The Rake :(

New OP Thread Update

I have so far noticed that there are very few people willing to get organized or involved in a fight for lower rake because they feel that no matter what we do as players there will be no impetus for the major sites to change. Most have reflected that until a new site comes into the market and changes the competitive environment none of these sites will take any action. I suggest therefore that we throw our support behind Gen and others who wish to create a rake free poker site. I believe that such a site could be run entirely through donations and eventually advertising revenue. If we build it and all make a conscious effort to spread the word once it is built, both the fish and the regulars will come.

Gen has already showed quite plainly that it's not all that difficult to build this. Starting a large open source project and bringing in people from the poker community who want to work on it is the first thing we need to do. The second thing we need to do is a little fund raising from the major poker communities. On a rake free poker site the players win. I'd rather play at a table with all regulars and no rake than a table with one or two fish and a bunch of regulars + insane rake. I would much prefer to watch a 30 second ad over top of my table every 30 hands than be charged rake. This new site would charge for deposits, withdrawals, and peer-to-peer transfers. Not to make a profit but simply to keep costs down. All of which would be a massive amount cheaper than paying for rake as any regular can tell you.

This is a very achievable project. As a poker community if you want to see less rake in the games and more than 3-5% of people being winners and thus softer games higher up then support this movement to build a rake free site. If we build it they will come. We need the help of everyone in the poker community to help build it though. Computer science students, donations, and people who simply want to help advertise the site once it gets launched. There is absolutely no reason why the community can't organize and build such a project. There are hundreds if not thousands of online Poker Sites. It's really not that hard to do. Competing with large already branded sites will be difficult - but it gets a lot easier when your tag line is that nobody has to pay rake at our site. Lets work to build this into a reality.

this is very true.

people like us need to feed the costs of people playing play money and all the insignificant buy in games. Although 50nl-200nl is raked way too heavily... 50$ a month is a losing proposition. The site has teams of people doing a lot of stuff in the background. I'm not saying it's not mega profitable for them but all the transactions between accounts... all the requests and responses to even play money players... et cetera et cetera... that shit definitely adds up. The monthly charge would definitely be a LOT more... but yea, even if it was something ridiculous like 3,000$ that would have a huge impact positively on the profitability of poker.

i never really wanted to know how much i rake. im sure its gonna disgust me

Its still cheaper than the casinos

the tourney fee for the WCOOP High Roller event was $500 lol

I don't play World of Warcraft. I do however know that millions of people do. These people do so for $20.00 per month or less. Imagine if 310 hours of access to something like WoW cost you $13,687.00. That's $44.00 per hour for your video game. Does that sound like something that makes any sense to you? Fast secure service for a reliable video game doesn't cost that much. Poker is an exceptionally simple game.

Please don't compare the two. In poker there are a lot more costs associated with processing deposits, cashouts, chargebacks, investigations, and what not.

2. Someone will create a poker site similar to 100's of start-ups out there with one key difference. Rake will have two options. Option one will be the system and rates that currently exist everywhere. Option two will be a $50.00 payment up front for 30 days of access to the software. The person who creates this software will become a multi-millionaire and probably be credited with starting the 2nd "Poker Boom" after Moneymaker. Pokerstars, FTP, and others will quickly add the change to their software as well. The other site will probably die as regulars migrate back to the main sites but not without having collected a couple million dollars worth of up front fees for its original backers. The dust will settle and the major sites will now have an option to pay $50.00 up front for 30 days access and receive 100% Rakeback.

Actually I can see this discouraging the fish in a way. They could think, "Wtf? I have to PAY to PLAY poker?" Also, the idea kind of existed in SpadeClub where you paid a monthly fee and got access to more tournaments. It hasn't been done for cash games as far as I know. Also no real point in having two options cause it would just confuse the fish or have them realize how much is getting raked out of their pockets and maybe scare them.

Also I don't like to look at poker as a video game. Just view the rake as expenses towards making money. Rakeback and the PS VIP program help effectively to reduce rake anyway, so sites compete on effective rake instead of lowering their overall standard percents.

So you think all those people who answer your email instantly, the TV ads that bring fishes to the sites, the programmers who code the software, etc. etc. etc., that's just free?

All that you should have learned from the fact that you net about $1 profit for every $10 you pay in rake is that you are a very very marginal winner and you should study more if you care about winning at poker.

High flat rates for access would cause the games to become deserted overnight. Losing players would suddenly be charged much extra. You have to realize that rake is paid by winners. (If you lose a pot, you have paid no rake. If you lose your roll, you have paid no rake.)

i dont think the idea won't work, there was a sports betting site which offered rake free games and software was not atrocious at all, did this thing for free even, as a lure for prospective sports bettors, they stopped the whole thing since there were not too many who played poker and went to sports betting there. its definitely feasible if you dont aim to become a multi-billion company. other good ideas i heard before were:

a poker site run owned by its own poker player pool, like some sort of "cooperative" which will charge very little rake

ptr to have the option to put up
betting on players to run good or go on a downswing, much like how the stock market works ( but that would eventually be rigged by the players themselves and go on fake heaters or downswings ) but its a cool concept nonetheless

does anyone remember that thread where Floofy played a guy HU LHE like .5/1 or 1/2

I think both had $100 stacks and by the time Floofy bust the guy he had made $35 lol

yeah rake is pretty huge

On October 14 2010 03:36 vltava wrote: High flat rates for access would cause the games to become deserted overnight. Losing players would suddenly be charged much extra. You have to realize that rake is paid by winners. (If you lose a pot, you have paid no rake. If you lose your roll, you have paid no rake.)

this

On October 14 2010 03:27 vlseph wrote: Show nested quote + I don't play World of Warcraft. I do however know that millions of people do. These people do so for $20.00 per month or less. Imagine if 310 hours of access to something like WoW cost you $13,687.00. That's $44.00 per hour for your video game. Does that sound like something that makes any sense to you? Fast secure service for a reliable video game doesn't cost that much. Poker is an exceptionally simple game. Please don't compare the two. In poker there are a lot more costs associated with processing deposits, cashouts, chargebacks, investigations, and what not.   2. Someone will create a poker site similar to 100's of start-ups out there with one key difference. Rake will have two options. Option one will be the system and rates that currently exist everywhere. Option two will be a $50.00 payment up front for 30 days of access to the software. The person who creates this software will become a multi-millionaire and probably be credited with starting the 2nd "Poker Boom" after Moneymaker. Pokerstars, FTP, and others will quickly add the change to their software as well. The other site will probably die as regulars migrate back to the main sites but not without having collected a couple million dollars worth of up front fees for its original backers. The dust will settle and the major sites will now have an option to pay $50.00 up front for 30 days access and receive 100% Rakeback. Actually I can see this discouraging the fish in a way. They could think, "Wtf? I have to PAY to PLAY poker?" Also, the idea kind of existed in SpadeClub where you paid a monthly fee and got access to more tournaments. It hasn't been done for cash games as far as I know. Also no real point in having two options cause it would just confuse the fish or have them realize how much is getting raked out of their pockets and maybe scare them. Also I don't like to look at poker as a video game. Just view the rake as expenses towards making money. Rakeback and the PS VIP program help effectively to reduce rake anyway, so sites compete on effective rake instead of lowering their overall standard percents.

You've got the concept wrong. I did not suggest that this change would be for everyone. I'm well aware a $50.00 fee per 30 days access would not be appealing to fish. That's why I said it's a simple opt-in built into the software. Regulars can choose to pay $50.00 per month and recieve 100% rakeback.

I'd be happy to pay a small fee on my cash-outs, peer to peer transfers, and have a slightly longer response time for non-supernova+ VIP's on support e-mails. There is absolutely no reason that reliable Poker software cannot be created which allows for the regulars to pay $50.00 per month for up front access which at the same time allows fish to play the same rake system. You just add an option in the options menu to pay for monthly access and receive 100% rakeback. All the fish still donate tons of rake for advertising money and the regulars who are smart enough to pay up front stop paying insane amounts of money to stuff Pokerstars coffers.

I realize that this is not in the interest of Pokerstars or any other poker company. It's in the interest of the players. If you really think that people should be paying 9pt/bb in rake that's pretty insane. That means the only winners in the game have to be beating it at 10pt/bb just to have an exceptionally marginal win-rate. The more winners there are at the lower levels, the more newbs move up, and the easier the games are at the higher up levels.

It is common sense for absolutely everyone to want lower rake.

Let me ask you a few things:
1. Does it make any sense that the player at 5/10 is raked at the same cap of $3.00 as the guy at NL25?
2. Why are micro/low stakes players so disproportionately raked making it difficult for them to move up the stakes?

I'd prefer this:
NL2 - 10 cent per pot cap
NL5- 15 cent per pot cap
NL10 - 20 cent per pot cap
NL25 - 25 cent per pot cap
NL50 - 50 cent per pot cap
NL100 - 75 cent per pot cap
NL200 - 1.00 per pot cap
NL400 & NL600 - 2.00 per pot cap
NL1000+ - 3.00 per pot cap

Something like that would be a massive improvement. It's not unheard of either. The rake cap at HUNL is 50 cents for a reason. It's because nobody was able to win when it was set considerably higher when the tables first came out.

It's really simple. Your either willing to fight for lower rake or your too lazy to care. There is absolutely why rake can't be a fraction of what it is right now. If your arguing otherwise you seriously just have no clue how much money they're generating on a daily basis.

A lot of start up sites offer extremely high rakeback and some even 100% to try to bring players in. Creating the software isn't that much of an issue, I think the largest concerns are with handling the money and attracting players. A monthly fee alternative to rake is really only going to attract those who understand it's beneficial to them (grinders). The idea is certainly nothing new and there are enough existing poker sites out there to generate different tactics through competition. Success has been shown with marketing rakeback and VIP programs rather than not having to pay the money to begin with.

