Comments on: The Online Poker Industry’s Love Hate Relationship With Rakeback

By: James Tomshay

James Tomshay — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:16:18 +0000

I love your article. Basically every poker room offers rakeback in some respect. They just don’t all call it rakeback. Even brick and mortar casinos offer rakeback via player comps if you have a players club card. Dirty word or not they will never get rid of rakeback.

By: Most Popular Posts on Bill’s Poker Blog 2009 — Bill's Poker Blog

Most Popular Posts on Bill’s Poker Blog 2009 — Bill's Poker Blog — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:22:12 +0000

[...] 4. Online Poker Rooms Getting Stupid About Sponsorships 5. The Game is Getting Tighter 6. The Online Poker Industry’s Love Hate Relationship With Rakeback 7. Crazy Rigtards 8. This is Starting to Get Out of Control 9. 8 Unique Ways To Lose Money In Texas [...]

By: No Cookie Cutter Rakeback | Online Poker Circuit Poker Pub

No Cookie Cutter Rakeback | Online Poker Circuit Poker Pub — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:53:06 +0000

[...] first entered the discussion of online poker rakeback when I read Bill Rini’s post regarding the Online Poker Industry’s Love Hate Relationship with Rakeback. I’m not [...]

By: imjusthere4thebeer

imjusthere4thebeer — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:12:42 +0000

As a more traditional affiliate, things have changed quite a bit. I recently returned to the online poker community, only to find out its no longer as easy as shipping an email to my database, and the conversions pour in. It used to be that easy. I’m desperately trying to avoid using that “R-word” with my customer base, but it is seemingly more and more difficult to do so.

In many aspects, we slit our throats if we offer it in masses, and we slit our throats if we do not…

Great article, Bill. As always, you’re on the pulse of the poker world.

By: Zemalf

Zemalf — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:27:26 +0000

Excellent article. When I started my pokerblog, I decided I wouldn’t be linking to any pokersite which one can get rakeback if linked to those rakeback site instead. Doesn’t help much when most of the sites link directly and people see ads on tv and google, let’s say Full Tilt Poker. As a side note, I’m one of those who clicked banneror some link somewhere, and thus no rakeback at FTP, even that I have tried to request it for 2 years now, so I don’t play there for that reason. So I’m “punished” for things I did (or actually didn’t even know I was doing something) when I barely knew what poker was. But I definately agree, that poker sites should offer similar benefits to all players, but that’s not gonna happen.

By: Bill Rini

Bill Rini — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:25:43 +0000

@James: 100% agree other than the levels. I was a bit surprised when I saw the stats but a good chunk of the highest raking players are guys who max out the number of tables at some of the lower limits. Guys doing 18 tables of 2/4 limit or 1/2 NL for 10 hours a day could easily be generating substantially more rake than a guy playing $50/$100 on 2 tables.

By: Bill Rini

Bill Rini — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:17:01 +0000

@Unknown: I 100% agree with you on that. During the dotcom days AOL was famous for buying out promising companies and then killing them.

Yes, allowing them to continue to operate as they had been is a key element. They have to be able to compete.

I have a post in the back of my head where I make a similar argument about why online poker sites have never become successful in building their own referral engines. It really comes down to they want too much control.

By: James Devlin

James Devlin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:10:46 +0000

I think rakeback is here to stay, unfortunately. (Yes, I said “unfortunately”.) Rakeback was always the forbidden fruit of poker. Once you go there, it spreads, and pretty soon even your newbie players are wanting rakeback, because they’re not-so-newbie friends are telling them “make sure to get rakeback” and any casual Internet search is telling them “make sure to get rakeback”. That’s not to say there aren’t still a ton of players who have no idea what rakeback is.

To me the only model that makes sense is one in which rakeback is throttled according to how much a player plays. High-volume players should get rakeback. Low-volume players should not. And the sites should be totally above-board and honest about it.

Maybe rakeback should also be cordoned off based on limit. In the 6-man SNGs, for example, it’s hard to sustain a decent ROI once you get above about $100. JHub knows this subject probably better than any player in the world, has some interesting thoughts on how important rakeback becomes as you start notching up in limits.

http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/84891.html

By: Unknown Webmaster

Unknown Webmaster — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:32:36 +0000

Excellent article.

However, I’m not sure that I agree about the buy out part. I have seen the result of a top 5 pokerroom buying a very high value affiliate site, and it weren’t pretty.

It could still have been a good deal for them, but I’m 100% sure that the site could have dominated the niche if they had kept running like the affiliate did.

Not to say that such deals can’t be successful, however, I have seen some cases where the results weren’t really optimal for the site.

By: Sunday House Cleaning — Bill's Poker Blog

Sunday House Cleaning — Bill's Poker Blog — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:18:16 +0000

[...] And stay tuned tomorrow as I’m putting the finishing touches on a new post titled The Online Poker Industry’s Love Hate Relationship With Rakeback. [...]