Vote No Supernova+? Rake Theory

Let me preface this with a grain of salt. I'm not a genius by any means, this is my personal theoretical viewpoint and I'm sure it has many flaws worth poking holes in to make the theory stronger. Such is the way we build on theory at the graduate and post-graduate level in Universities all across the world. So feel free and in fact overwhelmingly welcomed to throw rocks at my ivory tower and my thoughts on this topic.

In recent weeks many regulars on various poker forums are up in arms about the changes coming to Pokerstars. I'm mostly in agreement with that unbridled rage, but in terms of what I ponder to be the best solutions - that's where I probably stand in stark contrast to many people. So let me present my argument here. I'll try to be concise, but I'll probably muck that up .

------------ Why No Supernova+? --------------------
I've asked myself for a long time why we as players think that rewards programs like Supernova, Supernova+ (x2-x9) and Supernova Elite are actually a good thing. In fact, I think they're a terrible thing for the poker economy. Why do you ask? Well lay out some bullet points below.

-They encourage regulars to play 10+, 20+ tables and put in insane volume
-Inevitably, this leads regulars to developing their skills faster making games tougher - it's education by volume
-Regulars in this context will also play tighter, because it's too hard to make the amount of decisions required by looser play even if that looser play is still +EV vs. many opponents
-The regular to recreational player ratio suffers greatly because regulars are clogging all the tables and on all the waiting lists for softer tables or are in fact seat scripting

The Rakeback is so valuable that people are willing to grind mindlessly and make small winrates to achieve it - and the very climate this mindless rat race creates is one of more regulars flooding more tables and churning more rake acquired from recreational players. It's not a pretty picture.

------------ So what's your big solution then??? --------------------

I'm sure the points in my argument above make it fairly obvious, but I vote we simply eliminate the Supernova and Supernova+ reward system. Maybe a structure like this...

Platinum Star = 2500 VPP's to acquire each month = 30% RB Through FPP's - Create a $500 bonus that can be acquired for FPP's that works this out to be purely accessible through FPP's earned at whatever rate.

New Supernova = 5000 VPP's to acquire each month = 35% RB through the same FPP mechanism.

New Supernova Elite = 7,500 VPP's to acquire each month = 40% or maybe 45% RB through the same FPP mechanism.

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

It's possible even requiring that many hands is too much. Lowering them would probably be reasonable to make it more accessible to lower limit players. The details of what's optimal could be worked out. The main point is we want to eliminate the need to play insane amounts of hands to get good RB.

Yes, I'm also advocating for lower top end RB. Honestly I'd have no problem with making it much higher percentages that would be fine with me. Recreational players likely won't take advantage of it much because they still probably won't play enough to get many benefits or they'll spend their points foolishly. There are easy enough ways to design the FPP Store around having recreational players make poor decisions. Although I question whether that's good, wouldn't it be better for them to buy only $ bonuses and keep that money going back into the games? Why would we want them buying an I-Pad? Unless this possibility is something recreational players vote really highly on enjoying and it's part of why they like to play at Pokertars or something.

So alternatively instead of reducing rake you could simply have 50, 60, and 80% Rakeback levels. Yeah you're giving a lot of money back but the reality is that money will make games much softer. Make more players winners, way more players bragging about winning and that's the sex appeal of our game. That's how new players come to join. They all want to be Chris Moneymaker and make it rich. Recreational players don't sign up to lose. They need players in their hometowns all talking about how well they're doing.

------------- Reduced Rake Theory ---------------------------------------------

My belief is that if you reduce the rake and create a climate where there are far more winning players, weaker players moving up and etc... then you have a much healthier poker economy. The more people win some and cash out, the more they come back to do it again and the more they brag to their friends about how awesome Pokerstars and poker in general is. That's what you want. A climate with as many winners as possible where Pokerstars exists to skim a bit off the top and the players have a healthy and wonderful poker economy. I believe this would be far better for everyone POKERSTARS as a business included in the long-run. Absolutely they would have to settle for dramatically lower profits for a while, but if the end result is many many many more people playing poker then you're winning long-term. They already make buckets of money anyways. How much better can you live as a rich poker executive? Like are ten more swimming pools of money going to make your life that much better? What's the point really. Why not build something amazing.

So an example:
Games $25 buy-in and below ($0.25 cent rake cap)
Games $50-500 buy-in ($1.00 rake cap)
Games $600 buy-in and above ($2.00 rake cap)

Yes it's a dramatic shift, but I really believe the hugely increased number of winners is going to make you your money back long-term in how many more new players you draw into the market.

