Poker site with monthly fee - Page 3

On June 15 2008 04:47 DaEm0niCuS wrote: There needs to be a poker site that has the option to just pay a monthly fee of 200$ or something, rake is fucking ridiculous. And it would be an option, so new fish singing up would just pay rake normally unless they choose otherwise. We need to make our own site.

Ironically I've already made posts about this before. I suggested a monthly rake cap of $1000-2000 for those who have Supernova status. So that only a few regulars get it but it is a huge benefit once you get there and after that 2k you get 100% rakeback and FPP generation is set to zero for the time period of the month. I think it would motivate a lot more regulars to play more but the problem is unless a huge massive group of players band together and spam Pokerstars support begging for this change it will never happen. We have to lobby for our own cause and thus far I've found that most poker players are just too fucking lazy to do that.

On June 15 2008 08:12 Fayth wrote: who cares, just get rakeback, or be a winning player =/

This attitude is the biggest fucking problem. Seriously you make a lot of money and you're great at poker, but I guarantee you would have more people who are inferior to your ability level making it up to your stakes so that you could take their money if this kind of a system was in place. Every regular poker player should be fully on side with getting 100% rakeback after a rake cap of 1-2k per month for those with Supernova status or the appropriate similar status on other sites.

The problem is the regular poker player community on the whole seems to be quite lazy in terms of making an effort to lobby on their own behalf. Making a website would be a start. Making daily e-mails to stars support from EVERY regular who has Gold Star and higher status asking for this to become a reality would be an even better start. They aren't likely to do it but with enough pressure and enough people who knows maybe they will? As long as the rake cap is reasonably high they still make a lot of money, maybe even more money because people will put in more hands.

The system I suggest would not use a monthly fee. It would use a rake cap. All the fish would still play. Only supernovas would get 100% rakeback after they reach the cap for each month. It's simple and it's completely worth fighting for. Regulars would play more hands. All of us would make more money. The argument that the system right now is decent and provides us a nice service isn't an argument at all. If you don't fight for a better system and lower rake it will never happen. That's why poker players need to stop being so lazy and actually consider lobbying for better. I can't imagine it costs more than $5-10 per month per player to make Pokerstars software, servers, and support function. After 1-2k per month I think players should get 100% rakeback if they have supernova or the equivalent status on other sites. Why the hell not? Businesses respond when their customer base puts pressure on them. If every Goldstar+ player e-mailed stars support once a day demanding this change happen I bet you it just might. They'd do that rather than have their support filters jammed 24-7 lowering the quality of the service they offer. Players ought to stand up for themselves and demand better. The customer is supposed to be the one with the power not the company. They SERVE us. Remember that.

On May 30 2009 13:44 ComeChinaMFer wrote: made 44k this year and paid 4400 in rake...cant complain at all <3 headsup

is that some kind of brag, if so, it's a total fail

while we are at it, why dont we get every company to try to lower there profits. get real kid, this is the real world

Ignorance must be bliss eh? How do you think oil companies get what they want? Lobbying and using their money and influence to peddle things in the right direction. Poker players have some influence too. We are the poker companies source of money. It's time to try using it for a change to ask for a fairly reasonable rake cap system for those with Supernova/equivalent status.

Sure it might not work soon or ever, but there is value in resistance and standing up for what you would like to see happen. Lets all sit on our hands and do nothing because it won't do any good is a pretty defeatist and to be honest retarded attitude to have.

lol what am i ignorant about man? when i started playing nl10 on full tilt, in my first 6 months i was raked 1000 dollars. do you think i liked that man? No but i realized full tilt is a buisness and they want to make monies.

You're ignorant because you clearly don't have the knowledge that there is value in actually doing something to resist against those things which you don't like. I think it's a completely fair and acceptable request to have a rake cap of 1-2k per month for those with Supernova or equivalent status. I think it's a request worth fighting for because of it's own merit. The fact that stars is a business and will most likely reject the request over and over again is fine. Keep putting more pressure on. There is value in struggling for change. Maybe one day with enough people pressuring for a change Stars decides that it's in it's best interest to meet the demands of its client base. Stars gives us a rake cap. Stars even potentially makes more money because all those who were just goldstar on a regular basis see much more motivation to get to supernova and play more. Never say never.

