The Rake :( - Page 8

what happened with that rakeless site?

word poker exchange or something like that

LOL at tloapc. People like him certainly demoralize the point of this thread.
Nice post TenBagger. Basically what I've been trying to say this entire time except 3x more eloquently.

On October 18 2010 22:07 Baal wrote: what happened with that rakeless site? word poker exchange or something like that

this.

exactly what i was talking about how people exaggerate how much it costs to run a site. this site when on for over a year, just to LURE potential sports betting people FROM the poker tables and not vice versa. i actually looked at it but since there were no players when games were so good back then, the site finally decided it was no longer viable to keep it and closed it down. it wasnt such a loss back then when games everywhere were actually golden. but now it seems that was really a huge blow to us
people talk about pokerstars excellent email support? how is it that they dont have a simple live chat feature that almost every other site has, u dont wait for emails anymore, they tried live chat support before and i actually used it, but they decided when they would contact u.

no one is arguing that pokerstars isn't making tons of money and that it costs anything close to what they charge to run the site. no one is arguing that the cost of printing a windows cd costs microsoft anything close to what they charge. point is that despite what they charge, they are still the most attractive option out there and until a better option comes along and poses a legitimate competitive threat, they will not voluntarily accept less just because we ask them to.

for the last time - my aim was not to demoralize but to help show some of the BS that would be faced - that was why I offered to play devil's advocate
funny I didn't think I did a good enough job but it seems I do TOO well

p.s.

A federal regulatory structure with an absolute funnel of taxation going to the fed gov is not going to help create any real competition in the long term. We will see an influx and then a plateau. After that influx there will be little-to-no chance to get a rake % change

btw I'm for max $1 rake across the board for hands that see a flop

no discrepancy between limits except maybe no rake taken at all for .01/.02

tell me there won't be enough money for them to make..

On October 18 2010 22:07 Baal wrote: what happened with that rakeless site? word poker exchange or something like that

from what i remember, it was just a marketing ploy to get more deposits to their site assuming people are gonna sooner or later dump their money into sports betting. they prob realized this wasn't working as planned because their software was dogshit, and the cost of operating the poker site outweighed what they made from the poker related deposits thru betting.

On October 18 2010 15:33 tloapc wrote: 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

They wouldn't need to survive on rakeback if the rake was less. They'd be winning more because they'd be paying less rake. You only get a % of rake back so no rake paid is always better than paying rake and getting a percentage back.

@TenBagger

You make excellent points but you're forgetting something. Pokerstars and FTP are much smaller businesses than a credit card company. Yes they have established the same sort of brand loyalty so it is somewhat comparable. However the point is even a small number of people could have a massive ongoing affect on their ability to adequately provide the service.

I notice you made zero comments about my options for people who want to get involved. How effective do you think Pokerstars support is going to be if they're getting massively spammed? How do you think players are going to respond if individual stakes are systematically targeted with sitting out strikes. Lets not ignore the fact that Pokerstars.fr has already had player strikes that resulted in some success.

Calling people naive and saying you'll never get anything done. Well great that sure helps a whole lot of nobody. In fact what it does is discourage people from getting involved in a grassroots movement against the rake. Involvement that for the most part wouldn't even take a lot of time to be a part of.

Some Examples:
1. Civil Rights Movement
2. Women - Equality of pay & Right to vote
3. Unions forming during the industrial revolution

In none of those circumstances did the people in power want the change to happen. Sorry TenBagger but the players out number the shit out of the people running these companies. There is absolutely no reason why we can't come up with effective ways to challenge the state of things. I listed a bunch of things poker activists can do. I'm going to keep organizing this as a grassroots movement and I'm going to help anyone who wants to fight back.

I'm not asking people to sit out 24 hours a day. In terms of sitting out strikes maybe one day a month as many people as would like to be involved could hold a massive sitting out strike on that day to send a message. Every other day of the month I'll just put up a blog naming a specific stake to be targeted with sitting out that day. Anyone who is done their session for the day or just doesn't have anything else to do at the computer can get involved on the day. There are so many easy things we can do to start being a thorn in the side of Pokerstars until they listen. The more pressure tactics we can come up with the more they will be forced to listen. Customers have a voice so stop trying to tell everyone they don't and can't do anything. You're not helping you're just wasting peoples time. I don't want to hear excuses in this thread. I want to hear solutions and ideas. I want to hear organizing and plans to fight against the rake. I want to hear from people who want to get involved. Maybe when it gets big enough you'll hop on the bandwagon.