On October 14 2010 08:20 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 03:27 vlseph wrote:   I don't play World of Warcraft. I do however know that millions of people do. These people do so for $20.00 per month or less. Imagine if 310 hours of access to something like WoW cost you $13,687.00. That's $44.00 per hour for your video game. Does that sound like something that makes any sense to you? Fast secure service for a reliable video game doesn't cost that much. Poker is an exceptionally simple game. Please don't compare the two. In poker there are a lot more costs associated with processing deposits, cashouts, chargebacks, investigations, and what not.   2. Someone will create a poker site similar to 100's of start-ups out there with one key difference. Rake will have two options. Option one will be the system and rates that currently exist everywhere. Option two will be a $50.00 payment up front for 30 days of access to the software. The person who creates this software will become a multi-millionaire and probably be credited with starting the 2nd "Poker Boom" after Moneymaker. Pokerstars, FTP, and others will quickly add the change to their software as well. The other site will probably die as regulars migrate back to the main sites but not without having collected a couple million dollars worth of up front fees for its original backers. The dust will settle and the major sites will now have an option to pay $50.00 up front for 30 days access and receive 100% Rakeback. Actually I can see this discouraging the fish in a way. They could think, "Wtf? I have to PAY to PLAY poker?" Also, the idea kind of existed in SpadeClub where you paid a monthly fee and got access to more tournaments. It hasn't been done for cash games as far as I know. Also no real point in having two options cause it would just confuse the fish or have them realize how much is getting raked out of their pockets and maybe scare them. Also I don't like to look at poker as a video game. Just view the rake as expenses towards making money. Rakeback and the PS VIP program help effectively to reduce rake anyway, so sites compete on effective rake instead of lowering their overall standard percents. You've got the concept wrong. I did not suggest that this change would be for everyone. I'm well aware a $50.00 fee per 30 days access would not be appealing to fish. That's why I said it's a simple opt-in built into the software. Regulars can choose to pay $50.00 per month and recieve 100% rakeback. I'd be happy to pay a small fee on my cash-outs, peer to peer transfers, and have a slightly longer response time for non-supernova+ VIP's on support e-mails. There is absolutely no reason that reliable Poker software cannot be created which allows for the regulars to pay $50.00 per month for up front access which at the same time allows fish to play the same rake system. You just add an option in the options menu to pay for monthly access and receive 100% rakeback. All the fish still donate tons of rake for advertising money and the regulars who are smart enough to pay up front stop paying insane amounts of money to stuff Pokerstars coffers. I realize that this is not in the interest of Pokerstars or any other poker company. It's in the interest of the players. If you really think that people should be paying 9pt/bb in rake that's pretty insane. That means the only winners in the game have to be beating it at 10pt/bb just to have an exceptionally marginal win-rate. The more winners there are at the lower levels, the more newbs move up, and the easier the games are at the higher up levels. It is common sense for absolutely everyone to want lower rake. Let me ask you a few things: 1. Does it make any sense that the player at 5/10 is raked at the same cap of $3.00 as the guy at NL25? 2. Why are micro/low stakes players so disproportionately raked making it difficult for them to move up the stakes? I'd prefer this: NL2 - 10 cent per pot cap NL5- 15 cent per pot cap NL10 - 20 cent per pot cap NL25 - 25 cent per pot cap NL50 - 50 cent per pot cap NL100 - 75 cent per pot cap NL200 - 1.00 per pot cap NL400 & NL600 - 2.00 per pot cap NL1000+ - 3.00 per pot cap Something like that would be a massive improvement. It's not unheard of either. The rake cap at HUNL is 50 cents for a reason. It's because nobody was able to win when it was set considerably higher when the tables first came out. It's really simple. Your either willing to fight for lower rake or your too lazy to care. There is absolutely why rake can't be a fraction of what it is right now. If your arguing otherwise you seriously just have no clue how much money they're generating on a daily basis.

You're right in the fact that there are people who would prefer it. If pokerstars offered $1000/mo 100% rakeback I would be all for it. The sites do generate a ridiculous amount of revenue and profits. You could probably run a free poker room profitably on ads alone. The thing is a site like what you're describing needs to be created, backed financially, promoted, and keep players. People who 16+ tables games on a popular site isn't going to switch to a small site with no rake. Anyone who plays high stakes isn't going to switch as there is rarely as volume. I doubt very few new players will even be aware of any sites beyond the advertised names. What you really want is someone who is already really rich to make a sick investment into a project like this along with some really good marketing.

Why is this so hard for people to understand?

STEP 1: You allow the regulars to "opt-in" to a $50.00 up front fee for rake.
STEP 2: Anyone who doesn't "opt-in" goes about their business paying rake exactly the same way they do currently.

Nobody is suggesting a fee for everyone. That obviously would not work. I'm suggesting a hybrid model. Everyone who enjoys the current system aka clueless fish will choose to play for free and pay the rake as it exists under the current system. Those who chose to "opt-in" to the $50.00 monthly fee will receive 100% rakeback.

This isn't something the poker sites are going to want. This is something we're going to have to fight for as players. It's our job to work on making the rake lower to increase the quality of the games. The same way unions fight for higher wages. What possible reason do you have as a poker player to be on the other side of this argument?

look at switchpoker, they just went with it, im sure they already have a million dollars in deposits circulating by now from all the fishy iphone users in europe


and yeah its a very bright idea. i dont really think this thing needs a ton of marketing and you could do exchange deals. everything in the internet now is viral. i think the term "promote" the site doesnt cost 5million dollars over the damn internet. like i said, this can also work as a form of a poker site owned by poker players' cooperative of some sort.

On October 14 2010 08:30 jchysk wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 08:20 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 14 2010 03:27 vlseph wrote:   I don't play World of Warcraft. I do however know that millions of people do. These people do so for $20.00 per month or less. Imagine if 310 hours of access to something like WoW cost you $13,687.00. That's $44.00 per hour for your video game. Does that sound like something that makes any sense to you? Fast secure service for a reliable video game doesn't cost that much. Poker is an exceptionally simple game. Please don't compare the two. In poker there are a lot more costs associated with processing deposits, cashouts, chargebacks, investigations, and what not.   2. Someone will create a poker site similar to 100's of start-ups out there with one key difference. Rake will have two options. Option one will be the system and rates that currently exist everywhere. Option two will be a $50.00 payment up front for 30 days of access to the software. The person who creates this software will become a multi-millionaire and probably be credited with starting the 2nd "Poker Boom" after Moneymaker. Pokerstars, FTP, and others will quickly add the change to their software as well. The other site will probably die as regulars migrate back to the main sites but not without having collected a couple million dollars worth of up front fees for its original backers. The dust will settle and the major sites will now have an option to pay $50.00 up front for 30 days access and receive 100% Rakeback. Actually I can see this discouraging the fish in a way. They could think, "Wtf? I have to PAY to PLAY poker?" Also, the idea kind of existed in SpadeClub where you paid a monthly fee and got access to more tournaments. It hasn't been done for cash games as far as I know. Also no real point in having two options cause it would just confuse the fish or have them realize how much is getting raked out of their pockets and maybe scare them. Also I don't like to look at poker as a video game. Just view the rake as expenses towards making money. Rakeback and the PS VIP program help effectively to reduce rake anyway, so sites compete on effective rake instead of lowering their overall standard percents. You've got the concept wrong. I did not suggest that this change would be for everyone. I'm well aware a $50.00 fee per 30 days access would not be appealing to fish. That's why I said it's a simple opt-in built into the software. Regulars can choose to pay $50.00 per month and recieve 100% rakeback. I'd be happy to pay a small fee on my cash-outs, peer to peer transfers, and have a slightly longer response time for non-supernova+ VIP's on support e-mails. There is absolutely no reason that reliable Poker software cannot be created which allows for the regulars to pay $50.00 per month for up front access which at the same time allows fish to play the same rake system. You just add an option in the options menu to pay for monthly access and receive 100% rakeback. All the fish still donate tons of rake for advertising money and the regulars who are smart enough to pay up front stop paying insane amounts of money to stuff Pokerstars coffers. I realize that this is not in the interest of Pokerstars or any other poker company. It's in the interest of the players. If you really think that people should be paying 9pt/bb in rake that's pretty insane. That means the only winners in the game have to be beating it at 10pt/bb just to have an exceptionally marginal win-rate. The more winners there are at the lower levels, the more newbs move up, and the easier the games are at the higher up levels. It is common sense for absolutely everyone to want lower rake. Let me ask you a few things: 1. Does it make any sense that the player at 5/10 is raked at the same cap of $3.00 as the guy at NL25? 2. Why are micro/low stakes players so disproportionately raked making it difficult for them to move up the stakes? I'd prefer this: NL2 - 10 cent per pot cap NL5- 15 cent per pot cap NL10 - 20 cent per pot cap NL25 - 25 cent per pot cap NL50 - 50 cent per pot cap NL100 - 75 cent per pot cap NL200 - 1.00 per pot cap NL400 & NL600 - 2.00 per pot cap NL1000+ - 3.00 per pot cap Something like that would be a massive improvement. It's not unheard of either. The rake cap at HUNL is 50 cents for a reason. It's because nobody was able to win when it was set considerably higher when the tables first came out. It's really simple. Your either willing to fight for lower rake or your too lazy to care. There is absolutely why rake can't be a fraction of what it is right now. If your arguing otherwise you seriously just have no clue how much money they're generating on a daily basis. You're right in the fact that there are people who would prefer it. If pokerstars offered $1000/mo 100% rakeback I would be all for it. The sites do generate a ridiculous amount of revenue and profits. You could probably run a free poker room profitably on ads alone. The thing is a site like what you're describing needs to be created, backed financially, promoted, and keep players. People who 16+ tables games on a popular site isn't going to switch to a small site with no rake. Anyone who plays high stakes isn't going to switch as there is rarely as volume. I doubt very few new players will even be aware of any sites beyond the advertised names. What you really want is someone who is already really rich to make a sick investment into a project like this along with some really good marketing.

That's why you need the players to organize and take meaningful action. You need petitions signed by 10,000+ Regs. You need legitimate threats to short tournaments like The Sunday Million by boycotting them so that they miss their guarantee by hundreds of thousands of dollars, You need people mass sitting out on 24+ tables simultaneously for as often as they have a computer within reach to block tables and disrupt play for everyone including fish. Spread the word publicly by blog and in the chat on Pokerstars.

Pokerstars, FTP, and the other big sites are raking the games dry. This is especially true at the microstakes which are disproportionately effected. It has a trickle up effect at higher stakes because less players advance to donate money higher up. It is in everyone's best interest to fight for lower rake. I want people to start fighting for this issue.

On October 14 2010 03:14 Steal City wrote: people like us need to feed the costs of people playing play money and all the insignificant buy in games. Although 50nl-200nl is raked way too heavily... 50$ a month is a losing proposition. The site has teams of people doing a lot of stuff in the background. I'm not saying it's not mega profitable for them but all the transactions between accounts... all the requests and responses to even play money players... et cetera et cetera... that shit definitely adds up. The monthly charge would definitely be a LOT more... but yea, even if it was something ridiculous like 3,000$ that would have a huge impact positively on the profitability of poker.

What information do you have that says $50.00 per month from regulars is not enough to support a fully functional poker site? Provided that the players pay their own fees for cash outs and peer to peer transfers. Something I'm sure everyone in that situation could live with.

Remember that all fish would still be on the rake system. The $50.00 per month would be something in the software options menu that people could simply opt-in for. No Fish would ever be faced with a forced up front fee to play poker.

you have to pay top dollar for updated desktop icons and lobby themes.

On October 14 2010 08:43 whamm! wrote: look at switchpoker, they just went with it, im sure they already have a million dollars in deposits circulating by now from all the fishy iphone users in europe and yeah its a very bright idea. i dont really think this thing needs a ton of marketing and you could do exchange deals. everything in the internet now is viral. i think the term "promote" the site doesnt cost 5million dollars over the damn internet. like i said, this can also work as a form of a poker site owned by poker players' cooperative of some sort.

Then lets start doing something about it. Lets start mobilizing people to fight for this issue. I can sit around here and hum and haw about options but at the end of the day clearly the best option is to force a site like Pokerstars and FTP to adopt a new paradigm which allows players to opt-in for an up front monthly fee on a purely voluntary basis. What we need are concrete actions we and many others can take to start fighting for this issue and making it very public. I'm tired of sitting around and being raked for 9pt/bb and having no recourse.

Some numbers:
1. It costs me $45.00 per hour to play 50PLO at a rate of 500 hands/hr.

2. During the Pokerstars billionth hand celebration I counted. It took about 15 minutes to deal every 1 million hands. If we conservatively suggest that Pokerstars raked on average about 25 cents per hand then Pokerstars made 250k for every 15 minutes and 1 million dollars per hour during the celebration.

On October 14 2010 08:56 byrnesam wrote: you have to pay top dollar for updated desktop icons and lobby themes.

The point I'd like to make is that we actually don't. There is no Pokerstars without the players. The regulars make up a significant portion of the revenue. We aren't powerless unless we choose to be.

pokerstars is a casino somehow, not a videogame, so you are thinking it wrong.

On October 14 2010 09:18 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 08:56 byrnesam wrote: you have to pay top dollar for updated desktop icons and lobby themes. The point I'd like to make is that we actually don't. There is no Pokerstars without the players. The regulars make up a significant portion of the revenue. We aren't powerless unless we choose to be.

Well... yes and no.