On June 15 2008 16:06 Subaru wrote: Have some of you thought what it costs exactly to run a poker business? Here are some examples on top of my head. Security Staff, from A computer programmer, all the way to a representative. This also includes network manager, money management and etc. Fees, don't think because you don't get a fee, doesn't mean they don't get a fee. Here is something that I emailed awhile back about changing rake. Running the Poker Room, think of the bandwidth required There are just so many things that add up. Yes they are a business, they are going to make a good profit, but people way over estimate how much they make. Hello Robert, I appreciate what you're saying; when you play poker, you not only have to beat your opponents, but you have to beat the rake. The same thing is true no matter where you play poker, online or in any casino. I assure you that if you compare our fees/rake with other poker sites (taking into account FPPs), you will find that our rake is the lowest of any site. And it's *way* lower than what you pay in a live casino (and no dealer tips!). I hope you can appreciate that we *are* running a business here. It may seem that we have a lower overhead than a live casino, but that's not necessarily true. There are many hundreds of employees working to keep our site running smoothly (including answering your emails). There are large teams of expert (and extensive) programmers, there are marketing people, security people, fraud prevention people, collusion experts. They pay me for doing my job, too. We also do many things that you never see, like pay large fees on every deposit and withdrawal to and from the site. Just like you need to overcome the rake, we need to overcome a fee in the 4%-15% range that is assessed on every transaction to/from the site. There are also a *huge* number of servers that are needed to keep as many as 20,000 tables running at once. And a *lot* of bandwidth, stretching out in many, many directions. It's a huge, immensely complex operation. Please understand we're not crying poverty here. We're doing fine. But we're providing a service, and that does have a cost. Yes, it's harder to beat the rake in micro-limits than it is in higher limit games. That's a phenomenon throughout poker; since the rake is capped at $3.00 in most games, at a certain pot size, no more rake is taken. But that phenomenon is even more pronounced in live casinos, which mostly take 10% of the pot, whereas we take 5%. On a percentage basis, it's much easier to beat a 5% rake. And we cap the rake at $3.00 or less, whereas live casinos rake as much as $4.00 or $5.00 per hand in the US. (Foxwoods, near you, raked 10% to $4.00 the last time I was there.) And it's a LOT higher elsewhere; I visited a casino in England recently that raked 10% up to GBP 8.00 -- that's $16.00 US. Online poker is a genuine bargain compared to live casinos. I hope I've been able to clarify some things for you, and ease your concerns somewhat. I wish you continued success. Regards, Scott PokerStars Support Team

lol we make millions if not billions per year, but I have to write something credible.

I fully agree with bejamin1 on this one.

Not too long ago telecommunication companies were forced to acknowledge and justify how access to information charges (text messages, cellphone web browsing, etc.) can cost so much when your transceiving so little information compared to other communications systems. They couldnt, and as a result, consumer charges were cut and decreased.

Online poker should fall under the same category. Do you really think it's necessary that rake can be as high as 3$ in a pot of virtual cards? All your really doing is 'handshaking' with the PS server; simply transmitting and receiving a simple series of bytes. I don't think that's really justifiable at all.

edit: below, genjix pretty much summed it up in a deeper sense.

I'll chip in here and add a comment about the technology having experiene in similar industries.

My previous line of work involved developing video games as a gameplay programmer. PokerStars software is not a particularly complicated piece of software to write. The amount of updates poker softwares get is simply abysmal. Compare with any online game where units are tuned and new maps added very regularly.

Also online video games are somewhat bandwidth intensive as you have a huge amount of data streamed to synchronise the game world. There is hundreds of optimisations and equations used just to save a couple of packets. Think about seeing just one character move around a map where its movement needs to be in sync. Now think about that your character needs to be updated with the server. Now think that both of these characters needs to be updated with a third character and the amount of server update location requests is enormous.

Online poker is a piece of piss. Send two holecards to everyone on the table. It doesn't even need any optimisations to increase speed really. There can be multiple tables split over multiple servers UNLIKE a video game where it ruins a seamless world since you need concurrency between servers.