------------------ What about Less Tables? Reduced Statistical Aids? ---------------------------------------------------
This one is trickier. We all know and love this stuff. Thing is, it's always the devil you know isn't it? Ask yourself, do you think things like PokerTraker4 and Hold'em Manager have made the games way more brutal? They more or less enable us to play massive amounts of tables and not make as many mistakes because we can make a lot of decisions based on statistical information. We now have a poker climate rampant with people who buy HH's despite it being against TOS & also seat scripting which is allowed in TOS but frowned upon as a brutally bad practice by many people.

What do these things do? They make it possible to play 10+ tables and not be completely spewing everywhere. They give you inhumane ability to do something you otherwise couldn't. All the while they increase the percentage of regulars on tables by way of having all regulars playing tons more tables than they otherwise could profitably. How is that good? Sure we might think "Playing lots of tables is now good for my bottom line because I can play them well" but for the health of the poker economy its terrible.

--------------Some Potential Fixes and Adjustments?-----------------------

-Maximum of number of tables somewhere between 4-8, this is tricky because sure we could play more, but is it actually a good thing for the poker economy that we do? The argument being that most recreational players aren't playing 4+ tables, so all we're doing here is increasing the ratio of regulars to recreational players. Pokerstars obviously wouldn't support it because it only guarantees less rake. They want you playing as many hands as possible.

-Software updates every six hours that make small but always slightly different changes to Pokerstars Hand Histories (or just eliminate providing hand histories altogether - though this is more difficult. People want to be able to review their games and view visualizations of hands, so that probably still has to be accessible within the software to some degree.

-What's the practical upshot of that? Good luck importing hands on a daily basis. The hassle will be so much only the most dedicated will separate their HH's by hours and do four imports a day. It will also completely F*** people who are cheating by buying HH's and guess what you could even make a software update every hour or two that would end any hope those companies have of falling into some sort of synchro with the updates

-Is that a good thing? I don't know... but having to only take notes and code players habits yourself reduces information available. The less info you have on your opponents through these aids the more difficult it is to exploit people and the more loosely they can play. Just spitballing here really. Not sure if these changes would be good or horrific.

-------

Anyways there you have it. Poke holes in it, shoot bullets or hurl rocks at it. It's all just theory spitballing on how to build a better poker economy. I think the most logical changes are that to rake structure and how the VIP system works. Those ones would have huge impacts. The rest of the stuff like limiting seat scripting and use of Poker Software would be much harder to do because I can't see many of us getting rid of that stuff and I'm not sure people even want to. Although I still don't fully understand how seat scripting is much different than just sitting in on tables. I guess because it goes directly to the player and harasses them but I think that's a terrible thing to be doing that will make those players quit Poker.

the VIP system is designed to incentives players of all types to play more.

Reducing rake, as you suggested greatly increases the advantage of players who put in a lot of volume.

Removing hand histories has been discussed for a long time and has no implication on the recent rake changes, so I don't understand what the context of your point is.


Basically my thoughts is that, Pokerstars is aware of the changing landscape of the online poker industry, they are trying to maximize their profits vs time. Time being the greatest enemy of pokerstars because players are constantly improving,and the older players are not returning to the game at the same frequency, additionally they have to spend a greater amount of money to find innovative ways to advertise to newer/emerging markets. All in all they have no choice but to try to maximize their profits in the shortest period of time.

My personal opinion is that once the original owners of pokerstars found out that they wont find a easy way back to into the US market, they resigned to the idea of selling the business as a whole.

CasinoCasino, I agree 100% with pretty much everything you said. I also thought about how you're right you'd have to find other ways to lower volume if we're giving everyone high RB (aka limited number of tables you can sit on) to keep regular vs. recreational ratios healthy. Although I don't think I made that point very clearly. I also agree with your assumption about why the original owners chose to sell the business.

My argument is basically built on a simple premise. Softer games created by a more player friendly climate aka more players being capable of being winners = the sex appeal of poker that brings everyone here and brings regulars back in the first place. People want to believe they can win. This is a difficult game. It's easy for a brilliant few but for most people it's very hard to become profitable especially in 100K+ hand samples. That's a problem for poker. If rake is taking so much out of the game that only a few bragging winners are left in existence then you kill the grassroots of what brings in new depositors. And to me that's friends of these random people who go around bragging about how well they're doing. You don't hear many people brag about losing. It's human nature. Fantasy sports and sports betting are similar. People play because they believe they can win. If there aren't poker players going around bragging about being successful and not just guys on TV but people you know, then people don't envision themselves doing the same.

the solution isnt that hard. expediate pstars screwing its users until some1 like phil ivey is annoyed enuff to create iveyroom.com

inb4 heropoker ceo and naz teamup for liquidpoker.com

I've written on this extensively too much to pick out and explain although i am willing to discuss. You essentially have discovered the difference between current keynsian accepted economics and austrian/nashian. You are correct in the concept you wish to implement, however we can do far better and I have taken your system many levels beyond.

