The Rake :( - Page 11

On October 25 2010 00:34 Jubert69 wrote: Do you guys realize how much it costs to run Pokerstars? Are they making a large profit? Probably. But here are things that hits Pokerstars's profits. Every time there is a deposit, there is a fee assessed. Every time there is a cashout, there is a fee assessed. They cover all those fees for everyone. Do you know how quickly Pokerstars responds to your emails? Sometimes minutes, usually within an hour. That's because they have a HUGE support system running 24/7. Do you feel safe Pokerstars handling your money? Most people answer yes, because your balance is an actual balance in a European bank. Do you know how big Pokerstars's security team is? Personally I don't, neither do most people, but they do large investigations, eg. Chinese DoN players, The Void in the WCOOP last year, etc. Do you know how much bandwidth/hosting is required to run PS? Yes sometimes it's slow as hell, but most of the time it runs with no issues, even then if you lost money, you can request a refund for losses, and usually they do give it to you. There are so many things in the background that we don't see. You can make a website, with little to no rake. But you won't be able to provide the security, support, volume, etc.. to Pokerstars unless you start increasing rake. As stated before, those who played on Prima websites like RedNines, much less rake. But have you tried cashing out/contact support on those places? Took days. Also, there's no way people could orchestrate the strike by no one playing. The reason FR got it because they have a small community. People who won't care about it, fish, they don't go to any poker forums like we do, they won't know whats going on. Regs who don't care as much about the rake, since it will be the regs orchestrating it, would be more profitable to play during those times. Yes rake sucks, but I don't think anytime will come remotely close to competing with Pokerstars rake wise(Other than the current sites out now like FTP.)

are they making a large profit? LOL

they are making a fucking absurd profit. I can hardly think of a more profitable enterprise

Jubert69 - Seriously. Do you work for Pokerstars? I'm seriously starting to wonder about all the people who oppose lower rake. They "probably make a good profit" ??? No They absolutely do. They're charging up to $3.00 for a single hand of fucking virtual poker.

I will happily switch to a lower rake system with --> Paid support only - Fee for every e-mail sent. Pay my own fees for cash-outs, deposits, and peer-to-peer transfers.

Not including advertising I 100% guarantee Pokerstars makes enough profit in the first month of the fiscal year to pay for all the years operating costs including 24-7 support. Which by the way is only fast when the question is simple. I've been waiting over 2 weeks now in a "cue" to have my e-mail responded to because it's going to one of the e-mails like security@pokerstars.com that has a much smaller team of people working for it. Advertising is separate only because how much they spend on it is truly up to them.

The point remains. The rake affects the micro and low stakes up to 1/2 and below very disproportionately compared to have it affects people higher up. That's the #1 change I want to find for. Having the rake at lower stakes be less of a burden therefore allowing more weak players to make it up to higher stakes softening those games. That's something we can fight for that might actually get accomplished if we put some hard work into it. here would be so few winners at 2/4+ if they were paying 5% in rake on almost every pot they play. Well that's what it's like down below and that needs to change. The players at lower stakes are getting unfairly abused by the rake even in comparison just to higher games on Pokerstars nevermind in general.

sure they have some operating costs but if you compare....

total costs to stars for operating one hour

versus

amount stars rakes per hour




the latter figure will be magnitudes higher. the people at the top of these companies are absurdly rich

I'm going to start a new thread pretty soon since this one has about 10 different ideas bouncing around in it and it's hard to get people focused on one idea. I think Gen should have his own thread dedicated to his progress towards creating an independent poker software that will be inexpensive and secure. That's certainly a great thing to work towards.

The main thing I want to fight for right now:
1. Lower rake at the stakes 1/2 and below. People are being raked at 5% a hand and that's just too much. Not enough weak players are winning and moving up to soften the stakes of 1/2 to 5/10 and that's a problem for everyone.

The goal is very simply to petition, e-mail, negatively advertise, and potentially sit-out strike when its organized enough for lower rake at these stakes. Rake reduction that would allow a lot more players to progress through the micro limits to soften the games up top. I see no reason why at 25NL people should lose $2.50 out of 50 when they go all-in. It's ridiculous - the equivalent of that at 5/10 would be losing $100 to rake every time you go all-in.

Understand how disproportionately people are being affected at lower stakes. Fight to reduce the rake at these stakes to make the games at all levels better. Please help. I will start the new thread probably tonight or tomorrow. I'll be requesting PM's and E-mails of anyone who wants to get involved. This movement is starting no matter how few people start it. I'll keep trying to collect people and the more we get the better. Even just a few thousand people sending stars 5 copy pasted e-mails a day will make a difference. It will impact their ability to give support. You can use fresh non-stars e-mails or you can use e-mails attached to your accounts. The worst that will happen is you'll get a warning to stop e-mailing them and then we can go public saying stars just ignores the cries of thousands of their customers while raking them to death.