On October 19 2010 00:03 TenBagger wrote: no one is arguing that pokerstars isn't making tons of money and that it costs anything close to what they charge to run the site. no one is arguing that the cost of printing a windows cd costs microsoft anything close to what they charge. point is that despite what they charge, they are still the most attractive option out there and until a better option comes along and poses a legitimate competitive threat, they will not voluntarily accept less just because we ask them to.

Nobody is arguing that point. This is about organizing the consumers to not only ask for the change but to start applying pressure tactics to make things happen. I listed about 6 things a few pages back that we can do off the top of my head. You're an intelligent poster so take a look at those and tell me what you think. Feedback and criticism is fine but lets keep it to figuring out solutions and organizational issues rather than just blindly accusing people of being naive. That doesn't help anyone.

From Pokerstars point of view I think if they start getting mass spammed they set some email filters. If people start mass sitting out on their tables they add some penalties for doing it. Problem solved.

Bejamin,

Pokerstars is a business and a business is there to make as much money as possible. Reducing the rake in the manner that you have suggested would cost them a significant portion of their profit and the only way they would consider that is if their core business were affected in some way.

Merely being a thorn in their side will accomplish nothing. The examples you gave of civil rights and suffrage was accomplished through massive movements and not merely by just being a thorn in one's side. The establishment (whites and males) fiercely protected their economic advantage and only gave it up after a huge struggle. In the same way. corporations do not voluntarily give up massive amounts of profits just because someone is being annoying and flooding their inbox. As I previously mentioned, you have to be able to organize enough of a movement where it will seriously impact their bottom line. Sitting out on tables 1 day a month, even if you can somehow convince ALL the regs to sit out for the entire day, that amounts to maybe 1 or 2% of their profit since the fish will still be playing. How logical is it for a corporation to reduce their prices and consequently their profits by 50% due to a threat of a 1 or 2% reduction which likely won't happen anyway?

You have compared this movement to the civil rights, women's suffrage movements. There is a huge difference in that those movements were able to gain a critical mass because the majority of the populations were in intolerable situations. When you push a person's back to the wall, they will fight back.

The analogies that you made:

- Black man in the 1950's, entire race is oppressed, most live in poverty, deprived of educational and professional opportunities and has to sit at the back of the bus. Current situation in intolerable and even if means he gets slammed by water hoses and bit by dogs, it is +EV for him to try and make a change.

- Women at the turn of the century, no professional opportunities and very few rights. Completely at the mercy of their husbands/fathers and no hope of change since they don't have the right to vote. Again, +EV for them to organize and try to make a change.

- Unions at the industrial revolution. Workers bust their ass for 12 hour days, 7 days a week and can barely feed their family. Poor work conditions that are often dangerous lead to very short life expectancies. The EV difference between them being beggars on the street and employed at the factory is quite minimal so it is +EV for them to risk their jobs and attempt to improve their conditions

The analogies I made:

- I pay $2K a month to Visa/MC in interchange fees. It is basically a $1K a month tax since if prices were even somewhat reasonable, I would only pay $1K a month. However, I still make a good living and the bottom line is that I make more by paying $2K a month to Visa/MC and gaining the credit card paying customers than if I didn't use them at all. While I would love for fees to be lowered and I believe Visa/MC are extortionists, it is still +EV for me to use them and so I tolerate it.

- Nolan, Exiliharate, Mipwnya, ChicagoJoey, etc. pay 21321452341613461 a month in rake. They also happen to make 6 figures a year clicking buttons. Any boycott on their part would be massively -EV and so they tolerate it.

An idealistic person might accuse me and the regs of being unprincipled and not fighting for what we believe in. At the end of the day, almost all decisions made by human beings are an economic one. Even the situations bejamin described regarding the civil rights movement and women's suffrage were at the core an economic decision made by a large group chasing what they perceived to be +EV.

