The Rake :( - Page 2

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.