blonde poker forum

Ongame have just announced they are dramatically changing their VIP point (rakeback) distribution system. Basically winning players get a smaller percentage of the pot and losing players get a higher percentage.

Thoughts?

http://www.ongamenetwork.com/news/the-essence-of-ongame-networks-new-poker-business-mod

or a (hopefully) clearer explanation

http://www.insidepokerbusiness.co.uk/poker/news/271/ongame-radically-changes-vip-system.html

Online poker is so fckd.  These ppl should be concentrating on stopping the French experiment spreading throughout Europe and attacking the US for their unfair barriers instead of pissing about with nonsense like this.

Actually really like it in principle, this and Betfair moving there should make OnGame pretty playable in the future

This is something they have been working on for a while, way before the French thing.

so bad players make networks more money?

This decision obv doesn't make any sense..bad/losing and recreational players don't really care about rakeback. They don't care whether they get $10 or $15 in rakeback a month..big winning players (STT and Cash) will however care whether they get $400 or $500+ in rakeback a month.

How does this affect breakeven STT/Cash game players? They don't lose money but can make their money on the rake..will that drop for them?

I thought large volume players made the network more money simply because they contribute more in rake....

this is essentially just a move by the big guys to try and squeeze out the little guys (Like Titan did to blonde), no?

There is a really good article by Peter Birks which explains why this is needed, but basically you get big known skins who put a lot of marketing in to attract new (fish) players to the network (lets just say William Hill for arguments sake) then you get small skins who do very little marketing but offer pro grinders huge rakeback deals (like NoIQ did until they were booted from iPoker).

A standalone poker room wants players to be slow losers at the table, but if you are a skin you actually want the winners because they take money from the losers which means your players generate rake longer. What was happening is the skins that were doing all the marketing were finding their players lost all their money to the players from skins who offered huge rb deals. Basically a small % of the skins were commanding a huge % of the liquidity without doing any marketing.

There is obviously a lot more to it than that as I am sure Rich and co and confirm, but the bottom line is its good for everyone if the bad players stay at the tables longer.

that be ol' school thinking Mr B. nowadays to put it very simply they realise that good players (and rake obv) take money off the site and fish put money on. if there isn't a supply of money flowing onto the site it dies. This is mostly for networks, FT and Stars seem to be different although they advertise more than anyone else of course.

 

Yes, this - I think the general idea is that you can't carry on taking rake out of the system unless people are redepositing.

The winning players aren't redepositing; they're taking even more money out of the system - it's the losing players who do so; so they're the one's you've got to encourage to stay.

EDIT: i.e. they get $5 rakeback, and this will encourage them to deposit another $50 when they've lost it - which I think it will

I will be so pleased to see the end of the prop deals that have killed many of the games on betfair over the last few years.

My first thoughts is that all marketing efforts that people don't understand are absolutely useless.  Pretty much if the fish don't realise how good this is for them, then they won't play any more regularly.  I'd be pretty wary of playing a site with a reward system that wasn't published in detail, particularly as some sites seem unable to work out x% multiplied by rake correctly each month.

Betfair have also said that all current rakeback deals will be honoured, so the regs won't get less.  It is only those who are daft enough to voluntarily move to the new system that lose? 

OK, makes sense I guess.

Thanks :)

+1

-2

Smart move.  I was chatting to the Bodog guys who are planning something similar when their site opens to new white label partners later in the year.

When it comes down to it, the losing players need looking after in order to keep returning.  No one has bottomless pockets and it can't be much fun to keep losing to better players. 

The winning players need to accept that those players are integral to the longterm health of the game, and the redistribution of reward funds is an investment in the future liquidity of online poker.

Now - when are we going to shut down all the poker tracking tools?  :)

With you till the last paragraph.

Tracking tools have bad points, but they also offer players the oppurtunity to police their own games to an extent.

The sites including the big two have consistantly shown that they don't care all that much about their game integrity as far as detecting collusion goes. Maybe they do care but they're just really shit at it.

They need to sort that before they attack tracking tools.

I'm guessing Jamie means more things like datamining sites like PokerTableRatings, rather than Holdem Manager, that give players info on fish they have never played with. If so, I agree, get rid of em because they are killing the games and losing the fish so much quicker.

It's the datamining sites I was talking about. They've always been there as far as I know, I used one in 2004, and online poker has done ok so they can't be that deletrious.

If some grinder berates a fish using data they got from one of these then a site should be happy to ban their ass, not just chat ban. One warning then close their account. That's the way to tackle to problem imo as closing the door for datamining also closes the door to anyone wanting to verify the integrity of the RNG.

Correct me if I wrong but the older sites like sharkscope only let you know results, whereas PTR tells you every statistic (VPIP/3bet % etc etc) a player has and thats where the real problem lies, not only is this site telling you who the losers are they are also providing you with a blueprint on how best to exploit them.

I agree with what you say about the RNG, it is good that people can independently monitor stuff like that, but what PTR are doing is killing cash games.