What is the current market rate for clearing bonuses, ... ?

[TruePoker CEO]

Last time we put out a deposit bonus, we got excoriated for using a 10X rate, even if it was incremental.

What are some current, player attractive market rates for clearing deposit bonuses ?

[Uglyowl]

Please improve this:

Percentage of tournament rake refunded when clearing the bonus: 10%

I am getting 35-50% elsewhere in tournament bonus.

Not sure why there was complaint about the 10x portion for cash games, I remember the $1 rake at $12 pot which turned me off, but haven't really given it a thought after that.

Just looked at current rake at $2/$4: $.25/$5 rake at $2/$4.. Party & Pokerstars don't start raking til' $20

[excession]

Deposit bonuses are never seen as really good unless they outrun the rake and then of course all the whores descend and clean out your site - just give incremental rakeback instead - the more rake a player generates the higher % he gets back..deposit bonuses just encourage players to play so many hands and leave - incremental rakeback woudl encourage players to stay and get as many hands in as possible (assuming the top % RB was very attraactive of course)

Incremental RB also gives even the micro-limt players some sort of loyalty reward whilst rewarding the bigger stake players big-time

[JayLeno]

5-7 times

[uncleshady]

Maybe I will play at TruePoker. Whats the deposit bonus and such look like? (I'll go as high as 8x non-contrib) Does PokerTracker work for this site (important!) Can I get rakeback?

[thing85]

In addition to a decent clearance rate for bonuses (like 5x-7x), many players like some of the more non-traditional promotions as seen recently by Party Poker or Interpoker (the two I could first think of). If you could implement a way to allow players to collect tickets and then award the top x amount of players $X, a lot of players seem to go for promotions like that. As said already, plain deposit/reload bonuses will just attract bonus whores who will cash out as soon as they receive their bonuses. You need to offer continuous (however unique) promotions that will keep players on your site more frequently. Obviously an attractive RB deal is nice, but most players don't even know what RB is. You're better off offering explicit promotions that are well known by your entire customer base (and advertised elsewhere) that will draw players to play and compete for prizes and $$. As another example: Even though it seemed lame, Party's scratchcard promotion had my interest as well as many others'. Honestly, I think it encouraged a lot of play and is less costly to you, the site owner (since not everyone wins). You just have to make sure to deliver the bonus prizes or products promptly and to enough people to draw attention (i.e. if players see countless posts here that say "I can't seem to win anything," many will be discouraged to play.").

Bottom line, in my opinion, is that you need to get creative. For all that Party has done wrong, this is an area that I believe they are starting to do right.

[darkcore]

i am willing to play an 10x first deposit bonus on any network/site with decent traffic i haven't played before, - as long as any raked hand counts.
and a box of condoms might help, too. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

an 5x bonus will get my attention on any network for sure.

and as uglyowl pointed out, clearing bonuses with sngs/mtts-fees nicely helps a lot. in fact, this is the reason party gets exactly zero of my tourny play.

the more interesting (and far more difficult to answer) question is "what must a site over/have that i am willing to keep playing?", though.

[GoCubsGo]

I don't do 10x unless it's at my home site. 7x, depends on the site, what percentage of hands are counted towards the total needed. 5x I will probably do, assuming the software is decent and there are some fish at the site. Pokertracker is a must.

[TCBSTEVE]

I think you'll find 10x is fine with most players IF you don't make it contributed and not to difficult to clear. Keep the min rake for a hand to count at no more than .25. Then as another poster stated, you've got to get them to stay. One of the best ways i think to do that is with frequent reloads. You don't have to get crazy. Something like 20% up to $75 max would work. You also might want to look at something on a monthly continuos basis as done on Sun, Pokerplex, and Interpoker.

[threeonefour]

i am not going to add any content. but i would just like to say that i plan on trying out your site really soon simply because you are always here on 2+2 trying to help out the players. you really seem like a stand up guy. keep up the good work.

regards,
threeonefour

[lumpy19]

[ QUOTE ]
i am not going to add any content. but i would just like to say that i plan on trying out your site really soon simply because you are always here on 2+2 trying to help out the players. you really seem like a stand up guy. keep up the good work.

regards,
threeonefour

[/ QUOTE ]

I had similar thoughts about 3 months ago and still haven't signed up. I want to but there are soooo many other sites out there and I'm not a full time player, its tough.

[Spy Dog]

[ QUOTE ]
Last time we put out a deposit bonus, we got excoriated for using a 10X rate, even if it was incremental.

What are some current, player attractive market rates for clearing deposit bonuses ?

[/ QUOTE ]

I want to make 10-12 cents per hand at the 3/6 and 5/10 6-max tables from a bonus.

