The Rake :( - Page 6

ur hopes dashed, ur dreams down the toilet

On October 15 2010 20:15 Bigbobm wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 19:20 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job . To be frank, I don't care at all about the casual players. They pay far less rake than the average grinders, and they are given much less back. A lot of people have worked hard to get SN/SNE and deserve to be rewarded for it. If the casual player wants to pay less rake, get serious and grind more/move up. If they can't beat the rake, that's a problem they have to face because there are a lot of people who have started with nothing and play 1/2+ playing under the same rake structure, with quite possibly a much worse rb program.

just bcuz theres ppl who are able to beat the games and move up under the current rake structure doesnt mean that we arent getting overcharged.

i think ppl are getting too hung up on the $50 number that the OP just randomly threw out and are missing his point.

On October 16 2010 18:30 joLin wrote: Show nested quote + On October 15 2010 20:15 Bigbobm wrote:   On October 15 2010 19:20 Bejamin1 wrote:   On October 15 2010 17:01 dogmeat wrote:   On October 15 2010 16:29 Bejamin1 wrote: There is almost no chance of a player at .25/.5 or lower making it to Supernova. That rakeback % is simply not available to those players. wtf i made sn at nl50 in 2008, i started at nl2 in march and made it in october and i wasnt even playing during summer [?] brag I mean this in reference to the casual player. Obviously if when you put in hours you were putting in 40/hrs a week then probably. The point being that Supernovas are a very small minority of the overall player base on stars. It's obviously not impossible to be a supernova playing .25/.50 but its certainly quite difficult especially if poker isn't your full time job . To be frank, I don't care at all about the casual players. They pay far less rake than the average grinders, and they are given much less back. A lot of people have worked hard to get SN/SNE and deserve to be rewarded for it. If the casual player wants to pay less rake, get serious and grind more/move up. If they can't beat the rake, that's a problem they have to face because there are a lot of people who have started with nothing and play 1/2+ playing under the same rake structure, with quite possibly a much worse rb program. just bcuz theres ppl who are able to beat the games and move up under the current rake structure doesnt mean that we arent getting overcharged. i think ppl are getting too hung up on the $50 number that the OP just randomly threw out and are missing his point.

exactly, bob your post is kind of "???".. you don't want to improve your profitability with no actual change to the games.. because it will make it easier for people to have a winrate...and you had to earn your current winrate already and.. i don't understand what your angle here is. You don't want games to be more profitable for everyone (including yourself)?


Anyway, I don't know enough about poker companies to know what their financials look like. I heard party poker is a public company.. you could take a look in there and see if they have ridiculous profit margins or whatever and exactly how much room we the consumers have to pressure down their rake.

nah, partygaming is probably a bad example. They have other things as well like their casino, backgammon, and bingo. Plus their balance sheet for 2009 was not good.

How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale.

And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

Seriously dude are you a Pokerstars employee?

Pokerstars offers a very simple service. They are charging a disgustingly high amount of money for delivering that service. I don't feel like 9pt/bb in rake is a fair amount. I feel it makes the games unfairly difficult even for a player who has a decent edge.

If you disagree that's fine but personally that makes me think you're kind of an idiot. I'm glad you think Pokerstars should charge the equivalent of mortage payments for access to a game over the internet.

I'm not willing to just bend over and take it anymore. It's stupid. We shouldn't have to pay this much.

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

yes it is completely relative, but just bcuz stars does better than the industry average doesnt mean that the industry as a whole isnt overcharging. look at the amount youve paid in rake. its a ridiculous amount to comprehend paying for any sort of service/game.

yes, by reducing rake, the poker sites would be reducing their income and of course its in their best interest as a business to make as much as possible. but as consumers we dont just have to sit here and accept whatever theyre charging. you say it as if theres only 2 extremes, benjamins $50/month idea or the amount that theyre currently charging. theres better mediums that would still allow the poker sites to profit a huge amount of money while being more fair to the players. you cant really think its impossible for them to reduce rake without going out of business?

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.

