Lets consider the poker sites profitability so far as a winning full stack middle stakes player is concerned. I draw the following conclusions:

A) a full stack middle stakes player pays very little rake compared to the money they make
B) a full stack middle stakes player therefore takes money from a poker sites economy
C) a full stack middle stakes player is not a preferred customer

Now, a consequence of short stack middle stakes player is that they increase the portion of rake/profit in pots that they play

This benefits the sites as it:
A) increases the rake that a full stack middle stakes player would ordinarily pay
B) reduces the amount of money that the full stack middle stakes player takes from the poker site economy

My conclusion is that poker sites LOVE short stack players. They understand that they are marginal winners, that they are a conduit for taxing otherwise bigger winners, that they slosh money around paying vast amounts of rake, and i think they consider the short stack player as being beneficial to the sites profitabilty.

Questions:
Do sites actively pay any short stackers to play, given how greatly they increase their profits
Do sites pay authors to promote short stacking play? is this why Chris Ferguson has been seen peddling short stacks on FTP

As an aside it would be wonderful for a poker site if everyone were break even as the money would just gbet washed around and the rake ta applied again and again and again.

So, maybe now we can also see why the sites are actively promoting training sites, and trying to improve peoples play. This works two ways:

It reduces players variance so people aer more likely to carry on playing longer
It levels the feild thus increasing the amount of rake that they make - the ideal model for a poker site would be 100% BE poker



so ask me if i hate choo choo poker. The answer is yes, despite having played some choo choo myself! they do nothing for me, they incease the rake, they are rake machines for the poker sites, they can easily think they are winning through variance but most are BE.

"bla da bla da bla and crap"
"what's that? it sounds like diarrhea coming from someones mouth"
"who cares"

Dont Mind Chargers, he is the neighborhood crazy.

lol, plenty more blah blah blah. chargers if the site upped its rake % would you play there? just curious because generally people are kinda dumb when it comes understanding indirect taxation and the like.

link to proper diarrhea

You are assuming that poker sites are first level thinkers. Some of the bad ones are, of course (didn't Paradise unofficially say that they deliberately alienated big winning players because they took too much out of the game?) but like all good businesses, the best sites think at least on the second level.

That is, although it SEEMS wonderful for a poker site to have everyone playing BE poker, its actually bad for them - because people wouldn't actually play. It's like saying coke should sell bottles for $100, because the profits margins are higher. Well thats true, but if nobody buys it.....

IMO, the poker marketplace works like this: there are three classes: fish, sharks and operators. Fish play for fun, sharks play for money. Essentially, the sharks and operators enter into an unofficial joint venture - the operator supplies the fish and in return, the sharks pay the operator and allow themselves to be used as advertising.

The reason it works this way is because of why the fish are attracted to poker in the first place:

They hear of people making huge sums of money online
They see Moneymaker winning live having qualified online
They enjoy making huge bluffs like they see on TV

Now if everyone was playing BE poker, the first two wouldn't happen. And although poker is fun, nobody really played until they saw the money involved, so the whole system falls apart.



However, in reality, the difference between winning shortstackers and winning fullstackers is only slight - the only difference lies in that the fish can have more fun against full stackers (because they can pull off big bluffs, which is really why they are playing). Shortstackers generate a lot of rake, so its a case of balancing off the loss of fun vs the rake gained. From their point of view, 3-4 shortstackers per table is probably optimal.


(The best poker sites think on the third level - they want you to think that the operator has your best interest at heart. Stars do this oh so well.)

This doesnt make sense. AVG potsize would be bigger without SS, thus more rake. PS and other sites dont care who is winning because even the winners pay rake.

At FTP small stakes the tables infested with choochoo always seem to have the highest avg pot size.

Poker sites care about TOTAL rake paid, not rake/profit. Whether or not shortstackers generate more total rake, I'm not sure. But it's wrong to think that they don't like full stackers just because they pay a lower % of their profit in rake.

Individual pot sizes don't matter, but who wins the pot does matter.

Think of how cash moves through a poker site. It is put on there by a fish, and is taken off by a winning player.

In between getting from the fish to the winning player, the cash may pass several times between fish and breakeven players before it reaches the winning players. Each time it passes hands, the site takes a rake. Obviously, the more times it passes hands, the more times the site takes a rake.

The pokersites therefore do care who wins a hand - a fish will put the money through the site again, whereas a winning player wouldn't (remember the winning player is going to play anyway, so that cash he has won brings no additional benefit to the site than that which they would have anyway).