It's all based on the concepts lined in ideal money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_money

The extensive extension "ideal poker" is all outlined here: http://thewealthofchips.wordpress.com/

I'm ban on sight on twoplustwo for trying to bring this concept to the players based on nashian economics and discuss it https://www.scribd.com/doc/224948379/Ideal-Poker

I'll try to remember to pop by to join the dialog but I'm busy and players are generally idiots and assholes, and ive lost a lot of patience with people whos purpose is to argue without studying.

There is a revolution going on
#idealpoker #idealmoney

After thinking about it today I vow this. I will form a players union similar to ThePPA.org for players of Pokerstars. I think it's time we begin to organize and lobby for player rights and for the health of the games. Yes it's a private company and they will do what is best for business. Remember that many casual players joined ThePPA just because someone encouraged them to do so. If we do a good enough job we can have a voice. I'd like to recruit other influential players to join. Even just blog submissions on a weekly basis by notable and recognizable people in the poker community would go a long way to making something like this sucessful.

I will preface it outright that I will never draw or intend to draw a sigificant salary. Really just enough that it wouldn't be all blood sweat and tears for no compensation for the time and effort. I'll put a hard cap right now of 25k and I expect it could be done for less than that depending on how many hours are being put in. All other donations will be put towards lobbying Pokerstars. At first I doubt much money would be necessary until we understand and do our homework on how it could be used well.

ThePPA.org has a significant presence and I'd like a players union to have this as well. It's just time guys. Decades of social science research shows unions do wonders for improve the climate of workers. Grinders and Recreationals on Pokerstars, don't kid yourselves, we're all working for them in one way or another. I vow that I will get a website up and running and then I suppose it's up to just passing votes and putting forward lobbying efforts to Pokerstars to e-mail and physical mail campaigns etc. It doesn't have to be that difficult and people don't need to put much time into it. Lets have our voices heard and lets have our wallets do the talking.

You have some homework to do, the revolution has started already, even some time ago, and I've spent a year on formulating everything. I can't begin to explain, its too dense. The cliffs are if you want and effective lobbying players group we need to get a few decently respected, trust, and known names, to canvass all the site friendly businesses (such as forums, coaching groups, crypto sites, stables and so on...) and get them to accept the players "poker coin". It is not another bitcoin, it is a different technology that rests ON TOP of bitcoin's block chain (see what I mean dense). This manifesto was posted a year ago, I've been getting banned ever since for it, and it is from a lecture by John Nash, keep up!:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/ideal-poker-1353102/

Political Evolution There perhaps will always be “rake", like also “death and taxes". But it is sometimes remarkable how poker strategies can evolve. And in relation to that I think that it is possible that “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ " are like a political faction that will become less influential as a result of poker revolution. The “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ” view of things did not come into existence until after the time when what we can call “Black Friday" had become established in the US. And by this label we wish to differentiate between any theoretical or ideal concept of justice and the actual form of governing regime structure that came to exercise state power on the poker community. (All over the world varieties of sites make claims to have systems very properly or even ideally devoted to the interests of the professional or recreational players of those sites and always an externally located critic can argue that the site is actually a sort of despotism.) PSFTCIAFBIDOJ implicitly always have the argument that some good managers can do things of beneficial value, operating with the skins, and that it is not needed or appropriate for the players or the “customers" of the chips supplied by the site to actually understand, while the managers are managing, what exactly they are doing and how it will affect the “ROI" circumstances of these players. I see this as analogous to how the PSFTCIAFBIDOJ were claiming to provide something much better than Ponzi schemes that they could not deny existed in all other sites. But in the end the “dictatorship of the proletariat” seemed to become rather exposed as simply the dictatorship of the regime. So there may be an analogy to this as regards those called “PSFTCIAFBIDOJ” in that while they have claimed to be operating for high and noble objectives of general poker welfare what is clearly true is that they have made it easier for their sites to “print money".

you are 50 years behind until you get into the bulk of this.

Also, forgot about something, and no doubt you have been thinking about it in the back of your mind. If you start to cut down on RB, it does not help the game UNLESS the site in question puts that savings BACK into the game. So one must ask as a player how can we know this is happening? It would be terrible to cut RB down and sites just keep the profits. You see this is a very difficult economic question to answer, and I'm willing to suggest that zero players in this world have solved it.