The staff costs are a joke. On NL25 it says I've been raked $6952 in 54317 hands of which half were raked according to PT3. That's ~30c per raked hand. I play 347 hands per hour so I'm paying $44 rake per hour or $7.4 per table. Nine players paying $67 in rake per hour? You think there is a member of staff hovering every hour over a table? Bullshit.

Real casinos of course have to pay for property, dealers... staff to player ratio is probably much higher. I don't know the logistics here but obviously it's not cheap.

Poker sites get far too much money for providing minimal service. Look at video game industry where it is so hugely competitive that largely successful companies that release one bad title can kill themselves. Online poker is just a huge cash cow.

- Online poker software is not difficult or costly to produce.
- Poker rooms are not expensive to run.
- Poker is nowhere near bandwidth intensive. More akin to repeatedly checking email.
- Rake paid is huge in relation to maintenance costs.
- Poker site industry is largely uncompetitive and there's little drive/motivation to develop better software/features.

obviously we all want to pay less rake, and obviously the poker sites make bank. But i cant really see anything to do. i would always think about trying to send an email to full tilt threatening to switch to poker stars if they didnt give me a higher percentage rake back. but i was always too lazy/ thought theyd tell me to fuck off in other words. plz come up with solution, dont need to convince us that paying less rake would be a good thing lol

well, my humble opinion:

yes I think Stars is making a ridiculous amount of money.
Is this wrong? No, that's what companies target in a capitalism world.
It's only wrong if Stars has a dominant monopoly position. Does Stars have this? No

For the people who are complaining about this, play for others sites with good rakeback, you're not obliged to play on Stars.

It's like complaining in a Burberry shop that the clothing is too expensive and telling them that Burberry is making too much profit on its clothing and then still buying a burberry shirt.

one of the worst ideas i've heard

Benjamin1 isn't saying that it's "wrong" that Stars makes a boatload off of its players.

What he is (correctly) saying, is that the users have a certain amount of leverage over the company if they chose to band together and express their displeasure over the current situation. It's exactly how labor unions work...

Wait, so why should supernovas get 100% rakeback after a certain cap? They also pay the lowest percent of rake since it is capped for them, and they get the largest rewards. If you look at rakeback already from the VIP system you will see supernovas get a MUCH larger percent since they get 4 FPP for every 1 FPP a bronze star gets. How about you lobby for no rake on games under $100 buy in instead.

I mean really, are you asking the entire poker community to come together to lobby for the elite?

On May 30 2009 22:20 Uptown wrote: Benjamin1 isn't saying that it's "wrong" that Stars makes a boatload off of its players. What he is (correctly) saying, is that the users have a certain amount of leverage over the company if they chose to band together and express their displeasure over the current situation. It's exactly how labor unions work...

we are customers, no employees so you cannot compare it with a labor union. Moreover, we don't have leverage because poker players have no possibility and no chance to unite.

Problem is that there is essentially a monopoly, a group of small trusted sites which already have most the fish. While a site with a rake cap could be commercially viable because it would be the best of both worlds and if everyone knew about it and trusted it then it'd get all the customers that's simply not how it is. Only the regs would hear of its existence because fish play on whatever server television tells them to play on so it'd just be a nitfest. And the sites which already have all the customers have no incentive to adapt because there isn't a rival in the market undercutting them.

Standard monopoly. Established companies exploiting the customers to charge unfair fees because access to the market for companies wishing to undercut them is very limited.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't complain, as has already been mentioned, all the big mobile phone companies used to charge insane roaming costs until consumers started pointing out what bs it is. It does mean there's not much we can do though.

thanks to stars im pretty rich for a student. Quit whining, get better move up, problem solved

On May 30 2009 22:29 blackjacki2 wrote: Wait, so why should supernovas get 100% rakeback after a certain cap? They also pay the lowest percent of rake since it is capped for them, and they get the largest rewards. If you look at rakeback already from the VIP system you will see supernovas get a MUCH larger percent since they get 4 FPP for every 1 FPP a bronze star gets. How about you lobby for no rake on games under $100 buy in instead. I mean really, are you asking the entire poker community to come together to lobby for the elite?

Because they also play the most hands on average and contribute the most rake, is that not obvious? How do you think they get to supernova?