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Goodbye rakeback. Good or bad?
Tikay10
Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 172,584
The 2nd largest Online Poker site in the world (888) is abandoning its traditional rakeback system.
Disgruntled PokerStars players switching to 888Poker are in a state of shock after the second largest online poker room followed the largest online poker room after deciding to overhaul their rewards program to the detriment of the heavy volume grinders.
“The main objective of the new plan is to reallocate the loyalty budget from the heavy grinders to the masses. We want to reward players for other activities, including long term loyalty to 888poker, rather than only for grinding"
It's reasoning (good or bad) is the rising awareness that Online Poker sites have been getting it wrong, & looking after the wrong people. That's the view, & that's why every poker site is now trying to look after the recreational players these days.
Thoughts, is this good, bad, or neither one nor the other?
Comments
Quick PS - there is no hidden agendas with this thread, Sky Poker have no plans that I am aware of to change their current system which was introduced June 1st 2015, as it's working as intended, but I hope they continue to tweak & refine it, & change if necessary. Discussion of that would be a completely different topic.
How many rec players who are totally new or have little knowledge of the rake back system and how it works?
Do you look after your heavy grinders or look after the smaller rec players (who might not bring in as much money to the site but will keep on coming back). It's such a fine line to balance and please everyone.
At least they didn't copy stars in every respect, then.
As for the changes, well, I don't really understand it. I mean, I've read everyone's response to Stars, and I too would have thought that incentivising high amounts of rake using rakeback was worth doing. But obviously companies know a lot more about the financials of their business than we do, and it must be that the value of deposits is really much higher than many grinders realise.
The last 10 years or so have really been a unique learning experience I suppose, with the first time rise of the online poker pro. Obviously sites weren't going to get it right first time, so maybe this will be the future of online poker?
Of course, sometimes I would often lose more money in the extra hands played than the extra reward, which makes me a bit of a mug. Putting on a business hat though, you want customers to "fall" for psychological rewards without realising that it costs them more in the long-term.
To sum up from across several forums (and hugely generalised I know):
Real winning players = In favour, the more recs the better.
Breakeven grinders = Against, it hits the profit they make and turns them into losing players.
Recs = In favour, the promos benefit them a lot.
I think I'm with you Mr Wh1te. Obviously all sites want to reward the recs the most and certainly brands with multiple products want to encourage cross-sell. Essentially the people who purely exist because of the rewards offer little value to the recs, the pro-players or the site and so making a change that penalises them while hurting nobody else must be good.
That assumes that the change does in fact encourage recs to play, that the extra money they now have will mean they play more poker. If they are strictly limited by time and play 1 hour a day, a week or a month because that is all the time they can spare for their hobby then they just get a price reduction but they don't play more.
Interesting topic.