On October 25 2010 15:14 Bejamin1 wrote: Jubert69 - Seriously. Do you work for Pokerstars? I'm seriously starting to wonder about all the people who oppose lower rake. They "probably make a good profit" ??? No They absolutely do. They're charging up to $3.00 for a single hand of fucking virtual poker. I will happily switch to a lower rake system with --> Paid support only - Fee for every e-mail sent. Pay my own fees for cash-outs, deposits, and peer-to-peer transfers. Not including advertising I 100% guarantee Pokerstars makes enough profit in the first month of the fiscal year to pay for all the years operating costs including 24-7 support. Which by the way is only fast when the question is simple. I've been waiting over 2 weeks now in a "cue" to have my e-mail responded to because it's going to one of the e-mails like security@pokerstars.com that has a much smaller team of people working for it. Advertising is separate only because how much they spend on it is truly up to them. The point remains. The rake affects the micro and low stakes up to 1/2 and below very disproportionately compared to have it affects people higher up. That's the #1 change I want to find for. Having the rake at lower stakes be less of a burden therefore allowing more weak players to make it up to higher stakes softening those games. That's something we can fight for that might actually get accomplished if we put some hard work into it. here would be so few winners at 2/4+ if they were paying 5% in rake on almost every pot they play. Well that's what it's like down below and that needs to change. The players at lower stakes are getting unfairly abused by the rake even in comparison just to higher games on Pokerstars nevermind in general.

I don't work for Pokerstars.

I'm a realist. I don't think it's possible to orchestrate a large number of people to cause a strike against PS.

Yeah of course I want lower rake. I'd probably be up an additional 5k in my pocket. But I just don't see it happening.

On October 25 2010 00:34 Jubert69 wrote: Do you guys realize how much it costs to run Pokerstars? Are they making a large profit? Probably. But here are things that hits Pokerstars's profits. Every time there is a deposit, there is a fee assessed. Every time there is a cashout, there is a fee assessed. They cover all those fees for everyone. Do you know how quickly Pokerstars responds to your emails? Sometimes minutes, usually within an hour. That's because they have a HUGE support system running 24/7. Do you feel safe Pokerstars handling your money? Most people answer yes, because your balance is an actual balance in a European bank. Do you know how big Pokerstars's security team is? Personally I don't, neither do most people, but they do large investigations, eg. Chinese DoN players, The Void in the WCOOP last year, etc. Do you know how much bandwidth/hosting is required to run PS? Yes sometimes it's slow as hell, but most of the time it runs with no issues, even then if you lost money, you can request a refund for losses, and usually they do give it to you.

>Are they making a large profit?
Yes
>Every time there is a deposit, there is a fee assessed.
>Every time there is a cashout, there is a fee assessed.
They also have deposit and cashout restrictions. You also can't just cashout money that was recently transferred to you without playing through it a couple times if you had a lesser balance than what was transferred. In comparison how much they make from the average person the fees aren't a big deal. Less than 6% when compared to net revenue.
>Do you know how quickly Pokerstars responds to your emails? Sometimes minutes, usually within an hour. That's because they have a HUGE support system running 24/7.
Let's just say for fun that 200 support staff for writing emails 24 hours a day 365 years a year are being paid $10/hr. 200 * 24 * 365 * 10 = $17.5 million. Less than a week revenue.
>Do you know how big Pokerstars's security team is? Personally I don't, neither do most people, but they do large investigations, eg. Chinese DoN players, The Void in the WCOOP last year, etc.
Their security team for collusion is fairly decent, botting it's very small. They try to deal with a lot of those matters automatically through the software triggering certain flags. The Chinese DoN situation is a pretty awful example imo because it took such a long time to figure it out.
>Do you know how much bandwidth/hosting is required to run PS? Yes sometimes it's slow as hell, but most of the time it runs with no issues, even then if you lost money, you can request a refund for losses, and usually they do give it to you.
I don't know how much they actually use, but the amount that's actually needed is quite small. They need a mail server for all the incoming/outgoing emails. Maybe a dozen servers for running the games and then some for backups for hardware failures and keeping track of all the data. Bandwidth is very small. You can probably 24 table on a 56k modem, so even with 200k users at peak hours 10 gbit connection would be enough. In data centers the cost is more about the power that the machines cost to run each hour.

On October 25 2010 15:23 Bejamin1 wrote: The main thing I want to fight for right now: 1. Lower rake at the stakes 1/2 and below. People are being raked at 5% a hand and that's just too much. Not enough weak players are winning and moving up to soften the stakes of 1/2 to 5/10 and that's a problem for everyone.