The idea seems paradoxical, but by speaking of “rake targeting" these responsible officials are effectively CONFESSING that, notwithstanding how they formerly were speaking about the difficulties and problems of their functions, that it is indeed after all possible to control rake by controlling the supply of chips

This is what asymptotically ideal poker is all about (again extrapolated from ideal money):

So here is the possibility of “asymptotically ideal (rakeless) poker". Starting with the idea of value stabilization in relation to a domestic ‘deposits raked’ index associated with the territory of one state, beyond that there is the natural and logical concept of internationally based rake comparisons. The sites being compared, like PSFTCIAFBIDOJ, Merge, Party Poker, etc. can be viewed with critical eyes by their players and by those who may have the option of whether or not or how to use one of them. This can lead to pressure for good quality and consequently for a lessened rate of rake.

You see...we have our solution, it wasn't easy, but its backed by some very strong economics....we just don't understand it collectively, but I mean to find a few people that are intent on understanding it....

poker economy is a hilarious phrase

This is just silly. You want pokerstars to lower SNE to 7500 VPPs and you want people to send you $25000?

LOL, you want 25k compensation for your effort??? Your compensation would be achieving a goal that you really feel needs to be met.

Lol have fun boycotting stars while other regs fill your seats. And lol @ 25k

wall of text full of bs... send me $25 on ps for my lost time

On November 03 2014 01:08 dogmeat wrote: wall of text full of bs... send me $25 on ps for my lost time

we saved you money you would have lost playing poker.

havent u seen his HH? he must be loosin a lot at the tables so he needs the 25K urgently

Benjamin1, great ideas but there are many flaws in your thinking process.
The Poker eco-system is much more complex than just the rake issue. The drain has always been an issue since years in Poker for the cardrooms and especially in recent times.

The drain is the money taken away from the Poker ecology: so it's either winning players taking the money away or the rake being taken from the games. Rake can be adjusted indeed but how do you have a solid (and logic) system that would make the difference between winning, losing and breakeven players? It also needs to have a balance between these 3 types of players or your ecology will be screwed.

I'll comment your original post but before people flame, it's just my opinion, not something I consider being the absolute thruth

I've asked myself for a long time why we as players think that rewards programs like Supernova, Supernova+ (x2-x9) and Supernova Elite are actually a good thing. In fact, I think they're a terrible thing for the poker economy. Why do you ask? Well lay out some bullet points below.

-They encourage regulars to play 10+, 20+ tables and put in insane volume

Would you be playing the same volume if the rake was lowered down by half? And would your winning rate be increased by same margin rake is taking away from the tables right now? If games are tougher as everyone is saying, we can assume that the top end would be winning much more faster while the rest would be improved marginally if rake is lowered down.

So from what I see, there are 2 points here if rake is decreased:
- You volume would be much less but nowhere near high enough for your winnings/winning rate to be compensating your loss in RB money. I'm talking about average players which represents most of poker players, not top end bosses at poker which represent 5% of total players.
- This will profit ONLY top winning players. The rest of players like marginal winners/breakeven players or losing players will see much less money back as the winning rate of the top players will eat up the money faster than the rake + that money won is NEVER put back into the eco-system since winning players by principle, don't put the money back into the system as they don't lose on mid/long term to the other players.

-Inevitably, this leads regulars to developing their skills faster making games tougher - it's education by volume

This not true at all. If skills are growing and reach a high point now, it's not because of the VIP plan configuration but because of 3rd party software such as trackers that gives you a tool to analyse each of the hands being played + coaching sites have made the basic strategies available to everyone in no time. So the bottom level has been increased drastically

-Regulars in this context will also play tighter, because it's too hard to make the amount of decisions required by looser play even if that looser play is still +EV vs. many opponents

But trackers made this much easier by giving you a bunch of info where you can see at glance if a decision/move is mathematically correct vs a specific opponent. A cardroom does not force you to chase top VIP levels but players do because it's much more easier to get % back from rake taken than increasing their own winning rate against the field. We can even view the rake as being a handicap you put on your opponent: I play you but you pay me 1bb/100. If you lower the rake, then I would be playing you but you would be paying me only 0.25bb/100. Do I think that I could improve your winning rate by 0.75bb/100 against you if rake is lowered?
I'm not even taking into account that no matter the variance the rake gives you back a % while you get 0 back from variance from playing an opponent.

-The regular to recreational player ratio suffers greatly because regulars are clogging all the tables and on all the waiting lists for softer tables or are in fact seat scripting

But if rake is lowered down, then winning rates are increased a lot for winning players. Which means they will eat up the recreational players even faster while these fishes will see less money back because they would have paid less rake. All that does is favours the top end that are winning players, not the average players/mass of players. So actually the ratio rec players to sharks would be even worse.

------------ So what's your big solution then??? -------------------- I'm sure the points in my argument above make it fairly obvious, but I vote we simply eliminate the Supernova and Supernova+ reward system. Maybe a structure like this... Platinum Star = 2500 VPP's to acquire each month = 30% RB Through FPP's - Create a $500 bonus that can be acquired for FPP's that works this out to be purely accessible through FPP's earned at whatever rate. New Supernova = 5000 VPP's to acquire each month = 35% RB through the same FPP mechanism. New Supernova Elite = 7,500 VPP's to acquire each month = 40% or maybe 45% RB through the same FPP mechanism.