Why do some casinos rake so much that the game is unbeatable?

Because they can, and the tables are still full night after night.

You wont get a revolution of rake for the following reasons:

- Regular winning players who care about rake want to play with the fish and need fish to continue to win money.
- Fish dont care about rake.
- Rake is used to promote the site to bring in the fish. You arent going to get endorsments from Ivey and Antonius on a $20/month subscription fee.
- Rake is used to provide security and support. If a fish cant deposit on a friday night, he isnt going to wait until sunday for a response to his email, If things arent instantaneous they will leave.
- People who rely on regular cashouts to live do not want to wait extended periods of time when they have a query.
- People who have a significant amount of money in their account want a dedicated and responsive security team.
- Poker sites are a business. They want to make as much money as possible.
- low % return rake rewards keep grinders happy and fish will come thinking they can get a porsche playing NL25 for 2 hours once a week.

if regs leave, the site will be a fish pool that will attract regs and this is why its so damn hard to organize a large ammount of regs, we fuck ourselves because poker players are greedy and short term oriented.

As much as I'd like to pay less rake, this is a complicated problem.

more advertising = more fish, but advertising requires rake

less regs on a site due to strike = better fish/reg ratio, more profitable for regs who don't strike with the rest

it seems most regs are not united, and therefore unable to mount an effective strike. poker players are also selfish and therefore somewhat difficult to unite

vast majority of poker players are fish who don't care about rake

With that being said, I am sure it is possible to renegotiate the rake we all pay, it is simply a matter of getting people unified and mobilized toward that goal. Perhaps a good first step would be alerting people to just how much they are paying in rake? I don't think most people in the general poker community know.

The sites make so much money from rake that they wont change their system even if every reg went on strike(which they wouldn't) and nobody wants to rely on some fishy startup site to carry large amounts of money with a monthly subscription as revenue.

this really is an argument that we will never win vs the poker sites. from a business prospective, they have absolutely no reason to give us more money, i.e. rake less. anything they do is pure charity, and you should be happy for it. while it is gross the amount they rake, there really is nothing we can do for reasons baal stated.

I agree that sites are charging too much in rake and that they could still make hundreds of millions in profit charging 50% or even 25% of the rake they're charging now, but starting up a new pokersite or somehow petitioning for stars to lower rake or use a monthly subscription service are both extremely far fetched.

One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete.

Pretty much every site ive searched for thats given rake comparisons isn't doing much more than just advertising for the sites. I think we need an ad-free rake review site.

yeah, the statistics are pretty disgusting:

so far this month, I have played 36 hours and have generated 2142 in rake. I play at ft, so I get 27%, and assume that the black card and ironman actually means something so I get something like 31%. That's 664 deducted.

That means that I paid 1477 for those 36 hours = 41 dollars an hour.

=[

but with that said OP your "50 dollar / month" figure is so fucking ridiculous it makes me giggle. something like 600-800$ a month is more fair / realistic, but when I mean realistic I also mean never going to fucking happen.

it is impossible because of the short-term present-oriented mindset of poker players (so a strike is out of the question) as well as the fact that what matters isn't the amount of rake paid, but who controls the fish and has the most players.

is a 16 tabling rake grinder going to move to a smaller, "pay 50/month site" where he can't even get 10 tables of action at nl50? hm.

On October 14 2010 08:42 Bejamin1 wrote: Why is this so hard for people to understand? STEP 1: You allow the regulars to "opt-in" to a $50.00 up front fee for rake. STEP 2: Anyone who doesn't "opt-in" goes about their business paying rake exactly the same way they do currently. Nobody is suggesting a fee for everyone. That obviously would not work. I'm suggesting a hybrid model. Everyone who enjoys the current system aka clueless fish will choose to play for free and pay the rake as it exists under the current system. Those who chose to "opt-in" to the $50.00 monthly fee will receive 100% rakeback. This isn't something the poker sites are going to want. This is something we're going to have to fight for as players. It's our job to work on making the rake lower to increase the quality of the games. The same way unions fight for higher wages. What possible reason do you have as a poker player to be on the other side of this argument?

Wait, so you think it's in any way feasible in the real world for a poker site to allow a regular who pays thousands of dollars a month in rake to pay $50 and play rake free for a month? What are you smoking?

You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit.

On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete.

This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm.

yeah, its nice, but until we find some leverage nothing will change.

On October 14 2010 14:24 Bigbobm wrote: You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit. Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete. This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm.

we do have power we are just not united enough to use it properly, poker players won a battle against pokerstars in .fr didnt they?

they both look the same on the outside, but given the circumstances it's comparing apples and oranges.

On October 14 2010 13:47 phexac wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 08:42 Bejamin1 wrote: Why is this so hard for people to understand? STEP 1: You allow the regulars to "opt-in" to a $50.00 up front fee for rake. STEP 2: Anyone who doesn't "opt-in" goes about their business paying rake exactly the same way they do currently. Nobody is suggesting a fee for everyone. That obviously would not work. I'm suggesting a hybrid model. Everyone who enjoys the current system aka clueless fish will choose to play for free and pay the rake as it exists under the current system. Those who chose to "opt-in" to the $50.00 monthly fee will receive 100% rakeback. This isn't something the poker sites are going to want. This is something we're going to have to fight for as players. It's our job to work on making the rake lower to increase the quality of the games. The same way unions fight for higher wages. What possible reason do you have as a poker player to be on the other side of this argument? Wait, so you think it's in any way feasible in the real world for a poker site to allow a regular who pays thousands of dollars a month in rake to pay $50 and play rake free for a month? What are you smoking?

They're not going to want it. It's up to the players to organize and find ways to force change. Just shrugging our shoulders and saying "it's never going to happen so why bother" isn't good enough anymore. Not for me anyways. Do you think that workers at the turn of the century during the industrial revolution ever thought their bosses would give them a fair wage? They fought for it tooth and nail until step by step they got there. The fight has to start somewhere. Why not here?

On October 14 2010 11:02 Baal wrote: if regs leave, the site will be a fish pool that will attract regs and this is why its so damn hard to organize a large ammount of regs, we fuck ourselves because poker players are greedy and short term oriented.

We don't have to be. We can organize. If we fight for reduced rake especially at the micro and low limit levels more weak players will trickle up to 1/2+ and make the games softer. It doesn't have to be a $50.00 flat opt-in fee for those who choose it. That's maybe a long term goal to fight for.

Right now perhaps we just fight for rake to reflect its impact on the players. A $3.00 fee at 5/10 doesn't have the same impact it does at .25/.50. Limit and Pot Limit games are grossly over raked because players participate in more hands with smaller edges than in a game like NLH.

So for instance at .25/.50 instead of a maximum rake of $3.00 per pot how about 25 or 50 cents? It's 50 cents at NL50 HU so this isn't even an unheard of figure. The lower stakes are unfairly raked and its resulting in very few people finding their way up higher to make the upper games softer.

On October 14 2010 12:12 Bigbobm wrote: this really is an argument that we will never win vs the poker sites. from a business prospective, they have absolutely no reason to give us more money, i.e. rake less. anything they do is pure charity, and you should be happy for it. while it is gross the amount they rake, there really is nothing we can do for reasons baal stated.

You think it's charity that a player who plays 8 tables and 500 hands per hour pays $45.00 per hour at .25/.50 PLO in rake? Paying $45.00 per hour for any service is not charity. It's highway robbery. You need to change your way of thinking. There isn't nothing we can do. We can organize and we can fight back. If enough people get organized and enough people fight back change will happen.

I bet if you had a petition of over 100,000 people promising to deposit 1k and play exclusively on a site with a much lower rake cap of something like 25 cents per pot instead of $3.00 someone out there would take advantage of the business opportunity. If we can create a significant demand for a cheaper alternative to exist someone will figure it out. Someone will realize they can play a 2 minute video of commercials directly after you log into the software in order to generate extra revenue and people will be fine with 2 minutes of commercials for greatly reduced rake.

On October 14 2010 13:42 exalted wrote: but with that said OP your "50 dollar / month" figure is so fucking ridiculous it makes me giggle. something like 600-800$ a month is more fair / realistic, but when I mean realistic I also mean never going to fucking happen. it is impossible because of the short-term present-oriented mindset of poker players (so a strike is out of the question) as well as the fact that what matters isn't the amount of rake paid, but who controls the fish and has the most players. is a 16 tabling rake grinder going to move to a smaller, "pay 50/month site" where he can't even get 10 tables of action at nl50? hm.

It could be different for access to different stakes. Either way it's an opt-in. None of the fish will be paying an upfront fee it's just for regulars. Also what evidence do you have that $50.00 per month is too small a fee? What evidence do you have that actually shows how much it costs to give one player access to a site? WoW is a great example of a complex service delivered to millions for $20.00 per month or even less nowadays. There are plenty of monthly services that seem to do just fine on fees like this. HBO is another example and they have plenty of costs.

You don't even have to do it as an up front fee if you want. You can just have a rake meter in the persons options menu. Once it reaches 50 all further rake is returned to the player for those who opt-in. Fish won't opt-in because they won't know it exists. No up front fees and everyone who opts in gets the reward of reasonable rake for access to the software.

On October 14 2010 14:24 Bigbobm wrote: You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit. Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete. This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm.

Once again you fail to miss the point entirely. You make a statement that has no relevance to the OP. Nobody has at any point suggested fish should pay a fee up front. It has been said time and again that the fee would only be for those who opt-in as part of the options menu in the software. Your not changing anything for fish who are too stupid to realize the benefits of opting in. Only the regulars that are aware.

Yes of course the Poker sites have no leverage to do this. They're making millions upon millions of dollars a day and nobody is complaining. That's why we have to start organizing, writing blogs and articles, talking about this on all the major poker sites and blogs that people read for fun. People need to start fighting. Make it public enough and big enough and things will start to change. Get a big enough group of players saying publicly that they will all change to this new poker site if something with lower rake is introduced and you can change things.

On October 14 2010 14:39 Minsk wrote: yeah, its nice, but until we find some leverage nothing will change.

We have leverage as consumers we're just not using it. That's why I'm saying its time for everyone to do their part and start taking action. Start writing blogs. Start making sure there's official articles coming out daily about how much these sites are making and how the rake should be lower. Start publicly campaigning on all the major forums and sites that people read. This is especially important when it comes to publications that casual people read like Cardplayer magazine etc.

If you can keep this issue on the front page of every major poker publication in the world start organizing people both regulars and casuals to fight back against the rake then that's a start. We need to start building public pressure on this issue. Sitting back and shrugging "oh well its just too hard to do anything about" isn't good enough. That attitude isn't good enough.

The vast majority of major changes in society happen because a small group of people doesn't take no for an answer. A small group of people organizes and starts to push the larger groups to get involved.

On October 14 2010 15:41 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 12:12 Bigbobm wrote: this really is an argument that we will never win vs the poker sites. from a business prospective, they have absolutely no reason to give us more money, i.e. rake less. anything they do is pure charity, and you should be happy for it. while it is gross the amount they rake, there really is nothing we can do for reasons baal stated. You think it's charity that a player who plays 8 tables and 500 hands per hour pays $45.00 per hour at .25/.50 PLO in rake? Paying $45.00 per hour for any service is not charity. It's highway robbery. You need to change your way of thinking. There isn't nothing we can do. We can organize and we can fight back. If enough people get organized and enough people fight back change will happen. I bet if you had a petition of over 100,000 people promising to deposit 1k and play exclusively on a site with a much lower rake cap of something like 25 cents per pot instead of $3.00 someone out there would take advantage of the business opportunity. If we can create a significant demand for a cheaper alternative to exist someone will figure it out. Someone will realize they can play a 2 minute video of commercials directly after you log into the software in order to generate extra revenue and people will be fine with 2 minutes of commercials for greatly reduced rake.