I don't think you're looking at it realistically. You say it's what the consumers want, but that's not completely true. Businesses only try to fulfill their customers desires in order to somehow improve their bottom line. Even if it makes all their customers unhappy, if it will increase profits they'll do it. If you want a site like Pokerstars to take a 50 million dollar revenue cut you better have 50 million dollars or more of leverage. It's not like we have alternative sites to go to that fulfill the requirements you're demanding and we're certainly not going to quit poker for any extended period of time. Stars has over 200k players during peak hours. How many players do you think you could get to agree and comply to fish-only day strikes and how much damage is it going to inflict? Some of those people are going to have goals and will just make up the hours that they lost striking in the next week. I feel like rake is too high as well, but I think you need to set some more realistic (at least short term) goals and think about things from the poker rooms' perspectives.

how many supernova elites are there who will never participate in a strike? like 200? how many breakeven, disgruntled, bitter regs (and even winning ones obv) are hating their winrates atm? if players come together and just not play a single weekend for a ridiculously long term ev thing such as much lower rake or probably pokerstars at least meeting it halfway, there's just so much this can accmoplish. i wouldnt recommend a "sit out" type of boycott for risk that funds might be confiscated lol, just not playing a single day will do.

The way to reduce rake is to increase competition. They are not going to do it just because you ask them to.

I could almost guarantee you that no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to organize a mass boycott that has any direct effect on stars or ftp. You're better off spending your time and possible lost profits sitting out, investing in your own poker room that runs as a non profit to create some competition. But even that's a bit of an impossibility in itself.

Also, the sites don't really want the weaker players moving up. Weaker players moving up lose their money faster to better players and pay less rake in the long run.

On October 17 2010 11:06 Bigbobm wrote: You're better off spending your time and possible lost profits sitting out, investing in your own poker room that runs as a non profit to create some competition. But even that's a bit of an impossibility in itself.

Why is this an impossibility? Most of the mobile phones and most of the web is run off Linux. Google, Amazon, Sun, Ebay... all run on non profit software written by individuals. Another example is Firefox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages
It's entirely possible, and probably preferable to the environment now where people have no control in the running of the networks and are extorted.
See this thread, http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-forum/926937/P2P_Poker_brainstorm_session.html

On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait.

I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook?

that tactic gets old bigbrother
just sayin --> maybe one day?

On October 17 2010 12:28 tloapc wrote: Show nested quote + On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait. I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook? that tactic gets old bigbrother just sayin --> maybe one day?

Yeah people are starting to get a little mean over things other than just the ideas now. We have the idealist (Bejamin1) and the realist (Bigbobm).
We all want lesser rake and I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to come up with approaches towards achieving that and maybe even being optimistic about it but we need to look at what's actually possible and the best routes to take.

+ Show Spoiler +

When I say we can organize and make a difference I'm not kidding around. I'm also not an idealist. There is absolutely no reason fiscally why a much cheaper access to poker cannot be established and become successful. Not once have I suggested the poker site organizers would be on side with my ideas. I know it's the last thing they'd want. What I am saying is that we as consumers have a lot more power than we've been using.

A list of some things we can do as poker activists against ridiculously high rake:

1. E-mail support a copy pasted message 10 times a day that demands lower rake and informs them that this e-mail is being sent in protest. It doesn't even have to be done from your Pokerstars e-mail. Imagine thousands and thousands of e-mails flooding the various support e-mails Pokerstars has. You can send it 100 times a day if you want when you're doing it from a random e-mail not associated with your Pokerstars account.

2. Keep a sticky post at the top of every major poker forum that demands lower rake and asks people to join the cause by signing up at one of those petition websites.

3. Create a petition to be signed by as many people as we can get that say they want rake reduced significantly.

4. Have people e-mail the PPA, Cardplayer Magazine, and all the other major sources with the same copy pasted e-mail demanding reduced rake once a day.

5. Whenever your not grinding - sit out on 24 tables. Its not like any of us session 24 hours a day. If you're just watching a movie or the game or something then do it up. This will be especially effective if we pick a specific game like "6-Max NL100" and everyone for that week targets their sit out strike only to that game. That way the regulars and the fish get angry that their constantly playing 3-4 handed and it makes it miserable because they have to constantly re-seed to find tables without people sitting out.

6. Produce negative media campaigning on Facebook, twitter, blogs, magazine articles, and everywhere you can think of against how much is being raked. Get the word out and get everyone talking about it.

