Pokerstars USA Rake Increase
Pokerstars USA recently increased the rake. This increase is unacceptable. Even ACR has lower rake while also providing better rewards than Pokerstars.
As players we cannot accept poker sites increasing rake. Poker is a game players are supposed to be able to profit from in the long term. Due to major advancements that have been made in strategy over the past 5-10 years, winning at poker has become increasingly difficult.
Rake increases make it harder for everyone to win - not just regulars. A better and more ethical way for sites to increase rake collection would be eliminating the microstakes (everything under 25/30NL).
Changes such as this one contribute greatly to ruining the game. Sites need to find better ways to increase profits such as focusing on gaining new customers, increasing efficiency, eliminating stakes for meaningless amounts of money, etc.
Unless the trend of rake increases ends, online poker's best hope seems to be a poker site that figures out a way to avoid regulation and make crypto deposits easy for recreational players.
Old Structure:
New Structure:
That's pretty high rake.
People are playing microstakes a lot, i don't think that many microstakes players would play higher just because 5NL is gone. They would just switch to another room.
That's pretty high rake.
People are playing microstakes a lot, i don't think that many microstakes players would play higher just because 5NL is gone. They would just switch to another room.
In the US we have a ring-fenced environment. More players would be likely to switch stakes since there are fewer options. Of the regulated options - PokerStars has the advantage of having much better software than the other rooms.
Rake increases seem to be becoming a trend - if that can become a trend - why can't eliminating the super micro stakes? Running 2NL and 5NL especially don't seem worth it for operators since the amount of electricity and hardware resources expended is the same regardless of stake.
I'm also not excusing other sites, WSOP US rake is also high, and I can't even find the rake table for BetMGM.
Only way players can speak about this in a way that has an affect is to stop playing and if enough players do while e-mailing support with their reasons for doing so it will change if they want business.
I realise it is not a great option if you have limited choice but it is better than being exploited which happens all too easily when there is little or no market competition. The site won't change for you unless you do something that forces it to change.
Where did they announce the rake change? im curious if Canada Pokerstars will follow suit
Only way players can speak about this in a way that has an affect is to stop playing and if enough players do while e-mailing support with their reasons for doing so it will change if they want business.
I realise it is not a great option if you have limited choice but it is better than being exploited which happens all too easily when there is little or no market competition. The site won't change for you unless you do something that forces it to change.
I have already withdrawn my money. My plan is to move my volume to ACR and other unregulated sites which have better rake structures and rewards.
That and live games which although have even worse rake, is many orders of magnitude softer due to the makeup of the player pool.
Ya it seems like it was raised in Ontario/Canada (unconfirmed) unlike in the states tho Pokerstars has stiff competition from gg poker so I dont honestly care. I don't play on that site my hourly is like 1/4th of what it is on their competitor if I played the same stakes. sorry america!
heres a side by side look of the ring fenced Ontario Canada sites side by side my american brothers at 4pm est. One is not like the other.
In the US we have a ring-fenced environment. More players would be likely to switch stakes since there are fewer options. Of the regulated options - PokerStars has the advantage of having much better software than the other rooms.
Rake increases seem to be becoming a trend - if that can become a trend - why can't eliminating the super micro stakes? Running 2NL and 5NL especially don't seem worth it for operators since the amount of electricity and hardware resources expended is the same regardles
I'm pretty sure I was being raked at around 16bb/100 based on the stats I have for BetMGM
Rake seemed huge, but I think games on these sites are soft enough that you can still achieve high win rates. Still frustrating to pay so much rake though.
I'm pretty sure I was being raked at around 16bb/100 based on the stats I have for BetMGM
Rake seemed huge, but I think games on these sites are soft enough that you can still achieve high win rates. Still frustrating to pay so much rake though.
I found the BetMgm rake table, for whatever reason it would not come up on my PC but on phone found it easily. It’s about same as Stars new rake (a bit higher at high stakes) - except Stars is somehow higher at $1/$2
Canadian rake is much higher then america too lmao. Wtf are they doing in America it might make some sense if they have a monopoly but in Ontario they have like 10% market share right now across 4 different sites. Its like they are trying to go busto
I'm not disagreeing with you that this rake is high.
But your proposed solution that sites should increase revenue by eliminated popular games that collect a bunch revenue for the site is insane.
Lot of people love playing poker for "meaningless amounts of money" and wouldn't want to play for "meaningful" amounts of money. Eliminating these games would drive customers away, not bring in new customers.
I'm not disagreeing with you that this rake is high.
But your proposed solution that sites should increase revenue by eliminated popular games that collect a bunch revenue for the site is insane.
Lot of people love playing poker for "meaningless amounts of money" and wouldn't want to play for "meaningful" amounts of money. Eliminating these games would drive customers away, not bring in new customers.
Lower stakes have to be less profitable for operators per hand dealt due to the fact there is no cost difference to the operator to run them.
Even if a small fraction of the weeny stake players remain at the new bottom stake, that should make up for the ones who left - or even result in a net gain for rake collection.
Obviously impossible to know for certain without trying it.
In the US we have a ring-fenced environment. More players would be likely to switch stakes since there are fewer options. Of the regulated options - PokerStars has the advantage of having much better software than the other rooms.
Rake increases seem to be becoming a trend - if that can become a trend - why can't eliminating the super micro stakes? Running 2NL and 5NL especially don't seem worth it for operators since the amount of electricity and hardware resources expended is the same regardles
Err responsible gambling, forcing players to play above their means or not play at all is prob not very ethical either
This rake structure looks hard to beat.
Decentralized, low rake poker when?
Lower stakes have to be less profitable for operators per hand dealt due to the fact there is no cost difference to the operator to run them.
Even if a small fraction of the weeny stake players remain at the new bottom stake, that should make up for the ones who left - or even result in a net gain for rake collection.
Obviously impossible to know for certain without trying it.
not really. someone playing micros might dump off a few hundred a month as a fun hobby. when you increase the lowest stakes games they either quit or they dump the same amount of money but do it way faster and with a lot less churn for the site.
It's not like someone now who dumps 200 a month is gonna start dumping 2000 a month because they have to play bigger.
If only a small fraction remain the site is making a terrible move by dropping the lowest stakes.
A different idea is limiting the number of regs per table. There is another site doing this - but I forget which one.
2-3 would be a good limit, preferably 2.
The way it would work is you have a hidden rating … it would be based on your VPIP/PFR along with winnings over the past year of play.
If you take a year off it looks back at the last full year you played. If you haven’t played a year yet, it goes off VPIP/PFR min sample 500 hands (before that you’re automatically considered a rec).
Honestly disgusting
I have 40k hands this year at midstakes in PA paying $6500 rake or 8.96 bb/100 according to HM3.
If I set the filter to this month, rake is $660 across 4000 hands at 10.5 bb/100.
Playing 1/2, it looks like they round up, so the actual rake is 6% of pot. Might be wrong, just looking at pot sizes.
su8bbed
Whats the effective rake tho? 25% black chests prop not that much better
I have a program that I created which imports hand histories into a DB so I can analyze some things off table which aren't available in a HUD ... I am going to run a calculation to see the average pot size for 30NL / 50NL (of course will be a bit biased by my own actions/style). I have around 1.3m hands.
Should be easy to calculate the bb/100 difference in rake.
