The Rake :( - Page 3

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..