This is where you find your first big flaw in your thinking process: not all players being Platinum, Supernova or SNE are winning players. You can be a losing player (actually lots of them are) and reach these status.
What is hurting the ecology is not having grinders but having an unbalance eco-sytem between losing, winning and breakeven players.
The ideal way would be to compensate the losing/breakeven players by taking % rakeback from the winning players. So at same VIP level, a winning player would get much less in % of rakeback than a player that is losing. Why? As said above, winning players take away money from the eco-system as they WIN. So they are in a way not good for the ecology. However I'm not saying they are all bad and we should discriminate winning players but I'm saying that you need to have the right balance in terms of number of winning players and losing players.

These winning players don't necessarily deserve/need the same % rakeback than others since they already make money from the game.

It's possible even requiring that many hands is too much. Lowering them would probably be reasonable to make it more accessible to lower limit players. The details of what's optimal could be worked out. The main point is we want to eliminate the need to play insane amounts of hands to get good RB.

A recreational player is not playing for the RB. He barely knows what it means. Also another problem for the cardrooms is that they do not make income on the money lost by players, they generate revenues only on the money wagered by players. The hold in poker is something like 15% on average (with the current rake model) which means that for every $100 deposited, a cardroom makes $15. How do you think a losing or recreational player feel when you tell him that he is getting less than 10% back on the $15? You are basically telling him: "thanks, here's $1.50 back for losing $100". Sounds really bad doesn't it?

Then you might say: yes but one of my recommendation is to lower the requirement to reach VIP levels, so a player would get 30% RB instead of 10%. But this also implies that the cardroom would make 50% less rake (because let's assume your requirement are lowered by 50%) and giving back twice more. The bottom line is that rakeback given away by cardrooms are actually much more costly in total for lower segments than top segments. Why? Because the mass of players are all in the lower segments, so the volume of money cardrooms would give back would increase exponentially and it would not cut by 50% their net margin but by much more.

For example, there are maybe something like 300 SNE players in the world I think, and they are giving back something like 70%-80% to these players. But let's imagine they would do as you suggest: they would have their cost increased on millions of players for Platinum and they would be "saving" marginally on 300 players from SNE where they would decrease their % back. I'll let you imagine the cost increase for them + the fact that players would play less (so generate less income) because VIP levels are easier to reach but rewards higher...

So alternatively instead of reducing rake you could simply have 50, 60, and 80% Rakeback levels. Yeah you're giving a lot of money back but the reality is that money will make games much softer. Make more players winners, way more players bragging about winning and that's the sex appeal of our game. That's how new players come to join. They all want to be Chris Moneymaker and make it rich. Recreational players don't sign up to lose. They need players in their hometowns all talking about how well they're doing.

Here again, the biased theroy you have is that players are winning ones and rake decreasing would benefit to all. It's not true as it will benefit only to the top end players. Because these players have a winning rate higher than the average so they will simply be drying out the games faster... Rake dries out the games for sure but at least you are guaranteed a % back. When you are facing top end winning players, there is no guarantee of seeing 1 penny back even if you playing in a game with no rake.

My belief is that if you reduce the rake and create a climate where there are far more winning players, weaker players moving up and etc... then you have a much healthier poker economy. The more people win some and cash out, the more they come back to do it again and the more they brag to their friends about how awesome Pokerstars and poker in general is. That's what you want. A climate with as many winners as possible where Pokerstars exists to skim a bit off the top and the players have a healthy and wonderful poker economy. I believe this would be far better for everyone POKERSTARS as a business included in the long-run. Absolutely they would have to settle for dramatically lower profits for a while, but if the end result is many many many more people playing poker then you're winning long-term. They already make buckets of money anyways. How much better can you live as a rich poker executive? Like are ten more swimming pools of money going to make your life that much better? What's the point really. Why not build something amazing. So an example: Games $25 buy-in and below ($0.25 cent rake cap) Games $50-500 buy-in ($1.00 rake cap) Games $600 buy-in and above ($2.00 rake cap) Yes it's a dramatic shift, but I really believe the hugely increased number of winners is going to make you your money back long-term in how many more new players you draw into the market.

So your ideas are to:
1. Lower requirements to reach VIP levels
2. Give more % back to players via VIP plan
3. Lower the rake

Also as said, you will have more winners but this effect will be very marginal compared to the fact that top winning players will win all the money faster than anyone. Seat scripting, win rate much higher than average winning players etc... will make the games go dry as much as it is now.