Fwiw I pay ~30 an hr in rake after rakeback. So yes, I do consider it charity, because back in 2006 I would be paying close to 50 for the same volume.

We don't work for them, we aren't entitled to anything,

On October 14 2010 15:52 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 14:24 Bigbobm wrote: You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit.   On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete. This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm. Once again you fail to miss the point entirely. You make a statement that has no relevance to the OP. Nobody has at any point suggested fish should pay a fee up front. It has been said time and again that the fee would only be for those who opt-in as part of the options menu in the software. Your not changing anything for fish who are too stupid to realize the benefits of opting in. Only the regulars that are aware.

I'm not suggesting everyone pay the fee. I'm saying that from a business stand point it is beyond retarded for them to offer this as an option because the only players that would opt into it are players it would be +ev for.

Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method.

I think it was pretty clear.

Also, do we really know they are making millions every day? Do you have their financial info to prove that they are really making that much or are you just assuming because you think they rake x over y hands they make z a day? We have no idea what operating costs are for these sites.

On October 14 2010 16:03 Bigbobm wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 15:41 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 14 2010 12:12 Bigbobm wrote: this really is an argument that we will never win vs the poker sites. from a business prospective, they have absolutely no reason to give us more money, i.e. rake less. anything they do is pure charity, and you should be happy for it. while it is gross the amount they rake, there really is nothing we can do for reasons baal stated. You think it's charity that a player who plays 8 tables and 500 hands per hour pays $45.00 per hour at .25/.50 PLO in rake? Paying $45.00 per hour for any service is not charity. It's highway robbery. You need to change your way of thinking. There isn't nothing we can do. We can organize and we can fight back. If enough people get organized and enough people fight back change will happen. I bet if you had a petition of over 100,000 people promising to deposit 1k and play exclusively on a site with a much lower rake cap of something like 25 cents per pot instead of $3.00 someone out there would take advantage of the business opportunity. If we can create a significant demand for a cheaper alternative to exist someone will figure it out. Someone will realize they can play a 2 minute video of commercials directly after you log into the software in order to generate extra revenue and people will be fine with 2 minutes of commercials for greatly reduced rake. Fwiw I pay ~30 an hr in rake after rakeback. So yes, I do consider it charity, because back in 2006 I would be paying close to 50 for the same volume. We don't work for them, we aren't entitled to anything,

Yes we do work for them. We pay their salaries with our rake. As consumers we absolutely do have a say. In what world is $30.00 per hour a fair access fee for playing a simplistic game on virtual felt? Tell me what else you would be comfortable paying that much for? Why are you so happy to pay such an extortionist fee?

Charity? What part of it is Charity? Charity would be defined as something given to you for free. In poker you put in your time, hours, and effort. You also as mentioned pay $30.00/hr for access to the opportunity to make money. There is no charity here. There is you paying up the ass for a service that costs far less to provide than what's being charged.

On October 14 2010 16:11 Bigbobm wrote: Also, do we really know they are making millions every day? Do you have their financial info to prove that they are really making that much or are you just assuming because you think they rake x over y hands they make z a day? We have no idea what operating costs are for these sites.

Are you really so incredibly unaware that you believe they aren't? Take ten minutes to google financial data on Pokerstars and you'll find all the answers you need. PartyGaming took their company public so their revenues were put out in the open. Pretty easy to draw the comparisons. Their biggest expenditure is obviously advertising & promotions.

"In the first six months of 2007, Partygaming brought in $212.5 million in revenues, with $140.5 million of this revenue coming from online poker. According to their web site, Party Poker's real money players generated an average of $777,400 / day in revenues."

Not going to say this source is reliable http://www.pokerkingblog.com/2008/01/...h-money-does-pokerstars-make-per-day/ because it's just the first thing that turned up on google. It'd take maybe ten minutes to fact check it further and look for more information.

Ok so by that comparison, I buy gas twice a week, and Exxon Mobil has profited upwards of 48bil in the fiscal year of 2008. Do I deserve some of that money too? Should gas be 20c a gal now because they made all that money? Obviously not, because they are a business and they are entitled to make as much money as the market allows them to make.

And I'm thrilled to pay 30 an hour because despite that I'm still making a stress free 80 an hour sitting in my bedroom, playing poker on my computer at my own leisure.

It's a multibillion dollar industry for sure. There's no doubt in my mind that Pokerstars brings in multiple millions in revenue each day. The actual operating costs from the technical side should really be very small. The client has already been created, some programmers add some new features every once in awhile, security team, probably some networking or server maintenance guys. The data and bandwidth required is extremely small per user. For comparison a scalable torrent tracker can handle 5 million connections on a single quad-core computer. Even though I'm sure they have their own server center with air conditioning, hardware for failures, and whatever else they could easily pay the entire year's expenses in less than a day. If they keep the billions of dollars of players money they have a hold of in extremely conservative low-interest accounts, they would still make enough each year to easily cover their support teams and investigations department. The bulk of their expenditures comes from advertising and endorsements. It really is one of the most profitable businesses ever when compared to overhead expenses.
Anyway, I don't think a petition will do anything, a boycott is unlikely to be successful. The only thing that will really make anything change is if one site starts doing it and it actually starts hurting the competition. Let's say Full Tilt offered a $5000/mo package for high stakes, $1000/mo for mid stakes and that brings in a rush of players. Pokerstars still needs to deem the losses that they incur by having players move from their site to a competitor's greater than losses they would incur by offering such packages themselves.
So I believe the only way this dream of yours is going to happen is if the site is created by someone else that places their poker ideals over their business sense (greed) and somehow manages to get the site popular.

On October 14 2010 16:11 Bigbobm wrote: Also, do we really know they are making millions every day? Do you have their financial info to prove that they are really making that much or are you just assuming because you think they rake x over y hands they make z a day? We have no idea what operating costs are for these sites.

For 2009 PokerStars raked 4 million $ per day on average. This is official information announced by PS in the end of last year.

whining about rake is like bitching about paying to take a girl out

girls gotta trim da bush, shave legs, get the hair did, all this shit

all u gotta do is floss and shave da balls and be there

stars is the girl

you are da prospective mate

act like it, play yo position

you are not entitled to get da pussy on da cheap aight

I'm pretty stunned at the poker players here that don't want to fight for a rake reduction. Who would've thought if you proposed a measure that could greatly increase everyone's hourly rate that some people wouldn't bother to support it?

stop attention whoring Casper ffs -.-

On October 14 2010 17:57 Surprise wrote: I'm pretty stunned at the poker players here that don't want to fight for a rake reduction. Who would've thought if you proposed a measure that could greatly increase everyone's hourly rate that some people wouldn't bother to support it?

It's pretty silly to fight a pointless battle. You can tell just by the responses in this thread that if such a movement took place for the purpose of reducing rake that there would not be cooperation among regulars and that many people obviously don't feel the same way about it.

On October 14 2010 17:26 sawseech wrote: you are not entitled to get da pussy on da cheap aight

last temp ban, next time you are posting like crap its perm

On October 14 2010 18:13 jchysk wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 17:57 Surprise wrote: I'm pretty stunned at the poker players here that don't want to fight for a rake reduction. Who would've thought if you proposed a measure that could greatly increase everyone's hourly rate that some people wouldn't bother to support it? It's pretty silly to fight a pointless battle. You can tell just by the responses in this thread that if such a movement took place for the purpose of reducing rake that there would not be cooperation among regulars and that many people obviously don't feel the same way about it.

why i am not surprized you are from USA... just another sheep in the herd. despite how much i hate french ppl and their attitude towards foreigners i admire them how they gathered and striked PS.FR and yes eventually changes in the rake system were introduced!

I got a quick question. What about the SnG tourneys, lets say the 16$ (15+1$ rake) 18 mans. How bad is the rake on a game like this compared to the cash games, other sng formats, etc...

On October 14 2010 18:34 starscream3 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 18:13 jchysk wrote:   On October 14 2010 17:57 Surprise wrote: I'm pretty stunned at the poker players here that don't want to fight for a rake reduction. Who would've thought if you proposed a measure that could greatly increase everyone's hourly rate that some people wouldn't bother to support it? It's pretty silly to fight a pointless battle. You can tell just by the responses in this thread that if such a movement took place for the purpose of reducing rake that there would not be cooperation among regulars and that many people obviously don't feel the same way about it. why i am not surprized you are from USA... just another sheep in the herd. despite how much i hate french ppl and their attitude towards foreigners i admire them how they gathered and striked PS.FR and yes eventually changes in the rake system were introduced!

You sound like such a bigot. I think you should read the rest of the thread..

Poll: Try to reduce rake?
(Vote): I think it's fine the way it is.
(Vote): I think rake is too high and would participate in something like a strike in efforts to reduce it.
(Vote): I think rake is too high, but I'm not going to do anything about it.

theres a factor im sure most people are missing...
the lower the rake...the closer poker becomes to a zero sum game...it becomes easier to have tables with all regulars viable with significant edges...so if theres less fish its okay...

on the practical part....strike is pointless because there is not nearly enough leverage...

there are 2 ways to change
- enough poker players unite to constitute leverage and force sites to do this -- most likely impractical
- a better business plan is released and takes over market share -- if i knew how to and had the funds there would already be a monthly rake site...i think its a good business plan

On October 14 2010 19:49 Minsk wrote:the lower the rake...the closer poker becomes to a zero sum game...it becomes easier to have tables with all regulars viable with significant edges...so if theres less fish its okay...

You underestimate the rake's impact in the games. It's mainly the rake causing the huge variance in the games, not the edge between the players. Lower/no rake = more edge for better players = lower variance. No Limi Texas Hold'em is simply too complex to become considered as a zero sum game. I doubt anyone in the world is even close to solving it at this point. If the rake is just lowered we should see a huge difference in swings.

really interesting thread, lowering the cap on rake in cash games would have a really solid impact on the games as a whole. im surprised there's no compensating in this thread (or as a whole among poker players) since stars, in the end, is going to make their judgments entirely based on whats best for stars...poker players should be the same way but it seems they're not.

Unfortunately most people who would have the connections/experience to start a bonafide business through a new poker site, would know that simply offering price as the sole positioning to differentiate themselves from the competition would be a highly vulnerable endeavor . The existing operators can counter them so quickly and so brutally that I can't imagine some hero businessman taking up the task

All I know is we domesticate ourselves, and look what happens. You know what they say, in the poker game of life, women are the rake

They are the fucking rake....

On October 14 2010 11:02 Baal wrote: if regs leave, the site will be a fish pool that will attract regs and this is why its so damn hard to organize a large ammount of regs, we fuck ourselves because poker players are greedy and short term oriented.

didnt read the whole thread but I guess thats what would make any sizeable protest against rake really hard to organize, I could see myself stop playin poker to defend our interests but I think most would just take advantage of it and jump in the fishy games that such a boycot would create

I would easily pay up to 1k a month up front without even thinking twice if it meant 100% rakeback.

lol $50 bucks. my god i'd be a rich man.

On October 14 2010 17:57 Surprise wrote: I'm pretty stunned at the poker players here that don't want to fight for a rake reduction. Who would've thought if you proposed a measure that could greatly increase everyone's hourly rate that some people wouldn't bother to support it?

I think a lot of people just accept it because it's been the standard practice from the beginning. The idea of "hey, maybe rake should be way less than it is" just doesn't come to mind because it's what everyone is used to. I think it's time to shake things up and start organizing. There is a clear impetus to do so. There are also lots of good ideas out there as well as solutions to any potential problems.

