. the area between the lines is how much rake I've paid.

For 60bb pot Stars rakes pretty damn close to max, $2.8 out of $3 (4.55% of the pot...had the min BI been 50bb and pot thus 100bb, the rake would have been 2.95%, a substantial relative decrease). This severely limits my earning potential, but pockets Stars almost to the full. I think this illustrates that the situation even at PLO100 is completely unbearable, both rake-wise and minimum buy-in wise. The former should be radically decreased (PLO rake bb/100 at low stakes is ~2x higher than NLHE) and the latter should be increased to give at least somebody a chance to make some dough out of this game.

+1 Daut and Napsus. The ridiculously high rake is far more important for the health of the games than some technicality over ratholing/min-buyins, and I have no idea why Stars don't acknowledge it.

Yeah rake is absurd on SSPLO and should be changed, but the 30bb vs 50bb issue at hand is very important as well, far from just a technicality to nitpick you.

Ok fair enough, maybe a bad choice of word on my part, but the two are definitely related (at small - up to 2/4 at least - stakes) as Daut alluded to.

65 > 50 >>>> 40 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 30 imo

For me shorties destroy the games. I think I am the player on Pokerstars that starts the most tables from 2/4 to 5/10, and I will play everybody. Everybody except the players who shortstacks. To be honest, I won't start a table if the player joins me with less than 50bbs, regardless how bad he is.

And I often experience tables breaking because the tables are flooding with shortstackers (30bb-ers). Obviously, the mass tablers won't play with them. It is too much to adjust to and focus on for it to be worth playing on those tables.

I hope Pokerstars will listen to the majority here, and find a good solution.

- DonkPredator

Agree to all of this. Experienced the same when I grinded out SNE

Some dicussions are quite lol

Yes the rake is to high especially at mid- and lower stakes. But you are asking the market leader in the business who is designed to make as much profit as possible to lower the rake and therefore lower their profit.

And second you are asking them to raise the minimum buyin and/or to seperate their playing pool at a time that poker is not growing anymore.

So to sumarize: Stars take a leap of faith in us winning regs to make these changes so we experience less discomfort and can earn more money. And we hope these changes will not cost you a lot of money

Sounds not really fair to the chief operating at stars

I agree that plo rake is too high and needs a different rake structure. That being said, i wouldn't want to derail this thread in another rake frenzy, as i think stars is aware of this issue. Raising min buyin limits costs stars no direct revenue and is a very very serious issue.

So i suggest we don't focus on the direct rake % too much.

But what i do think is very important the note from the discussion above, is that midstakes and highstakes ss is a very different ussue due to the rake. At high stakes ss is very annoying to some. At midstakes excessive ss makes table unplayable if you want to make money. A very different type of problem.

Can we agree on the reasoning in the alinea above?

+1

I've noticed the same during this past year as I've played a significant amount at Ipoker, Ongame and Microgaming. PokerStars has the highest percentage of shortstackers by far and has the lowest min buy in for the PLO games of them all, including FullTilt. Coincidence?

^^Yeah basically that is what I was trying to say: at high stakes the current buyin levels make the games unprofitable; at low/medium stakes they often make the games unplayable.

As for the guy above who says Stars should only care about maximising their short-term profits: I don't believe this, it's in their interest to have games running and sustainable long-term, no?

Your arguments would carry more weight if you identify yourself.

Wanting a lower rake is directly related to the discussion of "long-term preservation of the games." If the rake stays this high, more and more pros at low and midstakes will be unable to make a living off plo and thus will stop putting in hundreds of thousands of hands each year. This leads to fewer games and less rake in the long run for Stars.

edit: don't mean to add fuel to the rake-discussion fire, carry on...

my apologies for the rake derail, but it's still part of the problem at low stakes.

I don't understand why the market leader cannot be challenged regarding e.g. the rake structure or minimum buy-in?v Would be quite irresponsible for us to stand here and wait, meanwhile getting butt-****ed and hope that it stops.

Your business sense is most likely not on an elite level if you think that these things are as straightforward as "Pokerstars lowers rake/increases min buy-in -> less revenue for Pokerstars", as I understand it from your posts.

So please bring relevant arguments to the table if you want to participate in the discussion.

Effective rake is formed by true rake and average pot size which is in correlation with the min buy in. So, rake discussion is completely in line with the minimum buy in discussion when it comes to low and midstakes and long-term health of the games.

Low stakes get absolutely shafted because they pay the highest amount of rake in big blinds and it's really, really hard to achieve Supernova+ status at these stakes so they can get a significant amount of rakeback. The effective rake at low stakes is just insane. Because of that it makes sense low stakes to have the highest min buy in.

As I already mentioned, I understand the demand of a shallower game at 10/20+ and since the effective rake is not so high at these stakes, there can be some kind of a shallow offering which discourages ratholing.