------------------ What about Less Tables? Reduced Statistical Aids? --------------------------------------------------- This one is trickier. We all know and love this stuff. Thing is, it's always the devil you know isn't it? Ask yourself, do you think things like PokerTraker4 and Hold'em Manager have made the games way more brutal? They more or less enable us to play massive amounts of tables and not make as many mistakes because we can make a lot of decisions based on statistical information. We now have a poker climate rampant with people who buy HH's despite it being against TOS & also seat scripting which is allowed in TOS but frowned upon as a brutally bad practice by many people. What do these things do? They make it possible to play 10+ tables and not be completely spewing everywhere. They give you inhumane ability to do something you otherwise couldn't. All the while they increase the percentage of regulars on tables by way of having all regulars playing tons more tables than they otherwise could profitably. How is that good? Sure we might think "Playing lots of tables is now good for my bottom line because I can play them well" but for the health of the poker economy its terrible.

Well playing lots of table is not bad for the "health of the poker economy". It actually creates games for people.
What is terrible is if your eco-system is unbalanced but the number of tables played itself is not a bad thing.

Trackers are something bad yes but it's very difficult to ban them.

--------------Some Potential Fixes and Adjustments?----------------------- -Maximum of number of tables somewhere between 4-8, this is tricky because sure we could play more, but is it actually a good thing for the poker economy that we do? The argument being that most recreational players aren't playing 4+ tables, so all we're doing here is increasing the ratio of regulars to recreational players. Pokerstars obviously wouldn't support it because it only guarantees less rake. They want you playing as many hands as possible.

PartyPoker did it and they got waves of players complaining. They did it in very bad fashion in terms of communication though.
Restricting numbers of tables played doesn't improve in any way the ecology unless you restrict that number of tables only for winning players.
You also have to integrate the fact that a small/rec player wants to be able to join games without having to wait. Also the winning rate of players are smaller nowadays so to achieve a decent profit, you need to put in lots of hands.

-Software updates every six hours that make small but always slightly different changes to Pokerstars Hand Histories (or just eliminate providing hand histories altogether - though this is more difficult. People want to be able to review their games and view visualizations of hands, so that probably still has to be accessible within the software to some degree.

Even if you remove HH every X hours, it will not change anything. Trackers would just archive the HH every X minutes and you will be ending up with all your HH the same way as it is now.
The only solution would be to not provide any HH at all. But would that be acceptable by players? How would you prove a bug or fraud happened at your table if you can't provide HH? Many other things that would not make removing HH possible.

-What's the practical upshot of that? Good luck importing hands on a daily basis. The hassle will be so much only the most dedicated will separate their HH's by hours and do four imports a day. It will also completely F*** people who are cheating by buying HH's and guess what you could even make a software update every hour or two that would end any hope those companies have of falling into some sort of synchro with the updates

Updating the software every hour or two is pratically impossible because as long as you do not close/relaunch the software, the update would not be implemented for you. You can't just update a software without a downtime or relaunching it.

Anyways, in conclusion, the problem don't really lies on the cardrooms and the rake itself I think.
It's more about balancing the number of winning players and losing players + all the tools that help winning players. That's why you've seen many cardrooms shifting their policy (like partypoker and ipoker removed all stakes higher than NL1k, party created the "beginner tables" to protect the fishes etc...)
However, what do you think of cardrooms picking on winning players? Would you feel comfortable with that? Do you think winning players are ready to give up what they have been getting as granted (RB etc...) so cardrooms can compensate smaller players like you?

You need to understand also that nowadays cardrooms have been trying to acquire recreational players and volume of players rather than focusing on getting grinders. However it's not something easy to do that. What would you be doing? Advertising on website: "if you are a recreational player, come play (but if you are a winning player don't come please!)"

Also this has a cost. Cardrooms have investing money for acquisition of new players. Let's take PokerStars example on increasing their rake, removing some promotions, and lowering their VIP plan. Everybody thinks it's Amaya doing all of this. The truth is that if PokerStars would not have been taken over by Amaya, they would have needed to do it anyways. Why do you think PokerStars has been doing so may reload/deposit promotions since 2 years? Why do you think they invest budget in the big game TV show, EPT live streaming, signing Rafa Nadal, Ronaldo (rather than big poker faces) and stuff like this? Because they want to target the mass public who are recreational players but this has some big costs.

Even them are reaching a point where they will be struggling with the money injected in the poker eco-system. You can't generate more rake than there is money injected by deposits into the system. Otherwise it means that you are generating rake from balances/money players have which means that you are drying it the balance of your players and your system is going to collapse soon as it is not viable. Remember one thing: rake is created from the deposits. Do you think that winning/Supernova/SNE players ever re-deposit? So what do you think they generate rake from? They generate it from other players' deposits...