The lowest stakes may be raked the highest proportionally, but it's also being raked the least as far as revenue goes to the sites. So the lower the stakes are the closer it comes between cost of running the games and the money they bring in from rake. Cost being as what Jubert stated above: fees from transactions, running the tables (bandwidth, servers, etc.), and pretty much the same resources required for access to the support staff and investigations department.
So I think it should just be a fight for lower rake in general in the form of higher rakeback or lowered rake rates.

benjamin:
" I see no reason why at 25NL people should lose $2.50 out of 50 when they go all-in. It's ridiculous - the equivalent of that at 5/10 would be losing $100 to rake every time you go all-in."

I agree, it is sick. 5% is to much.. 2-3% would be OK..

from a business perspective you want the fish to keep reloading...stop thinking so hard.

I read the gist of the thread, cliff notes would help new comers.
As a terrible micro grinder that needs help in every way possible, I'd like it very much if the rake is reduced from micro to small stakes.

However, I see few problems in this:
Reducing rake means not as much profit for poker sites, I see no reason why they should do that because they have no little to lose even if you threaten them to leave the site.
That's because even if we were to gather enough people and "threaten" Pokerstars to reduce the rake or we leave, it ultimately leads nowhere because regs leave and more regs come because old regs left.

It can only work if those who emigrate well overwhelm the number that may immigrate. I suppose it has to start somewhere.
And the truth is, even if the regs were to leave the site, there's really no other sites that are as trustable as Stars while offering more than Stars (because if there were, they would be #1 right now, right?)

If I'm shortsighted on this one, feel free to correct me please.

regrunch.

rake is still absurd at the moment compared to the variable costs associated with running it. I'm no expert but lol when small stakes regs (1/2 6max) are paying mid 5 figures a year. 30-40/hr for a modest 800 hrs a year (40 20 hr weeks) for example = 28,000. reflect on that number for a moment. 28,000. rake isn't off by a small percentage where people should be debating the fine points like jubert, it's off by a massive scale.

the only way it goes down is if big sites start having rake wars but they both realize a rake war is pointless from a game theory perspective since they both end up losers and only the players win. we have to hope something like legalization in the US brings new major sites entering the market and changing the landscape of site differentiation.

move up to where they respect your rake imo

On October 25 2010 18:48 Arirang wrote: I read the gist of the thread, cliff notes would help new comers. As a terrible micro grinder that needs help in every way possible, I'd like it very much if the rake is reduced from micro to small stakes. However, I see few problems in this: Reducing rake means not as much profit for poker sites, I see no reason why they should do that because they have no little to lose even if you threaten them to leave the site. That's because even if we were to gather enough people and "threaten" Pokerstars to reduce the rake or we leave, it ultimately leads nowhere because regs leave and more regs come because old regs left. It can only work if those who emigrate well overwhelm the number that may immigrate. I suppose it has to start somewhere. And the truth is, even if the regs were to leave the site, there's really no other sites that are as trustable as Stars while offering more than Stars (because if there were, they would be #1 right now, right?) If I'm shortsighted on this one, feel free to correct me please.

Here are the basic cliff notes:
-Casual player demands sites reduce rake because poker sites are making too much money
-Lots of people agree
-Some people make arguments that despite your best efforts, with even the most unrealistic outcomes, the sites will probably not alter their rake structure.
-Others disagree
-Talk about some rake free driven client

You aren't missing much.

no money in poker. everyone works for pokerstars

one thing people are failing to appreciate is where their raked dollars go. they're not all being gathered up, converted to cash and used to fill olympic sized swimming pools so the bigwigs and owners can have daily pool parties and swim around in your money and have a big laugh over how all you poor suckers multitabling the micros are getting raked. stars and fullt1lt spend MASSIVE amounts on marketing not only their product but the game of poker worldwide. every country you can imagine where there's any possibility of online poker ever being able to take off you can bet ps and ft are funding all manner of market research, legal teams, etc etc to do whatever possible to bring poker and their product to that country. Have you not seen the astonishing growth and globalisation of poker in the last 4 years since UIGEA passed? . Back in the day the overwhelming majority of players, especially the masses of depositing casual fish that feed our economy, were american but since that gravy train got shut down by Frist poker has only grown and grown. This didn't just happen by itself and certainly will never happen on genjix's site (not to take away from the good efforts he's making).Look at a world map and plot all the points where you could play big poker tournaments with lots of satellites in 2005, and plot all the points today. P0kerstars and Fullt1lt have spread everywhere crazy macro zerg style, and in doing so they have brought masses and masses of fishy players from all walks of life direct to your computer. If they weren't making huge profits (which is the actual goal of a business btw, contrary to the popularly held belief it's to help 50nl multitablers make a better living) then they would most likely have been unable to afford or think about spending the huge advertising bucks and without all the masses of extra fish they didn't bring in you would very conceivably be making a lot less money at poker if the rake was really low, not more. Worth thinking about