Micro stakes already got 50bb minimum buy in and a different rake structure a.k.a. lower rake. It's time to take care of the other levels.

let's carry on the rake discussion here:

Petition to Pokerstars to reduce the PLO cash game rake @internetpoker

Man, I really don't know what to say here. I've typed up at least five different responses but they all go nowhere and add nothing really. I have no new ideas - nothing better than what has been suggested in this thread already.

I agree with everyone who says that a change needs to be made.

Rather than attacking this issue on one front I believe it needs to be addressed from two different perspectives - that of high stakes players and that of low-mid stakes players. The defining difference between the two is the issue of rake and beatability of the games.

It's a real concern for low-mid stakes (let's say 1/2 and below now, probably 2/4 soon enough) that when effective stacks hit the 30bb mark winrates plummet to the breakeven point. As players get better at playing these stacks they'll only decrease further.

The same problem isn't there for higher stakes. Rake is such a significantly smaller percentage of the pot at 5/10+ that even with 30bb stacks players will be able to put up decent winrates. The problem then for high stakes isn't about the games becoming unbeatable, but rather, unplayable. By this I mean that due to the nature of PLO and inherent advantage a shorter stack has on a deep stacked table there is no incentive for players to buy in deep. In fact there is a disincentive for it -- and what will happen (and what is happening) is that everyone is being forced to buy in for 30bbs just to protect themselves. Then it becomes a preflop and flop game. This is not ideal.

I don't know the solution. I believe in giving people the option to play what they want to - some people prefer to play shallow, some people do it for the edge it gives them over deeper stacks and some people prefer to play deep. It's safe to say that most people posting ITT prefer to play deep - but how representative that is of the entire PLO player pool I really have no idea. I personally enjoy both deep and shallow play and love going back and forth between both depending on other circumstances. Whatever happens won't affect me too much personally - i'll adapt to the new game conditions, as will most other players, whatever they may be.

If the min buyin is changed to 40 or 50bb my guess is that we'll see everyone buying in for these amounts. It does change things a bit. It adds some more play and mitigates the disadvantage a 100bb+ stack has.

There has been a lot of talk about what the "fish" would want. It's all speculation and I really don't feel like it matters that much. If a person enjoys PLO then a buy-in change isn't going to stop them playing it. My personal experience is that the issue is split anyway. I cop a lot of flak at the tables by some recreational players for being a short stack. "Stars pro shortstacker?? how is this possible??" etc. Obviously these people are against it. On the other hand though there are a tonne of weak players who buy in for the minimum. Some hit and run, starting new tables frequently. Some players have patterns and the good players know these patterns and will follow the fish. I doubt this would change much with a buyin change, and maybe the fish will move down a level, maybe they'll stay at the same level. It's all speculation.

Here's what I believe:

Stars doesn't want to add aditional game types. Thus talking about adding cap or shallow games or anything that would dilute the player pool is moot.

Stars doesn't want to decrease the rake. Yes, this is a concern, and it should be discussed and made note of - but I don't think it's going to change right now or as a result of these discussions. Nothing that is being said isn't already known by them.

Stars is looking into either changing the minimum buyin and/or introducing anti-ratholing policies.

----------------

I voted to raise the min to 40bb. I think that doing this will solve a lot of the problems and have very little downside. Everyone currently playing a 30bb stack will learn to play a 40bb stack and be happy enough. Everyone playing a full stack will be happy that their mathematical disadvantage has been significantly reduced, as well as the fact that there's now more "play" involved vs a min-buyin stack. Also that the average stack will be larger and it will take less time for someone to build their stack to the 80-100bb mark.

It will help with the high rake at lower stakes. Honestly, it might even be better to increase the min buyin further for lower stakes (or reduce rake) and in an ideal world there would be different buyin levels and structures for different stakes (low, mid, high), but for the sake of simplicity let's start off by trying to keep things universal.

One last thing I want to say is that my position on this matter has remained unchanged throughout my whole career as a shortstacker and I have always been looking forward and felt that the health of the PLO ecology is the most important factor. I know that i personally will find a way to beat the games, whatever and however they may be, and so will most other winning players. My position has also remained unchanged before/after becoming a Stars pro - and everything I say here are my own thoughts and most would agree that they are in line with everything i've said before coming on board with Stars. I don't have any more information about their decision making processes behind these issues than any of you do and all my interpretations of what they are thinking or likely to do are based off the same information anyone else has.

Good post Roy. Thanks for the perspective.

Cool post Roy. Glad you share most of the concerns.

ya, good unbiased post roy.

I think 50 BBs for 10/20- and 40 BBs for 25/50+ would be ideal. That way the step between 10/20 and 25/50 (and this is the biggest step percentage-wise) will be reduced: the min buy-in at 10/20 will be 1000$ and at 25/50 will be 2000$, so the difference would be only 2x times as opposed to 2,5 times as it is now.

I think that the min buy-in for low stakes (1/2-) must be 50 BBs at least, since otherwise the players will be met with prisoners dilemma: once the certain amount of players will play 30BBs, the games will be just unbeatable for everyone, due to high rake.