I think the next big boom in poker will come when rake is significantly reduced. When people realize the price to play poker has been highway robbery. As consumers we've got to do a better job of representing ourselves and pushing for much needed change.

I think the first thing to push for as a group would be greatly reduced rake at .25/.50 and below. Not just because I'm a member of that player base but because the more winners we have at those limits the more fish end up getting into the higher games. People at these limits and below are disproportionately affected by rake. They see 5% of every pot they play raked away. Meanwhile people playing at 5/10 lose only a fraction of a %. The overall rake is a much lower pt/bb effect at those limits. Such inequality needs to be addressed.

On October 14 2010 23:29 MiPwnYa wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 11:02 Baal wrote: if regs leave, the site will be a fish pool that will attract regs and this is why its so damn hard to organize a large ammount of regs, we fuck ourselves because poker players are greedy and short term oriented. didnt read the whole thread but I guess thats what would make any sizeable protest against rake really hard to organize, I could see myself stop playin poker to defend our interests but I think most would just take advantage of it and jump in the fishy games that such a boycot would create

It's also really tough for a guy like you because you've put so much effort this year into getting SNE. In order to maintain your 65% rakeback you really can't stop playing. It's almost not an option for you. There are however lots of ways to bring your voice to the matter.

First of all in every major blog, poker related website, or forum there should be a thread stickied to the top of the boards about fighting for a reduction in rake. Similar to the fact that there are always people demanding lower tuition on University campuses. Negative campaigning all over the internet about how greedy Pokerstars is with the amount they rake is a good start.

Then its a matter of building a big enough group of people that say we will give all our business as consumers to the Poker site that makes this change. Even if all the regulars on Pokerstars left to play on FTP the FTP games would still be more profitable of the rake was greatly reduced. The rake is the single largest factor that causes the situation where very few players can be winners.

This is not something that's going to happen overnight. It's not something that's going to happen in one fell swoop where the players get everything they want. It's about picking target goals and flooding Pokerstars support with 100+ e-mails a day. Constantly bombarding them with the demand completely over flooding the support e-mail system. Talking about it everywhere. There are plenty of things we can do to make life difficult on Pokerstars.

Imagine an army of micro/non-micro players who whilst not playing but have a computer on nearby can sit out on 24 tables. That's not something that's difficult to do whilst your doing something else you would normally be up to like watching a favorite TV show or whatever. Having 2-3 seats blocked on a table makes it difficult for others to participate in the games and all of a sudden those people start complaining and hear about the strike and maybe join in.

All it takes is enough people that care about starting this movement. I care about starting it. I'm going to keep campaigning for it every day. I don't care if people get sick of hearing about it or are pessimistic about the potential for results. I'm going to keep on fighting for this issue for as long as I'm a poker player. I hope a lot of others take up the cause and do the same.

On October 15 2010 00:04 YoMeR wrote: I would easily pay up to 1k a month up front without even thinking twice if it meant 100% rakeback. lol $50 bucks. my god i'd be a rich man.

So would a lot of other people. The games up higher would be softer. The games health overall would be much better long-term, and that's the point.

Also $50.00 is just an arbitrary number that I think it could be done for. It could be a graduated fee based on the level of games that you play in. Not only that but instead of a monthly fee you could just have a "Rake Meter" in your cashier page. If you opt in to use the rakemeter it could work like this. The would keep track of your monthly accrued individually contributed rake. Once you raked over the required value - in your suggestion 1k - all further rake would be returned to you as 100% Rakeback at the end of the month.

The player in this case has to do nothing but opt in. Your contributed rake is tabulated and once you fill the monthly rake meter all further rake is returned to you as rakeback. That's simply a rake cap system and would be very effective in providing far better rakeback overall to those who put in large volume. So at NL2 the meter is $50 and at NL50 maybe it's $250 and so on. Still allows Pokerstars to make a good deal of money but also greatly reduces the fee we're all paying as individuals who play poker. The price is too high and its not justifiable. Any poker player on the wrong side of this issue needs to wake up and join the fight to lower the rake.

Sites incentivize players to play more for increased rakeback through their VIP programs and people make goals out of trying to hit Ironman or SNE. So far everything you've suggested, Benjamin, would cut into a site's profits by huge percentages. The amount of bad publicity and organized strikes that would have to occur for them to do anything but laugh at your suggestions would be enormous. If they look at their data and find out that at any given stake the top 5% rake contributors make up 25% of rake income at that level it would mean that setting up a rakecap that is only +EV for those top 5% players is still going to heavily influence their profit margins and still wouldn't satisfy the other 95% of players. Maybe small changes could be pushed for, but I'm really not sure what.
Thinking a little bit more about the whole issue and the problems one would face if they were to attempt creating a rival poker room I had a somewhat crazy idea: open-source player-developed non-profit poker room.
It would need a large group effort to be successful I'm sure, and there would be all sorts of complications concerned with creating something that has control of the money or disallows any individual from having control. The gist of the idea is developers help create the poker software, since it's open source anyone can help out add new features they want or whatever although there would probably need to be quite a bit of moderation, testing, and triple checking of code for security purposes. In the end large open source projects usually end up more secure, efficient, and stable than their proprietary adversaries. If the site once created and launched showed enough success and traffic the money made off interest from players' funds could cover the costs of servers and any maintenance so basically it would have a long term 0 rake goal in mind.
Currently unsolved problems with this idea:
Voluntary-only support, probably on forums
Control issues as far as who has the right to dictate or enforce the rules
Marketing would probably have to be cost free

I'm not against getting lower rake, but calling Stars 'greedy' because they take rake is just a bad rationalization. They are supposed to make money, not run a non profit. Also stars offers one of the highest effective rb% on probably one of the safest sites on the net. With 65% rb I think they have effectively lowered rake quite a bit.

^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me)

I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay.

Yeah Yomer I think the lucky thing is only something like 5% of players are winners. Even fewer are grinding for a living. So hopefully a lot of people should be able to participate. I think also the grinders will certainly be able to participate in other ways other than overtly striking. Blogs, articles, stickied forum threads, and joining up to large petitions etc. Getting some negative advertising about how much rake is being taken to go viral through the internet would be the first big step. Raise the awareness and then start to build the movement.

On October 14 2010 14:53 Baal wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 14:24 Bigbobm wrote: You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit.   On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete. This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm. we do have power we are just not united enough to use it properly, poker players won a battle against pokerstars in .fr didnt they?

What happened in France? Did stars change their policy or something? I saw the start of the situation, but didn't follow what happened after...

EDIT: ah, looked around on google, and found this article. Cudos to both players and poker stars:

http://www.gamblejack.net/blog/pokerstars-fr-rake-reduces-the-cash-tables/

On October 15 2010 14:33 phexac wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 14:53 Baal wrote:   On October 14 2010 14:24 Bigbobm wrote: You all have to realize we hold absolutely no leverage, and no bargaining power with these poker sites. These sites are businesses, and I don't see them sacrificing their profits to make regulars who pay thousands in rake happy. Also, suggesting that they have players pay an upfront fee is an absolutely retarded idea. Regardless of the price you suggest, only the players who are going to be +ev paying up front will consider the option while the rest follow the current pay as you go method. This is obviously a stupid proposition from the sites point of view as they will only lose profit.   On October 14 2010 13:20 NMcNasty wrote: One thing we can do however is recognize that the websites operate in a competitive environment. If new players were better educated as to which sites charged the least in rake and were more informed as to how that effects the profitability of the games, the major sites would be forced to lower rakes in order to compete. This is really our only viable option. Unfortunately there is a pretty consistent industry standard on rake charged which leaves us to rely on sites that provide higher rb as ways to reduce rake. Again this is a tough spot to go because a lot of sites like Red Nines or WSEX have had incredibly good looking rb %s, but accounts are either stolen, or software/support/etc is straight garbage compared to the norm. we do have power we are just not united enough to use it properly, poker players won a battle against pokerstars in .fr didnt they? What happened in France? Did stars change their policy or something? I saw the start of the situation, but didn't follow what happened after... EDIT: ah, looked around on google, and found this article. Cudos to both players and poker stars: http://www.gamblejack.net/blog/pokerstars-fr-rake-reduces-the-cash-tables/

i think they did

On October 14 2010 22:14 Carthac wrote: All I know is we domesticate ourselves, and look what happens. You know what they say, in the poker game of life, women are the rake They are the fucking rake....

What the fuck are you talking about? What- what saying?

{

On October 15 2010 03:18 jchysk wrote: Thinking a little bit more about the whole issue and the problems one would face if they were to attempt creating a rival poker room I had a somewhat crazy idea: open-source player-developed non-profit poker room. It would need a large group effort to be successful I'm sure, and there would be all sorts of complications concerned with creating something that has control of the money or disallows any individual from having control. The gist of the idea is developers help create the poker software, since it's open source anyone can help out add new features they want or whatever although there would probably need to be quite a bit of moderation, testing, and triple checking of code for security purposes. In the end large open source projects usually end up more secure, efficient, and stable than their proprietary adversaries. If the site once created and launched showed enough success and traffic the money made off interest from players' funds could cover the costs of servers and any maintenance so basically it would have a long term 0 rake goal in mind. Currently unsolved problems with this idea: Voluntary-only support, probably on forums Control issues as far as who has the right to dictate or enforce the rules Marketing would probably have to be cost free

Hey everybody,

I just signed up to post this. That is your solution. As a semi-notable former game developer who spent several years working on Open Source software, I can tell you that the technical cost of writing software like PokerStars is very tiny- one guy with enough willpower could likely write a similar quality client in under 6 months. I don't know the other costs like administration and legal, but I doubt it's many orders of magnitude greater than the technical costs.

Just off the top of my head, here's what I can imagine: you download the opensource software which contains a list of servers offering games- you can always add more servers to your server list. You go to the servers and find a game someone has setup. Now the game is not hosted on the server (that's only for finding games), but on all participating players machines. A player sends an encrypted long string to all the other players. After the hand is finished, they send out another key to decrypt the long string to confirm their hand. This kind of encryption is impossible to crack. Since everyone taking part in the game is collectively hosting the game (peer to peer network), no rake needs to be taken.

For handling the money, bitcoin has been making a lot of noise recently although I don't really know how it works. I imagine when you sit down for your $100, that it gets added to a special account for the current game which everyone has a small piece of the total password for. Maybe you have to deposit another $200 into there so that when you leave, you do actually relinquish your password to the rest of the group. These schemes are just from the top of my head, but with a bit of ingenuity and thinking, the security issues and problems can be worked out into a water tight scheme.

Of course the poker community is not much of a community. Reading this thread you can just see how fragmented people are. Open Source communities are very selfless and strong, which is what really makes the projects work (cooperation). This solution would give you rake free poker software, with the power in your hands (not hostage to companies since you have access to all the tech) and security (since the source-code is open, any dodgy business gets quickly discovered). It's truly a capitalist model since you can design your own games and if you don't like some aspect then you can easily fragment (design your own game, move to another server, or change the software and redistribute it) or even make your own skin (complete with integrated HUD, scripted play or auto-fold hands). The poker companies are scamming you and laughing to the bank while you chase the bonuses.

This model is a federated peer2peer design. You can read more details,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_(information_technology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_identity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer2peer
Diaspora is a distributed social network that was funded by donations,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(software)
Excellent example of distribution,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)

Distribution is an established methodology and with enough mathematical schemes to prevent exploitation, they are rock solid in terms of security.}

On October 15 2010 13:37 YoMeR wrote: ^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me) I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay.