Also I strongly disagree with the notion that it's "unfair" lower stakes are raked at a higher proportion than higher stakes. this seems to be based on a very naive and childish view of fairness. sure few would disagree that higher stakes games should be raked more than lower ones and this is indeed the case. But when most of the cost to the site for offering a 50plo game and a 2000plo game is the same (i.e. mostly fixed costs) then why should they charge 20x more for the latter game? Of course the absolute cost should be closer to the same than that.

It's time to stop thinking like a bitch and think smart like a poker player. Paying too much in rake compared to your earnings? What's the solution, is it to make threads on forums trying to get ppl interested in sitout strikes that have about a 0% chance of accomplishing anything? no, it's to play fewer tables at higher stakes and to try and work on your game more instead of mindlessly masstable grind.

ballgame.

lower rake favors mass grinding robots ;-0

On October 25 2010 21:13 Bigbobm wrote: Show nested quote + On October 25 2010 18:48 Arirang wrote: I read the gist of the thread, cliff notes would help new comers. As a terrible micro grinder that needs help in every way possible, I'd like it very much if the rake is reduced from micro to small stakes. However, I see few problems in this: Reducing rake means not as much profit for poker sites, I see no reason why they should do that because they have no little to lose even if you threaten them to leave the site. That's because even if we were to gather enough people and "threaten" Pokerstars to reduce the rake or we leave, it ultimately leads nowhere because regs leave and more regs come because old regs left. It can only work if those who emigrate well overwhelm the number that may immigrate. I suppose it has to start somewhere. And the truth is, even if the regs were to leave the site, there's really no other sites that are as trustable as Stars while offering more than Stars (because if there were, they would be #1 right now, right?) If I'm shortsighted on this one, feel free to correct me please. Here are the basic cliff notes: -Casual player demands sites reduce rake because poker sites are making too much money -Lots of people agree -Some people make arguments that despite your best efforts, with even the most unrealistic outcomes, the sites will probably not alter their rake structure. -Others disagree -Talk about some rake free driven client -ket is a pokerstars employee/spy who's designation is Liquidpoker.net You aren't missing much.

fyp

From Wikipedia:

Now, in 2009 and into 2010 PokerStars earns approximately $1.4 billion per year, and nets $1.34 million per day.

Seen in the year-by-year breakdown listed below, the tot amounts (in nominal dollars) that NASA has been budgeted from 1958 to 2008 amounts to $416 billion dollars—an average of $8.17 billion per year.

NASA takes us to space for 6x the amount.

But lets say they only keep 1/3 of that revenue (a very conservative estimate). That's $500 million. By comparison a common name company like amazon profits ~$900million annually.

Wikimedia (the org behind wikipedia) sees far more traffic then PokerStars- it is one of the top 10 websites in the world. They fund a bunch of projects (not only all the different language wikipedias). Their expenses are roughly 2mil, http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/inde...File:Wikimedia_2007_fs.pdf&page=5

On October 26 2010 02:07 whamm! wrote: Show nested quote + On October 25 2010 21:13 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 25 2010 18:48 Arirang wrote: I read the gist of the thread, cliff notes would help new comers. As a terrible micro grinder that needs help in every way possible, I'd like it very much if the rake is reduced from micro to small stakes. However, I see few problems in this: Reducing rake means not as much profit for poker sites, I see no reason why they should do that because they have no little to lose even if you threaten them to leave the site. That's because even if we were to gather enough people and "threaten" Pokerstars to reduce the rake or we leave, it ultimately leads nowhere because regs leave and more regs come because old regs left. It can only work if those who emigrate well overwhelm the number that may immigrate. I suppose it has to start somewhere. And the truth is, even if the regs were to leave the site, there's really no other sites that are as trustable as Stars while offering more than Stars (because if there were, they would be #1 right now, right?) If I'm shortsighted on this one, feel free to correct me please. Here are the basic cliff notes: -Casual player demands sites reduce rake because poker sites are making too much money -Lots of people agree -Some people make arguments that despite your best efforts, with even the most unrealistic outcomes, the sites will probably not alter their rake structure. -Others disagree -Talk about some rake free driven client -ket is a pokerstars employee/spy who's designation is Liquidpoker.net You aren't missing much. fyp

lol.. okay, just keep it up with that sense of entitlement and keep crying and protesting when things are not handed to you on a silver platter. just watch how much success that brings you in life