On October 17 2010 14:42 jchysk wrote: Show nested quote + On October 17 2010 12:28 tloapc wrote:   On October 17 2010 00:39 Bigbobm wrote: How do you actually define overcharged? Isn't it completely relative? To me the current rate stars/ftp offer is a steal. If the industry avg is to charge $45 an hr before rb, and stars is offering 65% of that in return for the highest lvls, and 40+ for any decent reg, I would say were getting a pretty fkn sweet deal. What op is suggesting is almost financial suicide for poker sites. I've tried to drive this point across again and again - these sites are a business. They are supposed to make money. Asking them to cut rake by ridiculous amounts is a straight up fairly tale. And of course I want to improve my winrate, but this has to be the worst possible approach to it. You have to consider the fact that to increase your winrate through rake, you are asking the poker site to effectively reduce their winrate. Do you think any site in their right mind would consider that? I would pray that none of the sites I play on do that because it's the most irrational decision a business could make. I kid you not, if ftp adopted benjamins rake scheme, I would take my money off, abandon the 30+ months I have in my vip program and move to stars instantly. If a site does something that is too good to be true it usually is. Red Nines, a month before its collapse deferred paying the rb owed to players for the month of Feb, promising some sort of bonus for the wait. I'm mainly gonna keep observing happily as I'm finally starting to see some real directions sprouting about but can you please attempt to do counters that do not include constant references to people being crazy/irrational/ridiculous/etc whenever they go against the establishment outlook? that tactic gets old bigbrother just sayin --> maybe one day? Yeah people are starting to get a little mean over things other than just the ideas now. We have the idealist (Bejamin1) and the realist (Bigbobm). We all want lesser rake and I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to come up with approaches towards achieving that and maybe even being optimistic about it but we need to look at what's actually possible and the best routes to take.

Nothing Bejamin said was unrealistic and cannot be achieved.

It's funny, after having just bought scII for $50 and playing it for a few months I have realized even more just how much Bejamin is correct about this. I have the ability to enjoy a very entertaining game, play whenever i want, play with my friends and enjoy a competitive environment. Blizzard has been working hard in terms of supporting their customers by fixing bugs, helping on technical forums, introducing new patches and trying to make the game the best game for people to buy. Even looking at a game like WoW which charges a small amount of money monthly, we see people enjoying many similar luxuries and supporting blizzard.

Then we look at poker, where in one solid day of grinding(by someone like me), a poker site is able to take enough money to buy sc2 three times. All for what? An online video game that offers essentially the same or worse services than these blizzard games/other similar games? Stars/FTP do have good support systems, but some sites have abysmal ones and have terrible software(cake poker software for example). Regardless if they were on par or even better than a company like blizzard, no video game service(call it whatever you want) should be charging its customers enough to make $4million in one single day. I understand they are difficult to program/maintain/keep safe, but who are they kidding? It probably costs them less than what they make in one week to pay reasonable salaries/maintain the site for an entire year. I'm no expert with regard to finances and costs to maintain these services, but even if the numbers are wrong the point should be pretty clear here.

In light of that, I agree with Bejamin about essentially everything he wrote. If anyone thinks parts of the arguments are flawed that's fine because the overall point is crystal clear. We are getting robbed, plain and simple. So lets do something about it and stop making excuses. Nobody but pokerstars/other poker sites care if they're in it as a business, it doesn't give them the right to charge me ~$50,000 in rake since i began playing this game(probably insane amounts for some other people). The consumers have the ability to change the market they are immersed in and if enough people act on it it will inevitably happen.

Please people who disagree - Stop making ridiculous excuses and open your eyes to what is happening. The daily status in poker quo that everyone just abides by and lets happen to them is similar to that of the frog of boiling water analogy where if you put a frog in water with a normal temperature and then slowly heat it up the frog will not jump out and will eventually die. Its just like poker, day after day you pay rake and while paying this "small" amount of rake you dont notice its accumulating effect on your roll. Eventually as time goes on you realize that you have been raked thousands and thousands of dollars and just how crippling it is to your bottom line.

We my friends are in this boiling water and its time to get out.

I'm going to bump this back to the top of the heap. I will do this continually because I think it's a very important issue that we all need to take seriously. I would ask now that people read my most recent post in this thread and give me some feedback on what they think of the 6 things I suggested we can do to start protesting the amount of rake we pay. We have more power to fight against unfair rake than some on here would suggest.