Yea but those people are the ones paying the most rake, and obviously the most deserving. Even still, almost any serious regular who gives stars a majority of their action will get supernova which is mid 40% rb. While Lee might still be lining his pockets, they are still giving back a shit ton of money to their biggest rake payers.

I'd rather have a reward system that encourages casual players to want to reach higher vip levels so they get more bonuses than to effectively give it to them by cutting the rake.

On October 15 2010 03:18 jchysk wrote: Currently unsolved problems with this idea:

>Voluntary-only support, probably on forums
http://ubuntuforums.org/ seem to be fine
>Control issues as far as who has the right to dictate or enforce the rules
Don't like it? Then fork the software and develop your own version.
>Marketing would probably have to be cost free
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networkin...-york-times-runs-firefox-ad-39181362/

On October 15 2010 15:51 Bigbobm wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 13:37 YoMeR wrote: ^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me) I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay. Yea but those people are the ones paying the most rake, and obviously the most deserving. Even still, almost any serious regular who gives stars a majority of their action will get supernova which is mid 40% rb. While Lee might still be lining his pockets, they are still giving back a shit ton of money to their biggest rake payers. I'd rather have a reward system that encourages casual players to want to reach higher vip levels so they get more bonuses than to effectively give it to them by cutting the rake.

There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. On top of that those players are being raked more in terms of proportion than any other stakes played on Pokerstars. I'd like to know how many winners you think there would be at 1/2 and higher if the rake was 5% of every pot instead of being capped at $3.00. That's what micro players are up against. There is no reason for you to be on the other side of this issue. Even for players at 1/2 or higher the rake is far in excess of what it should be. The rake needs to be reduced significantly.

The more we reduce the rake, the more people can be winners, and the softer the games at higher limits will be. That's a simple and obvious truth. Pokerstars treats its player base like lemmings. The VIP rewards programs are designed with that intent. It's the twinky on a stick in front of a treadmill design. If you play day and night or have nothing else to do except grind hands on Pokerstars for 40+ hours a week we'll reward you with a 65% Rakeback on 200k a year you pay in rake going for SNE. We'll profit 70k USD off all your hard work. We'll also laugh our asses off as we profit 100K+ over all the people who go for SNE but fall short.

The rake is way too high. I've given it some thought and here is the first change I think we should be shooting for.

The rake at HU/NL on Pokerstars is capped at 50 cents no matter what limit you play at. The lowest limit is NL50 - at that rate maximum rake per pot is achieved when 20% of a buy-in is put into the pot. So if all poker was raked in this fashion.

NL2 2 cents
NL5 5 cents
NL10 10 cents
NL25 25 cents
NL50 50 cents
NL100 1 dollar
NL200 2 dollars
NL400+ 3 dollars

This would make the rake considerably fairer for lower limit players and result in more fish or slighter winners working their way up into the bigger games to donate to the big boys. This is not the be all end all goal of reducing rake. I honestly think a system that allows regulars to opt-in on a rake cap and pay a monthly fee to receive 100% rakeback is what eventually needs to happen. This can be done as a rake meter in the cashier page where once it's full for the month all further rake is returned to your account in one payment at the end of the month.

This however I think is the starting point. Reduce the unfair impact of rake on the microstakes and even early middle stakes. These players are paying way too much proportionally compared to people who are playing higher. It is unfair taxation of the lower stakes and results in a reduced quality of the games at higher levels because few weak players will ever ascend there.

In terms of my personal view I hope that one day if we don't see a monthly rake cap we at least see the maximum rake per pot reduced to something like ten cents. I feel this is an achievable target. None of the major poker sites are going to want to do this. We have to force them to. We have to organize ourselves and wage an everlasting campaign until we get what we want. I expect it to be a long fight, but I also expect the movement to grow as more people join in. It's time to start getting the word out across the internet, facebook, twitter, and every source of social media we've got. The fight is on.

On October 15 2010 15:43 genjix2 wrote: Hey everybody, I just signed up to post this. That is your solution. As a semi-notable former game developer who spent several years working on Open Source software, I can tell you that the technical cost of writing software like PokerStars is very tiny- one guy with enough willpower could likely write a similar quality client in under 6 months. I don't know the other costs like administration and legal, but I doubt it's many orders of magnitude greater than the technical costs. Just off the top of my head, here's what I can imagine: you download the opensource software which contains a list of servers offering games- you can always add more servers to your server list. You go to the servers and find a game someone has setup. Now the game is not hosted on the server (that's only for finding games), but on all participating players machines. A player sends an encrypted long string to all the other players. After the hand is finished, they send out another key to decrypt the long string to confirm their hand. This kind of encryption is impossible to crack. Since everyone taking part in the game is collectively hosting the game (peer to peer network), no rake needs to be taken. For handling the money, bitcoin has been making a lot of noise recently although I don't really know how it works. I imagine when you sit down for your $100, that it gets added to a special account for the current game which everyone has a small piece of the total password for. Maybe you have to deposit another $200 into there so that when you leave, you do actually relinquish your password to the rest of the group. These schemes are just from the top of my head, but with a bit of ingenuity and thinking, the security issues and problems can be worked out into a water tight scheme. Of course the poker community is not much of a community. Reading this thread you can just see how fragmented people are. Open Source communities are very selfless and strong, which is what really makes the projects work (cooperation). This solution would give you rake free poker software, with the power in your hands (not hostage to companies since you have access to all the tech) and security (since the source-code is open, any dodgy business gets quickly discovered). It's truly a capitalist model since you can design your own games and if you don't like some aspect then you can easily fragment (design your own game, move to another server, or change the software and redistribute it) or even make your own skin (complete with integrated HUD, scripted play or auto-fold hands). The poker companies are scamming you and laughing to the bank while you chase the bonuses. This model is a federated peer2peer design. You can read more details, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_(information_technology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_identity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer2peer Diaspora is a distributed social network that was funded by donations, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(software) Excellent example of distribution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software) Distribution is an established methodology and with enough mathematical schemes to prevent exploitation, they are rock solid in terms of security.}

Glad someone even acknowledged my idea let alone agreed with me. haha
I've always figured it wouldn't be difficult to create a poker client in league with full tilt or pokerstars and considered getting some friends together to build it, probably within a few months. The reasons that always stopped me were the fact that I had no idea how I would get it off the ground or the amount of crazy legal stuff I would have to do to handle the money or even to host a poker room within the US. I'd be willing to try to set something like this open source software project up, even host a website and forum for it just to see if there is really enough interest to continue pursuing this.

On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 15:51 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 15 2010 13:37 YoMeR wrote: ^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me) I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay. Yea but those people are the ones paying the most rake, and obviously the most deserving. Even still, almost any serious regular who gives stars a majority of their action will get supernova which is mid 40% rb. While Lee might still be lining his pockets, they are still giving back a shit ton of money to their biggest rake payers. I'd rather have a reward system that encourages casual players to want to reach higher vip levels so they get more bonuses than to effectively give it to them by cutting the rake. There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. On top of that those players are being raked more in terms of proportion than any other stakes played on Pokerstars. I'd like to know how many winners you think there would be at 1/2 and higher if the rake was 5% of every pot instead of being capped at $3.00. That's what micro players are up against. There is no reason for you to be on the other side of this issue. Even for players at 1/2 or higher the rake is far in excess of what it should be. The rake needs to be reduced significantly. The more we reduce the rake, the more people can be winners, and the softer the games at higher limits will be. That's a simple and obvious truth. Pokerstars treats its player base like lemmings. The VIP rewards programs are designed with that intent. It's the twinky on a stick in front of a treadmill design. If you play day and night or have nothing else to do except grind hands on Pokerstars for 40+ hours a week we'll reward you with a 65% Rakeback on 200k a year you pay in rake going for SNE. We'll profit 70k USD off all your hard work. We'll also laugh our asses off as we profit 100K+ over all the people who go for SNE but fall short. The rake is way too high. I've given it some thought and here is the first change I think we should be shooting for. The rake at HU/NL on Pokerstars is capped at 50 cents no matter what limit you play at. The lowest limit is NL50 - at that rate maximum rake per pot is achieved when 20% of a buy-in is put into the pot. So if all poker was raked in this fashion. NL2 2 cents NL5 5 cents NL10 10 cents NL25 25 cents NL50 50 cents NL100 1 dollar NL200 2 dollars NL400+ 3 dollars This would make the rake considerably fairer for lower limit players and result in more fish or slighter winners working their way up into the bigger games to donate to the big boys. This is not the be all end all goal of reducing rake. I honestly think a system that allows regulars to opt-in on a rake cap and pay a monthly fee to receive 100% rakeback is what eventually needs to happen. This can be done as a rake meter in the cashier page where once it's full for the month all further rake is returned to your account in one payment at the end of the month. This however I think is the starting point. Reduce the unfair impact of rake on the microstakes and even early middle stakes. These players are paying way too much proportionally compared to people who are playing higher. It is unfair taxation of the lower stakes and results in a reduced quality of the games at higher levels because few weak players will ever ascend there. In terms of my personal view I hope that one day if we don't see a monthly rake cap we at least see the maximum rake per pot reduced to something like ten cents. I feel this is an achievable target. None of the major poker sites are going to want to do this. We have to force them to. We have to organize ourselves and wage an everlasting campaign until we get what we want. I expect it to be a long fight, but I also expect the movement to grow as more people join in. It's time to start getting the word out across the internet, facebook, twitter, and every source of social media we've got. The fight is on.

With the numbers you are proposing, I feel like you live in the la-la land. Reduce the rake? Ok, let's discuss it; I am sure there are valid points to be made. Maximum rake per pot down to 10 cents? I think you should check out this place called the real world.

On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players.

wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer


[?] brag

On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag

I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job .

On October 15 2010 16:41 phexac wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 15:51 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 15 2010 13:37 YoMeR wrote: ^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me) I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay. Yea but those people are the ones paying the most rake, and obviously the most deserving. Even still, almost any serious regular who gives stars a majority of their action will get supernova which is mid 40% rb. While Lee might still be lining his pockets, they are still giving back a shit ton of money to their biggest rake payers. I'd rather have a reward system that encourages casual players to want to reach higher vip levels so they get more bonuses than to effectively give it to them by cutting the rake. There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. On top of that those players are being raked more in terms of proportion than any other stakes played on Pokerstars. I'd like to know how many winners you think there would be at 1/2 and higher if the rake was 5% of every pot instead of being capped at $3.00. That's what micro players are up against. There is no reason for you to be on the other side of this issue. Even for players at 1/2 or higher the rake is far in excess of what it should be. The rake needs to be reduced significantly. The more we reduce the rake, the more people can be winners, and the softer the games at higher limits will be. That's a simple and obvious truth. Pokerstars treats its player base like lemmings. The VIP rewards programs are designed with that intent. It's the twinky on a stick in front of a treadmill design. If you play day and night or have nothing else to do except grind hands on Pokerstars for 40+ hours a week we'll reward you with a 65% Rakeback on 200k a year you pay in rake going for SNE. We'll profit 70k USD off all your hard work. We'll also laugh our asses off as we profit 100K+ over all the people who go for SNE but fall short. The rake is way too high. I've given it some thought and here is the first change I think we should be shooting for. The rake at HU/NL on Pokerstars is capped at 50 cents no matter what limit you play at. The lowest limit is NL50 - at that rate maximum rake per pot is achieved when 20% of a buy-in is put into the pot. So if all poker was raked in this fashion. NL2 2 cents NL5 5 cents NL10 10 cents NL25 25 cents NL50 50 cents NL100 1 dollar NL200 2 dollars NL400+ 3 dollars This would make the rake considerably fairer for lower limit players and result in more fish or slighter winners working their way up into the bigger games to donate to the big boys. This is not the be all end all goal of reducing rake. I honestly think a system that allows regulars to opt-in on a rake cap and pay a monthly fee to receive 100% rakeback is what eventually needs to happen. This can be done as a rake meter in the cashier page where once it's full for the month all further rake is returned to your account in one payment at the end of the month. This however I think is the starting point. Reduce the unfair impact of rake on the microstakes and even early middle stakes. These players are paying way too much proportionally compared to people who are playing higher. It is unfair taxation of the lower stakes and results in a reduced quality of the games at higher levels because few weak players will ever ascend there. In terms of my personal view I hope that one day if we don't see a monthly rake cap we at least see the maximum rake per pot reduced to something like ten cents. I feel this is an achievable target. None of the major poker sites are going to want to do this. We have to force them to. We have to organize ourselves and wage an everlasting campaign until we get what we want. I expect it to be a long fight, but I also expect the movement to grow as more people join in. It's time to start getting the word out across the internet, facebook, twitter, and every source of social media we've got. The fight is on. With the numbers you are proposing, I feel like you live in the la-la land. Reduce the rake? Ok, let's discuss it; I am sure there are valid points to be made. Maximum rake per pot down to 10 cents? I think you should check out this place called the real world.