Also now, you have all the market being regulated. Regulation means taxes to pay. For example, 20% taxes on GGR for Spain, Italy, 15% for UK, 37% (!!) for France etc... This is money cardroom need to pay and cut from income so this is also money, players are not seeing back.
Imagine, a cardroom gives you 40% back. They need to pay 20% taxes as well. That's already 60% gone. Now imagine, the players also come from an affiliate, then the cardroom needs to pay a % to the affiliate too. Then royalties if the cardroom is part of a network. Then cost for their operational, marketing cost etc.... Not much left right?

I think you guys underestimate the amount of resources/logistic you must have to run a poker website. Rational group alone has 1,500 employees. Playtech/iPoker group has over 3,000 employees but their main activity is actually casino and not poker as you would think. Bwin/Party has over 3,000 employees as well but their main activity is sport and casino, not poker. It's not like they bink hundreds of millions on Poker by snapping fingers. By the way, if you look at PokerStars who announced 1/2 billion EBITDA and you compare their size with other competitor, you can see that PS is actually 20 times bigger than any of their competitors in Poker. So if you think about it, the net income the others make is not 20 times less but maybe 50 to 100 times less because the bigger you are, the exponential the increase in your income is.

Bejamin1 here. The 25k is just a ballpark figure for the hours it would potentially take.

So tasks that would have to be done:
1. Build the Website
2. Recruit membership
3. Moderate forums
4. Fix any issues with the website
5. Produce content on the main page that can be picked up by search engines
6. Optimize content for search engines

It's just a random number. If there was less work the figure would be much lower. I obviously wouldn't pay myself anything more than $25-30 an hour for hours worked. I think that would be perfectly reasonable. And likely the first 6 months would be purely pro-bono until the union actually turns into something real. It woud be funded entirely by donations. So there is no money unless there is people using the site.

The point of throwing out a figure was to tell you that if I raised 200k or some ridiculous amount I wouldn't be some greedy horrible person taking all of that for myself. The pledge was to say if that amount happened to be raised I woudln't be taking it for myself.

Of course I'm not surprised you'd think it was some sort of money grab. Poker players are prone to that sort of thinking.

The purpose of the union would be to represent the views of the majority. So likely what we could agree on was lowering the rake to improve the poker economy and maybe removing seat scripting as a start. All other things would be conversations. I would think we would have to vote as a group on anything we would put forward. Either way there is some good discussion here and that's a good thing. I don't care if you shoot holes in my ideas just provide some real criticism. Useless crap like just saying its garbage who cares. Say why you think it's garbage and what would be better. Add to the discussion.

"But if rake is lowered down, then winning rates are increased a lot for winning players. Which means they will eat up the recreational players even faster while these fishes will see less money back because they would have paid less rake. All that does is favours the top end that are winning players, not the average players/mass of players. So actually the ratio rec players to sharks would be even worse."

Difficult to read the rest of what you wrote and assume it has any base in logic after reading this statement.

Lower rake = all players money lasts longer. Period. There is no other logical end result of that. Why would regulars get more of the fishes money faster if they were paying less rake? Most recreational players probably don't even know they have FPP's in their account and they also take the worst possible transfer rate of like 10% for their value. The only difference in a lower rake system is more money goes to players instead of directly to Pokerstars which absolutely softens the games.

I don't understand what math you're doing to come to a conclusion that makes no sense. Lower rake is definetely better for the poker eco.

Would you be playing the same volume if the rake was lowered down by half?And would your winning rate be increased by same margin rake is taking away from the tables right now? If games are tougher as everyone is saying, we can assume that the top end would be winning much more faster while the rest would be improved marginally if rake is lowered down.

NO! Lowering rake effects all players positively.

So from what I see, there are 2 points here if rake is decreased: - You volume would be much less but nowhere near high enough for your winnings/winning rate to be compensating your loss in RB money. I'm talking about average players which represents most of poker players, not top end bosses at poker which represent 5% of total players.

Why is our volume less? Why are you making the assumption that we our winnings would be less if there is more money to win? If there is more money in the prize pool ALL players win more. Think.

- This will profit ONLY top winning players. The rest of players like marginal winners/breakeven players or losing players will see much less money back as the winning rate of the top players will eat up the money faster than the rake + that money won is NEVER put back into the eco-system since winning players by principle, don't put the money back into the system as they don't lose on mid/long term to the other players.

Think about this, imagine a game where all money is raked? Who are the winners? As we can understand rake has an effect on “winners”, so the more rake the less “winners” the less rake the more winners. Right now sites are taking money out of the game completely, and keeping that money in would cause the losing players to win more.