While I agree with your points on business/profit tenbagger, I think one thing you overlook is the fact that regs have more market share than the average user. Quite a bit more, actually. Considering the fact that most of them multitable to various degrees it would mean that in terms of rake paid, they pay much more than the average fish and are thus more valuable to the sites. Hard statistics would be useful here, and I do not know of any graphs/tables illustrating the relationship between regs and overall rake paid by a player base. If the amount I am talking about here is significant enough, organized reg strikes may be able to achieve moderate rake reductions by making it more profitable for a site to end a strike and suffer a rake reduction than by permitting a strike to continue and keeping rakes at normal rate.

I haven't read most of this thread and I just recently started playing again for fun only. Been playing rush 5nl and at the moment over about 6k hands I'm paying around 11bb/100 in rake. Quite obscene really, on the upside long term if I just break even I'll have an ok win rate with my rakeback..........yeah what a great silver lining lol

Yeah i think a lot of people understand the major poker sites are huge companies and essentially act in their own interest, but at the same time its evident that a lot of their policies just make no sense. We shouldn't just assume that just because a company is making billions that they have teams of analysts optimizing every rule and feature of the site.


stars rake

Example:

On pokerstars, while they have HU tables, if its a full table that is down to two players, the rake is capped at $1 for fixed limit games. For no-limit, for the same relative bracket of stakes, its capped at $0.50. This means that a 5/10 limit player is paying twice as much rake as a 25/50 NL player when playing HU, and this is despite the fact that pots are getting raked way more often in limit since the pot is taken down a lot less preflop. This is not the case on Full Tilt, where the rake is capped at $0.50 no matter what HU.

Another inconsistency is that at limit poker 2/4 and 10/20 are in the same rake bracket. A 2/4 player can reraise preflop, bet the flop, get a call and take it down on the turn rake free, while if a 10/20 player takes down the pot from the big blind after one preflop raise and a cbet, he's paying 10% in rake.

On October 17 2010 02:21 Bejamin1 wrote: 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.

You're calling for a monthly service charge but at the same time saying its unfair that higher stakes players pay proportionally less in rake. In a B&M casino u can argue that high stakes players should pay more in rake (which they only barely do) due to an increased need in security, but online its not much of an issue. Online high stakes players are paying more (sometimes much more) for the same service.

On October 19 2010 12:23 Surprise wrote: While I agree with your points on business/profit tenbagger, I think one thing you overlook is the fact that regs have more market share than the average user. Quite a bit more, actually. Considering the fact that most of them multitable to various degrees it would mean that in terms of rake paid, they pay much more than the average fish and are thus more valuable to the sites. Hard statistics would be useful here, and I do not know of any graphs/tables illustrating the relationship between regs and overall rake paid by a player base. If the amount I am talking about here is significant enough, organized reg strikes may be able to achieve moderate rake reductions by making it more profitable for a site to end a strike and suffer a rake reduction than by permitting a strike to continue and keeping rakes at normal rate.

but regs are paying the rake with the fishes money

Regs aren't even customers really, the only real value they have to the sites is that their existence helps perpetuate the idea that a random new player can become a big winner, and the fact that regs keep a lot on the sites so that they can earn interest. Only real leverage they have is threatening to withdraw the money left in their accounts, or somehow deter fish from going to their site, both of which are obviously against their self-interest at least in the short term.

On October 19 2010 13:14 NMcNasty wrote: Show nested quote + On October 17 2010 02:21 Bejamin1 wrote: 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. You're calling for a monthly service charge but at the same time saying its unfair that higher stakes players pay proportionally less in rake. In a B&M casino u can argue that high stakes players should pay more in rake (which they only barely do) due to an increased need in security, but online its not much of an issue. Online high stakes players are paying more (sometimes much more) for the same service.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I think what the higher stakes pay is much more reasonable but should still probably be less than the $3.00 cap per pot. I think at NL25 and pretty much all stakes below 5/10 it should be reduced to be closer to the proportions experienced by higher limit players.