.

I actually don't think 10 cents per pot is unrealistic it all. You seriously think that isn't massively profitable compared to what it costs to deal one hand of poker on virtual felt? I'm 100% certain it costs less than 1 cent to deal a hand of online poker. The fact that people are willing to pay $3.00 doesn't make it right. This isn't about what the poker companies think is a fair price to charge. It's about what the consumer thinks. Do you really think it should cost the players more than 10 cents to be dealt a hand of poker? Would you be willing to pay 10 cents every time you updated the status on your Facebook page? Start putting the cost of the service were being provided into real terms. Then you'll see how ridiculous the charges are. Honestly for all the whining people do about cell phone companies being a huge ripoff in terms of their charges poker companies are 1000x worse and nobody says anything.

I do live in the real world. In the real world consumers have a significant voice in most industries. Poker players have been too lazy to find their voice so I'm working on starting a grassroots movement to reduce the rake. If you want to stick your head up your ass and settle for less than poker provided at a much fairer cost to the consumers then go ahead. My first target is to bring the rake at lower stakes proportionally into line with the rake at the nosebleed stakes. Why should the little guys pay 5% a pot when that's clearly not the case at the higher levels?

I think the initial numbers I just provided which cap the raked dollars at 20% of a buy-in for every level is a good first target. Eventually I'd like to see regulars have the option to opt-in to a program that allows 100% rakeback after a certain rake fee threshold is reached per month.

Right now the rake disproportionately affects the players at the lower levels. The first target is to bring that rake into realistic proportions. That way more lousy players can work their way up to the bigger games and help give players like yourself more money.

On October 15 2010 19:20 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job .

To be frank, I don't care at all about the casual players. They pay far less rake than the average grinders, and they are given much less back. A lot of people have worked hard to get SN/SNE and deserve to be rewarded for it. If the casual player wants to pay less rake, get serious and grind more/move up. If they can't beat the rake, that's a problem they have to face because there are a lot of people who have started with nothing and play 1/2+ playing under the same rake structure, with quite possibly a much worse rb program.

On October 15 2010 15:08 vltava wrote: Show nested quote + On October 14 2010 22:14 Carthac wrote: All I know is we domesticate ourselves, and look what happens. You know what they say, in the poker game of life, women are the rake They are the fucking rake.... What the fuck are you talking about? What- what saying?

Its a rounders quote, calm down

According to HEM I paid ~$69 an hr in rake this year. Which comes out to about ~38k or so ;o

and I'm not going busto so the rake structure can't be all that bad.

But really I'd be all for the strike. reducing the amount of rake i'm paying would be quite nice.

Now to actually mobilize enough players to do this would be another story...

On October 15 2010 20:23 Carthac wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 15:08 vltava wrote:   On October 14 2010 22:14 Carthac wrote: All I know is we domesticate ourselves, and look what happens. You know what they say, in the poker game of life, women are the rake They are the fucking rake.... What the fuck are you talking about? What- what saying? Its a rounders quote, calm down

Fail. The correct response is:

"I, I don't know. There oughta be one."

On October 15 2010 21:16 vltava wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 20:23 Carthac wrote:   On October 15 2010 15:08 vltava wrote:   On October 14 2010 22:14 Carthac wrote: All I know is we domesticate ourselves, and look what happens. You know what they say, in the poker game of life, women are the rake They are the fucking rake.... What the fuck are you talking about? What- what saying? Its a rounders quote, calm down Fail. The correct response is: "I, I don't know. There oughta be one."

Well I just got completely rolled

But you know what cheers me up when I'm feeling shitty?

rolled up aces over kings?

On October 15 2010 19:34 Bejamin1 wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 16:41 phexac wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 15:51 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 15 2010 13:37 YoMeR wrote: ^ true, but a very microscopic % of the player pool are getting that high of a %. the rest are just chumps giving Lee a good laugh while he scoots on towards the bank. (yes i still believe Lee exists somewhere within pokerstars. so sue me) I would definately participate in this kind of strike. But would be hard for me to do so for a long time. I got bills to pay. Yea but those people are the ones paying the most rake, and obviously the most deserving. Even still, almost any serious regular who gives stars a majority of their action will get supernova which is mid 40% rb. While Lee might still be lining his pockets, they are still giving back a shit ton of money to their biggest rake payers. I'd rather have a reward system that encourages casual players to want to reach higher vip levels so they get more bonuses than to effectively give it to them by cutting the rake. There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. On top of that those players are being raked more in terms of proportion than any other stakes played on Pokerstars. I'd like to know how many winners you think there would be at 1/2 and higher if the rake was 5% of every pot instead of being capped at $3.00. That's what micro players are up against. There is no reason for you to be on the other side of this issue. Even for players at 1/2 or higher the rake is far in excess of what it should be. The rake needs to be reduced significantly. The more we reduce the rake, the more people can be winners, and the softer the games at higher limits will be. That's a simple and obvious truth. Pokerstars treats its player base like lemmings. The VIP rewards programs are designed with that intent. It's the twinky on a stick in front of a treadmill design. If you play day and night or have nothing else to do except grind hands on Pokerstars for 40+ hours a week we'll reward you with a 65% Rakeback on 200k a year you pay in rake going for SNE. We'll profit 70k USD off all your hard work. We'll also laugh our asses off as we profit 100K+ over all the people who go for SNE but fall short. The rake is way too high. I've given it some thought and here is the first change I think we should be shooting for. The rake at HU/NL on Pokerstars is capped at 50 cents no matter what limit you play at. The lowest limit is NL50 - at that rate maximum rake per pot is achieved when 20% of a buy-in is put into the pot. So if all poker was raked in this fashion. NL2 2 cents NL5 5 cents NL10 10 cents NL25 25 cents NL50 50 cents NL100 1 dollar NL200 2 dollars NL400+ 3 dollars This would make the rake considerably fairer for lower limit players and result in more fish or slighter winners working their way up into the bigger games to donate to the big boys. This is not the be all end all goal of reducing rake. I honestly think a system that allows regulars to opt-in on a rake cap and pay a monthly fee to receive 100% rakeback is what eventually needs to happen. This can be done as a rake meter in the cashier page where once it's full for the month all further rake is returned to your account in one payment at the end of the month. This however I think is the starting point. Reduce the unfair impact of rake on the microstakes and even early middle stakes. These players are paying way too much proportionally compared to people who are playing higher. It is unfair taxation of the lower stakes and results in a reduced quality of the games at higher levels because few weak players will ever ascend there. In terms of my personal view I hope that one day if we don't see a monthly rake cap we at least see the maximum rake per pot reduced to something like ten cents. I feel this is an achievable target. None of the major poker sites are going to want to do this. We have to force them to. We have to organize ourselves and wage an everlasting campaign until we get what we want. I expect it to be a long fight, but I also expect the movement to grow as more people join in. It's time to start getting the word out across the internet, facebook, twitter, and every source of social media we've got. The fight is on. With the numbers you are proposing, I feel like you live in the la-la land. Reduce the rake? Ok, let's discuss it; I am sure there are valid points to be made. Maximum rake per pot down to 10 cents? I think you should check out this place called the real world. . I actually don't think 10 cents per pot is unrealistic it all. You seriously think that isn't massively profitable compared to what it costs to deal one hand of poker on virtual felt? I'm 100% certain it costs less than 1 cent to deal a hand of online poker. The fact that people are willing to pay $3.00 doesn't make it right. This isn't about what the poker companies think is a fair price to charge. It's about what the consumer thinks. Do you really think it should cost the players more than 10 cents to be dealt a hand of poker? Would you be willing to pay 10 cents every time you updated the status on your Facebook page? Start putting the cost of the service were being provided into real terms. Then you'll see how ridiculous the charges are. Honestly for all the whining people do about cell phone companies being a huge ripoff in terms of their charges poker companies are 1000x worse and nobody says anything. I do live in the real world. In the real world consumers have a significant voice in most industries. Poker players have been too lazy to find their voice so I'm working on starting a grassroots movement to reduce the rake. If you want to stick your head up your ass and settle for less than poker provided at a much fairer cost to the consumers then go ahead. My first target is to bring the rake at lower stakes proportionally into line with the rake at the nosebleed stakes. Why should the little guys pay 5% a pot when that's clearly not the case at the higher levels? I think the initial numbers I just provided which cap the raked dollars at 20% of a buy-in for every level is a good first target. Eventually I'd like to see regulars have the option to opt-in to a program that allows 100% rakeback after a certain rake fee threshold is reached per month. Right now the rake disproportionately affects the players at the lower levels. The first target is to bring that rake into realistic proportions. That way more lousy players can work their way up to the bigger games and help give players like yourself more money.

It kind of makes sense that the rake is disproportionate based on stakes. They're providing the same service, but to different levels. They have their base rake and then cap it off at higher levels. From the technical side of things it doesn't cost them any extra, but it's better than them charging 5% pot for every level unanimously. Anyway, I still think it's pretty unrealistic that you'll get very far. It's pretty similar to the fees for trading but that doesn't get capped off at high volume. Brokerages make a lot of money. If your style includes making a lot of trades your rake at the end of each month can easily be way more than your profits.

On October 16 2010 01:04 byrnesam wrote: rolled up aces over kings?

Yeah, and check raising stupid tourists, taking huge pots off them

stacks and towers of checks that i cant even see over

playing all night high limit holdem at the Taj

Where the sand turns to gold...

in the game of life....

lets play some cards

The poker room at the Mirage in Vegas...

ur hopes dashed, ur dreams down the toilet

On October 15 2010 20:15 Bigbobm wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 19:20 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job . To be frank, I don't care at all about the casual players. They pay far less rake than the average grinders, and they are given much less back. A lot of people have worked hard to get SN/SNE and deserve to be rewarded for it. If the casual player wants to pay less rake, get serious and grind more/move up. If they can't beat the rake, that's a problem they have to face because there are a lot of people who have started with nothing and play 1/2+ playing under the same rake structure, with quite possibly a much worse rb program.

just bcuz theres ppl who are able to beat the games and move up under the current rake structure doesnt mean that we arent getting overcharged.

i think ppl are getting too hung up on the $50 number that the OP just randomly threw out and are missing his point.