But trackers made this much easier by giving you a bunch of info where you can see at glance if a decision/move is mathematically correct vs a specific opponent. A cardroom does not force you to chase top VIP levels but players do because it's much more easier to get % back from rake taken than increasing their own winning rate against the field. We can even view the rake as being a handicap you put on your opponent: I play you but you pay me 1bb/100. If you lower the rake, then I would be playing you but you would be paying me only 0.25bb/100. Do I think that I could improve your winning rate by 0.75bb/100 against you if rake is lowered? I'm not even taking into account that no matter the variance the rake gives you back a % while you get 0 back from variance from playing an opponent.

Sure but who wants to play in a low variance game where there is no money to win? If rake is lowered both players win more. Is that bad thing?

But if rake is lowered down, then winning rates are increased a lot for winning players. Which means they will eat up the recreational players even faster while these fishes will see less money back because they would have paid less rake. All that does is favours the top end that are winning players, not the average players/mass of players. So actually the ratio rec players to sharks would be even worse.

The question is about keeping rake in the players pool or giving it to sites. And keeping it in the pool will not chew up the games much faster. What eats up the profits faster is having a breakeven field where players toss money back and forth, no one is winning, and sites continue to rake the game dry.

This is where you find your first big flaw in your thinking process: not all players being Platinum, Supernova or SNE are winning players. You can be a losing player (actually lots of them are) and reach these status.What is hurting the ecology is not having grinders but having an unbalance eco-sytem between losing, winning and breakeven players.

And if you think about it, having 100% rake creates 100% losers, and lowering the rake to 0% creates the most winners.

The ideal way would be to compensate the losing/breakeven players by taking % rakeback from the winning players. So at same VIP level, a winning player would get much less in % of rakeback than a player that is losing. Why? As said above, winning players take away money from the eco-system as they WIN. So they are in a way not good for the ecology. However I'm not saying they are all bad and we should discriminate winning players but I'm saying that you need to have the right balance in terms of number of winning players and losing players.

Its true somewhat that it is a nice ideal that the winnings support the losers a little. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you want the right balance between winners and losers you need to lower rake, and then everyone wins more.

A recreational player is not playing for the RB. He barely knows what it means. Also another problem for the cardrooms is that they do not make income on the money lost by players, they generate revenues only on the money wagered by players. The hold in poker is something like 15% on average (with the current rake model) which means that for every $100 deposited, a cardroom makes $15. How do you think a losing or recreational player feel when you tell him that he is getting less than 10% back on the $15? You are basically telling him: "thanks, here's $1.50 back for losing $100". Sounds really bad doesn't it?

Recreational players like points systems and know what they mean.

Here again, the biased theory you have is that players are winning ones and rake decreasing would benefit to all. It's not true as it will benefit only to the top end players. Because these players have a winning rate higher than the average so they will simply be drying out the games faster... Rake dries out the games for sure but at least you are guaranteed a % back. When you are facing top end winning players, there is no guarantee of seeing 1 penny back even if you playing in a game with no rake.

This is ridiculous logic!!!!

I can't spend time responding and trying to understand all that. Its not right, its all backwards. When making an argument you have to stop and think "Is this logical?" Fighting to rake the games harder in order to "slow" the speed at which players lose is absolutely ridiculous, like sticking up for your abusive partner. It doesn't stand to reason.

Ideal Poker kids, this is your manifest, learn it well:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/224948379/Ideal-Poker

The special commodity or medium that we call EV has a long and interesting history. And since we are so dependent on our use of it and so much controlled and motivated by the wish to have more of it or not to lose what we have we may become irrational in thinking about EV and fail to be able to reason about it like a technology, such as radio, to be used more or less efficiently So I wish to present the argument that various interest and groups, notably including PSFTFBICIADOJ has sold to the players a “quasi-doctrine” which teaches, in effect, that “less is more” or that (in other words) “raked poker is better than not raked poker”

On November 03 2014 10:00 RunGoodMan wrote: "But if rake is lowered down, then winning rates are increased a lot for winning players. Which means they will eat up the recreational players even faster while these fishes will see less money back because they would have paid less rake. All that does is favours the top end that are winning players, not the average players/mass of players. So actually the ratio rec players to sharks would be even worse." Difficult to read the rest of what you wrote and assume it has any base in logic after reading this statement. Lower rake = all players money lasts longer. Period. There is no other logical end result of that. Why would regulars get more of the fishes money faster if they were paying less rake? Most recreational players probably don't even know they have FPP's in their account and they also take the worst possible transfer rate of like 10% for their value. The only difference in a lower rake system is more money goes to players instead of directly to Pokerstars which absolutely softens the games. I don't understand what math you're doing to come to a conclusion that makes no sense. Lower rake is definetely better for the poker eco.

TTTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKK UUUUUUUUUUU 44444444444444 SSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!