Also, remember that the rake is capped and hence it is preferable at NL100 and above that cash passes hands in chunks, rather than all in one hand.

If you mean that SS players are helping to do this, IMO t is not really so.

Not really if it would mean that it leads to fullstack players not playing at all. They still produce positive cashflow for the site. It is in the pokersites best interests to have as many players as they can, from all the categories.

To maximize this, I am sure it is best to have a balanced amount of each.
If you have too many shortstacks, the fullstacks will move somewhere else.

I disagree with pretty much every single sentence in the OP.

exactly. its all about ratios of money that leaves v money thats taken as rake (also money deposited by fish)

ratios

-x:1 fish v fish - outcome money will just be circulated and eventually the site has it all (best for site if new players are always available)
0:1 fish v BE - outcome money moves to the BE enough to cover the rake site makes all the money eventually (good result but new blood needed too)
1:1 fish v SS - outcome money moves from fish to shortstack with site taking an equal amount (money left site not good, some money made good)
>1:1 fish v fullstack winner - outcome money moves from fish to winner but the site takes less than the winner takes, money leaves poker site faster (not so good, site sees more money leave than they make)

example

if a winner withdraws at a set amount lets say 5k above a 5k float.

A) if a SS pays 5k in rake to make 5k profit (ratio 1:1) then the site waves goodbye to 5k but takes 5k as its cut.

B) a FS 2:1 ratio would only pay 2500 in rake for the same cash out. Thus the site waves goodbye to the 5k but this time only get their hands on 2.5k as a service charge.

The worst case would be a high ratio, say 10:1 as they would be killing from the fish and paying a nominal profit:rake ratio. hence my view that its in the site's interest to even out the field a little. More neutral ratios are more profitable.

care to elaborate on your theory Soah?

(most) Sites are not dumb. To say sites and sharks have a symbiotic relationship is obviously true. HOWEVER, unless the game was completely random with no skill whatsover, there would always be winners and losers even if nobody had seriously analysed the game. And even if it was completely random, some people would run hot and others would run cold...

Poker has taken off due to the appeal of the potential for everyman to get rich quick. Certainly the presence of pro players online reinforces that, but I'm not sure how many recreational players particularly those who don't take the game seriously are really drawn by the presence of pro players.

What sites don't want is for the winning players to win too much, too quickly and bleed the fish dry before the site can collect it's rake (see also; sheep and multiple sheerings). That's why there are capped buy-ins everywhere. That's why promotions like Stars' FPP system tend to max out at around $100NL and give diminishing returns after that. From the sites POV, their ideal situation would be if everybody played $50NL to $200NL because that where they've obviously pegged it as the most profitable for the house. The balance between affordable stack size (most people aren't stung too badly by a $50, $100 or $200 loss) and maximising the rake (as many pots as possible that cap the rake, but as few as possible which exceed this too much.)

As far as Stars is concerned, the ideal pot is $60. Any more than that, and Stars is loosing out of part of their comission. Any less than that and they still get their share of the action, but obviously it's not nearly as efficient for them. Obviously this is never going to happen. There will always be people who can only afford $10 and 5% of a $500 pot capped at $3 is still better than having your competitor get that $3. If min buy-in is 20BB, then when a shorty stacks off the rake caps right between $100NL and $200NL. At $400NL and higher the min buy-in becomes irrelevant except as far as limiting a player's loss (so he doesn' go broke) because the rake cap is always hit. From the site's rake perspective it doesn't matter if it is $400NL or $1KNL, 20BB short stacks or 60BB short stacks. What we're really talking about after that is "price points" and "sticker shock".

Frankly, at $50NL, $100NL and probably even $200NL I'd be against the elimination of short stacks simply because so many of them are so bad. A bad short stacker at $100NL is generally much more profitable than a good TAG full stack. At those levels they're mostly players playing above their bankroll/budget level, not to mention their skill level. Obviously at mid and high stakes this is a very different story and I suspect what's going to happen is that we'll eventually start seeing min-buyins raised at mid-stakes and higher just because so many people complain about it (obv Stars has already done this). Hopefully they'll (mostly) leave the small and micro stakes alone.

nice post CMAR.

If i might also add that, SS fit a good play model for sites as they:

a) have a nice neutral 1:1 type profit:rake ratio at best
b) at FR can play a ton of hands massively multitabling, increasing MT leads to lesser ratios
c) is easy'ish for many different ability levels
d) can easily slip into BE poker <1:1 ratios

multi table limits increased recently.. wonder why?