On October 16 2010 18:30 joLin wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 20:15 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 15 2010 19:20 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job . To be frank, I don't care at all about the casual players. They pay far less rake than the average grinders, and they are given much less back. A lot of people have worked hard to get SN/SNE and deserve to be rewarded for it. If the casual player wants to pay less rake, get serious and grind more/move up. If they can't beat the rake, that's a problem they have to face because there are a lot of people who have started with nothing and play 1/2+ playing under the same rake structure, with quite possibly a much worse rb program. just bcuz theres ppl who are able to beat the games and move up under the current rake structure doesnt mean that we arent getting overcharged. i think ppl are getting too hung up on the $50 number that the OP just randomly threw out and are missing his point.

exactly, bob your post is kind of "???".. you don't want to improve your profitability with no actual change to the games.. because it will make it easier for people to have a winrate...and you had to earn your current winrate already and.. i don't understand what your angle here is. You don't want games to be more profitable for everyone (including yourself)?


Anyway, I don't know enough about poker companies to know what their financials look like. I heard party poker is a public company.. you could take a look in there and see if they have ridiculous profit margins or whatever and exactly how much room we the consumers have to pressure down their rake.

nah, partygaming is probably a bad example. They have other things as well like their casino, backgammon, and bingo. Plus their balance sheet for 2009 was not good.

How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale.

And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

Seriously dude are you a Pokerstars employee?

Pokerstars offers a very simple service. They are charging a disgustingly high amount of money for delivering that service. I don't feel like 9pt/bb in rake is a fair amount. I feel it makes the games unfairly difficult even for a player who has a decent edge.

If you disagree that's fine but personally that makes me think you're kind of an idiot. I'm glad you think Pokerstars should charge the equivalent of mortage payments for access to a game over the internet.

I'm not willing to just bend over and take it anymore. It's stupid. We shouldn't have to pay this much.

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

yes it is completely relative, but just bcuz stars does better than the industry average doesnt mean that the industry as a whole isnt overcharging. look at the amount youve paid in rake. its a ridiculous amount to comprehend paying for any sort of service/game.

yes, by reducing rake, the poker sites would be reducing their income and of course its in their best interest as a business to make as much as possible. but as consumers we dont just have to sit here and accept whatever theyre charging. you say it as if theres only 2 extremes, benjamins $50/month idea or the amount that theyre currently charging. theres better mediums that would still allow the poker sites to profit a huge amount of money while being more fair to the players. you cant really think its impossible for them to reduce rake without going out of business?

Yeah I don't understand why he thinks this has anything to do with what the websites hosting poker want. I don't give a fuck what they want. This is about what the consumers want. The consumers want lower rake and games that are more fair especially when it comes to levels at NL200 and below.

Look at the amount of rake being charged on Pokerstars and how disproportionate it is.

NL1k - Cap is $3.00 = 0.3% of a buy-in
NL25 - Cap is $3.00 = 12% of a buy-in

Yeah that's not a huge disparity in fairness at all. I think the main target for players should be to bring the percentages into line. Lower stakes should pay a comparable cap of 0.3% which at NL25 by the way would be a maximum 7.5 cents per pot. I'm not saying it has to be THAT low but it should be much fucking lower than it currently is. The microstakes get the shaft and as a result few weaker players get up into the higher games to donate money. If you want more money support helping some of the minor league players make it up to the higher levels by reducing their rake. Simple as that.

I don't think you're looking at it realistically. You say it's what the consumers want, but that's not completely true. Businesses only try to fulfill their customers desires in order to somehow improve their bottom line. Even if it makes all their customers unhappy, if it will increase profits they'll do it. If you want a site like Pokerstars to take a 50 million dollar revenue cut you better have 50 million dollars or more of leverage. It's not like we have alternative sites to go to that fulfill the requirements you're demanding and we're certainly not going to quit poker for any extended period of time. Stars has over 200k players during peak hours. How many players do you think you could get to agree and comply to fish-only day strikes and how much damage is it going to inflict? Some of those people are going to have goals and will just make up the hours that they lost striking in the next week. I feel like rake is too high as well, but I think you need to set some more realistic (at least short term) goals and think about things from the poker rooms' perspectives.

how many supernova elites are there who will never participate in a strike? like 200? how many breakeven, disgruntled, bitter regs (and even winning ones obv) are hating their winrates atm? if players come together and just not play a single weekend for a ridiculously long term ev thing such as much lower rake or probably pokerstars at least meeting it halfway, there's just so much this can accmoplish. i wouldnt recommend a "sit out" type of boycott for risk that funds might be confiscated lol, just not playing a single day will do.

The way to reduce rake is to increase competition. They are not going to do it just because you ask them to.

I could almost guarantee you that no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to organize a mass boycott that has any direct effect on stars or ftp. You're better off spending your time and possible lost profits sitting out, investing in your own poker room that runs as a non profit to create some competition. But even that's a bit of an impossibility in itself.

Also, the sites don't really want the weaker players moving up. Weaker players moving up lose their money faster to better players and pay less rake in the long run.

On October 17 2010 11:06 Bigbobm wrote: You're better off spending your time and possible lost profits sitting out, investing in your own poker room that runs as a non profit to create some competition. But even that's a bit of an impossibility in itself.

Why is this an impossibility? Most of the mobile phones and most of the web is run off Linux. Google, Amazon, Sun, Ebay... all run on non profit software written by individuals. Another example is Firefox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages
It's entirely possible, and probably preferable to the environment now where people have no control in the running of the networks and are extorted.
See this thread, http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-forum/926937/P2P_Poker_brainstorm_session.html

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook?

that tactic gets old bigbrother
just sayin --> maybe one day?

On October 17 2010 12:28 tloapc wrote: Show nested quote + On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait. I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook? that tactic gets old bigbrother just sayin --> maybe one day?

Yeah people are starting to get a little mean over things other than just the ideas now. We have the idealist (Bejamin1) and the realist (Bigbobm).
We all want lesser rake and I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to come up with approaches towards achieving that and maybe even being optimistic about it but we need to look at what's actually possible and the best routes to take.

+ Show Spoiler +

When I say we can organize and make a difference I'm not kidding around. I'm also not an idealist. There is absolutely no reason fiscally why a much cheaper access to poker cannot be established and become successful. Not once have I suggested the poker site organizers would be on side with my ideas. I know it's the last thing they'd want. What I am saying is that we as consumers have a lot more power than we've been using.

A list of some things we can do as poker activists against ridiculously high rake:

1. E-mail support a copy pasted message 10 times a day that demands lower rake and informs them that this e-mail is being sent in protest. It doesn't even have to be done from your Pokerstars e-mail. Imagine thousands and thousands of e-mails flooding the various support e-mails Pokerstars has. You can send it 100 times a day if you want when you're doing it from a random e-mail not associated with your Pokerstars account.

2. Keep a sticky post at the top of every major poker forum that demands lower rake and asks people to join the cause by signing up at one of those petition websites.

3. Create a petition to be signed by as many people as we can get that say they want rake reduced significantly.

4. Have people e-mail the PPA, Cardplayer Magazine, and all the other major sources with the same copy pasted e-mail demanding reduced rake once a day.

5. Whenever your not grinding - sit out on 24 tables. Its not like any of us session 24 hours a day. If you're just watching a movie or the game or something then do it up. This will be especially effective if we pick a specific game like "6-Max NL100" and everyone for that week targets their sit out strike only to that game. That way the regulars and the fish get angry that their constantly playing 3-4 handed and it makes it miserable because they have to constantly re-seed to find tables without people sitting out.

6. Produce negative media campaigning on Facebook, twitter, blogs, magazine articles, and everywhere you can think of against how much is being raked. Get the word out and get everyone talking about it.

On October 17 2010 14:42 jchysk wrote: Show nested quote + On October 17 2010 12:28 tloapc wrote:   On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait. I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook? that tactic gets old bigbrother just sayin --> maybe one day? Yeah people are starting to get a little mean over things other than just the ideas now. We have the idealist (Bejamin1) and the realist (Bigbobm). We all want lesser rake and I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to come up with approaches towards achieving that and maybe even being optimistic about it but we need to look at what's actually possible and the best routes to take.

Nothing Bejamin said was unrealistic and cannot be achieved.

It's funny, after having just bought scII for $50 and playing it for a few months I have realized even more just how much Bejamin is correct about this. I have the ability to enjoy a very entertaining game, play whenever i want, play with my friends and enjoy a competitive environment. Blizzard has been working hard in terms of supporting their customers by fixing bugs, helping on technical forums, introducing new patches and trying to make the game the best game for people to buy. Even looking at a game like WoW which charges a small amount of money monthly, we see people enjoying many similar luxuries and supporting blizzard.

Then we look at poker, where in one solid day of grinding(by someone like me), a poker site is able to take enough money to buy sc2 three times. All for what? An online video game that offers essentially the same or worse services than these blizzard games/other similar games? Stars/FTP do have good support systems, but some sites have abysmal ones and have terrible software(cake poker software for example). Regardless if they were on par or even better than a company like blizzard, no video game service(call it whatever you want) should be charging its customers enough to make $4million in one single day. I understand they are difficult to program/maintain/keep safe, but who are they kidding? It probably costs them less than what they make in one week to pay reasonable salaries/maintain the site for an entire year. I'm no expert with regard to finances and costs to maintain these services, but even if the numbers are wrong the point should be pretty clear here.

In light of that, I agree with Bejamin about essentially everything he wrote. If anyone thinks parts of the arguments are flawed that's fine because the overall point is crystal clear. We are getting robbed, plain and simple. So lets do something about it and stop making excuses. Nobody but pokerstars/other poker sites care if they're in it as a business, it doesn't give them the right to charge me ~$50,000 in rake since i began playing this game(probably insane amounts for some other people). The consumers have the ability to change the market they are immersed in and if enough people act on it it will inevitably happen.

Please people who disagree - Stop making ridiculous excuses and open your eyes to what is happening. The daily status in poker quo that everyone just abides by and lets happen to them is similar to that of the frog of boiling water analogy where if you put a frog in water with a normal temperature and then slowly heat it up the frog will not jump out and will eventually die. Its just like poker, day after day you pay rake and while paying this "small" amount of rake you dont notice its accumulating effect on your roll. Eventually as time goes on you realize that you have been raked thousands and thousands of dollars and just how crippling it is to your bottom line.

We my friends are in this boiling water and its time to get out.

I'm going to bump this back to the top of the heap. I will do this continually because I think it's a very important issue that we all need to take seriously. I would ask now that people read my most recent post in this thread and give me some feedback on what they think of the 6 things I suggested we can do to start protesting the amount of rake we pay. We have more power to fight against unfair rake than some on here would suggest.

ok I will attempt to take a first stab at playing devil's advocate if u like?

all breakeven players and below should be happy as can be there is such a large % of rake being paid since they are not winning the pots/sessions they should be yet they are in the end still getting a % of money back based off the volume of hands they play with other players (which in itself can amount to a decent+ sum of money)

so if the percentage of rake taken was lowered it would severely hurt the breakeven and below player pool which is most of the people that play on the sites

this means the perspective behind any major poker site that is confronted with this 'strike' will envision that if they adhere to this, not only will their business take a huge cut on the amount of money they make, but their player pool and volume of dealt hands per hour could be greatly lessened - hurting them two-fold - which in conclusion for those current powers that be, this is not a profitable longterm move at all

instead it would certainly be more profitable for them to 'risk it'/stonewall/ignore this and continue providing their current service & marketing that is fluid in attracting a new player pool knowing full well there will be plenty of people not knowing what is going on that will still continue to want play there on their site

On October 18 2010 15:15 tloapc wrote: so if the percentage of rake taken was lowered it would severely hurt the breakeven and below player pool which is most of the people that play on the sites

either u r trolling or failling at math

u also can't forget the option that u didn't make the connection it would hurt those who survive on rakeback and not actual winnings