On October 19 2010 11:32 TenBagger wrote: Bejamin, Pokerstars is a business and a business is there to make as much money as possible. Reducing the rake in the manner that you have suggested would cost them a significant portion of their profit and the only way they would consider that is if their core business were affected in some way. Merely being a thorn in their side will accomplish nothing. The examples you gave of civil rights and suffrage was accomplished through massive movements and not merely by just being a thorn in one's side. The establishment (whites and males) fiercely protected their economic advantage and only gave it up after a huge struggle. In the same way. corporations do not voluntarily give up massive amounts of profits just because someone is being annoying and flooding their inbox. As I previously mentioned, you have to be able to organize enough of a movement where it will seriously impact their bottom line. Sitting out on tables 1 day a month, even if you can somehow convince ALL the regs to sit out for the entire day, that amounts to maybe 1 or 2% of their profit since the fish will still be playing. How logical is it for a corporation to reduce their prices and consequently their profits by 50% due to a threat of a 1 or 2% reduction which likely won't happen anyway? You have compared this movement to the civil rights, women's suffrage movements. There is a huge difference in that those movements were able to gain a critical mass because the majority of the populations were in intolerable situations. When you push a person's back to the wall, they will fight back. The analogies that you made: - Black man in the 1950's, entire race is oppressed, most live in poverty, deprived of educational and professional opportunities and has to sit at the back of the bus. Current situation in intolerable and even if means he gets slammed by water hoses and bit by dogs, it is +EV for him to try and make a change. - Women at the turn of the century, no professional opportunities and very few rights. Completely at the mercy of their husbands/fathers and no hope of change since they don't have the right to vote. Again, +EV for them to organize and try to make a change. - Unions at the industrial revolution. Workers bust their ass for 12 hour days, 7 days a week and can barely feed their family. Poor work conditions that are often dangerous lead to very short life expectancies. The EV difference between them being beggars on the street and employed at the factory is quite minimal so it is +EV for them to risk their jobs and attempt to improve their conditions The analogies I made: - I pay $2K a month to Visa/MC in interchange fees. It is basically a $1K a month tax since if prices were even somewhat reasonable, I would only pay $1K a month. However, I still make a good living and the bottom line is that I make more by paying $2K a month to Visa/MC and gaining the credit card paying customers than if I didn't use them at all. While I would love for fees to be lowered and I believe Visa/MC are extortionists, it is still +EV for me to use them and so I tolerate it. - Nolan, Exiliharate, Mipwnya, ChicagoJoey, etc. pay 21321452341613461 a month in rake. They also happen to make 6 figures a year clicking buttons. Any boycott on their part would be massively -EV and so they tolerate it. An idealistic person might accuse me and the regs of being unprincipled and not fighting for what we believe in. At the end of the day, almost all decisions made by human beings are an economic one. Even the situations bejamin described regarding the civil rights movement and women's suffrage were at the core an economic decision made by a large group chasing what they perceived to be +EV.

You do realize that A) We have the people power to progress with such a movement and B) all of those movements started as "just a thorn" in the side of whatever they were fighting against. It's always a small group of people who fought particularly hard that bring the other bandwagon people on board once things get moving.

During the civil rights battles they picked specific targets for sit in strikes etc. They didn't just say show up anywhere in America on this day and strike. They gathered people together to focus the power that they had. We can do the same within online poker. It's a lot easier to gather people together online than it is to get people to show up in person.

So we already know of one site called World Poker Exchange that shut down basically because nobody was interested in playing there despite functional rake free poker software and real money games and this existed years ago. I think a grassroots movement against work that puts real pressure on a major poker site can work. I think many of you are underestimating the impact of millions of e-mails to support flooding in daily demanding lower rake, the impact of negative advertising articles all over the internet, and the impact of people using the resources of the online community to fight back.

Now that being said.

I bet we could build a rake free poker site funded entirely by donations in its beginnings and eventually operated purely with advertising revenue. The poker community is big enough to organize and go forward with such a project. If there is someone we trust with appropriate knowledge at the head of these operations it can be achieved. If we build a stable and reliable alternative the people would flock to it in droves.

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

I personally think putting pressure on a major site to make changes can work. I think we also have a good number of bargaining chips to offer.

1. Players would accept any sort of advertising banners associated with the software as long as it didn't obstruct a players view of the play.
2. Players would accept paying fees on withdrawals and player-to-player transfers.

These are things we can offer to lower their cost of operations and in turn push for lower rake. Ask yourself if Pokerstars could cut the rake by 30%+ simply by using advertising to generate revenue how awesome would that be?