[MadMat]

I'll do a 5x raked at any site, up to 10x at most, more than 10x raked and the games have to be really soft for me to be interested.

I really must get around to opening a truepoker account, Sites that take the time and effort to have a rep usefully posting here regularly should see some benefit from it!

Mat

[imitation]

market rate should be relative to rake because any smaller site is competing with %25 rakeback at party, so you must beat that and then some at any limit to compensate for the wide game selection at party + the fact that it often offers it's own bonuses. Also no rate greater than 25c min rake 10x will appeal to any player playing low limits (.5/1 to 2/4)

[KSOT]

I think this has been said before, but I don't wander off to random new sites unless their bonuses are 5x.

I don't even know what network Truepoker is on, but I'd definitely have to sign up for a 5x bonus. That's the only reason I ever played at Bet365 and now that they changed it to 10x, I cashed out and left.

[Eder]

To get me back to your site I would want min 10x non contr, non incremental. I am busy all month at various sites that offer at least this deal or better, but I do love Truepoker and look forward to dropping in there. Perhaps a 10% reload up to $100 is fine.

Your truly,
A degenerate filthy whore

[Regis]

For a site with easy games....

5x is excellent
7x is very good
10x is good.

For a site where the games are not so easy, adjust from there.

Bet365 got everybody's attention with the 5x they ran for several months even though Prima games are not exactly soft. Now that's it's moved to 10x, I will continue to play there, as long as I can do OK on the games.

Having RB adds to the package also.

[bpb]

Absolute and paradise do 10x raked hands for all their bonuses.

Party does 5x for initial deposit bonus, and 5x-10x for reloads.


Part of the problem with this system is that someone playing $.5/1 full ring is clearing bonuses at the same rate as someone who plays 10/20SH. Assuming $1 avg rake (high estimate probably) at the .5/1 full and $2 avg rake at the 10/20 SH ... the SH player is contributing .33 cents/raked hand vs the .1 cent/raked hand of the full ring lower limit player.

Some sites such as the Gaming Club and Titan Poker have a system where the number of raked hands needed to clear the bonus is scaled according to the limit played. I think this is a much fairer system. In addition, it protects your site from getting bonus whored to death. You set the criteria such that regardless of the limit someone is playing, their bonus of $x is released when they're paid $>x dollars in rake.

If you have a flat raked hand requirement, and set that requirement such that you aren't losing money on the $.5/1 players, then you are screwing over the higher limit players. This gives them less incentive to play there, and you end up having tons of unprofitable microlimit games(ie ... you are paying out more in bonus than you are raking on those tables).

[thing85]

I would say on most sites, particularly ones with tighter play, .5/1 full games average rake more around .25-.50. I rarely see a $1 rake taken in a .5/1 game.

[TruePoker CEO]

... is your preferred return based upon all hands dealt or raked hands ?

[TruePoker CEO]

Ouch ..... "random new site"

That is reflective of our lack of marketing to date.

[bpb]

[ QUOTE ]
... is your preferred return based upon all hands dealt or raked hands ?

[/ QUOTE ]

By raked hands I mean hands where you are dealt cards and the pot is raked. I prefer this to counting only raked hands where the play contributes to the pot.

I don't see how you can offer a bonus that counts hands that aren't raked. This would make it too easy for a fraudulent group of players to fill a table and post and fold their way to clearing the bonus.

[TruePoker CEO]

"non contr"

... meaning what ?

To make sure I understand the phrasing, let me give an example:

Say a site offers a deposit which pays out at a rate of $15 per 100 raked hands played, with the entire balance paid when you hit X raked hands, where X = 100X(Bonus amount/$15).

Is that a 6.67X bonus which is non-incremental ? .... But what is non-contr ?

[TruePoker CEO]

You can win a WSOP Seat and trip for absolutely free. .... the WSOP4Free Series runs every day.

Step 1 Win a 10 player S&G versus play money players, go to step 2 for free

Step 2 Win a 400 player Multi-table versus play money players, go to Step 3 for free

Step 3 Win one of the Seats available in our March 22 WSOP SuperSatellite, one WSOP Trip/Seat for every 13 entrants. Our last SS gave out three seats, one went to a guy who never paid a dime, but won his way in for free.

Although, you might be too busy playing against Thousands of full time players at those other sites.

Maybe we could offer a Free WSOP Seat to a drawing or tourney winner among all FTDs .....

Just a thought.

[TruePoker CEO]

"If you could implement a way to allow players to collect tickets and then award the top x amount of players $X, a lot of players seem to go for promotions like that."

Sounds like a VIP pool

Thanks for the insights.

"you need to get creative"

You didn't like our Truepoker condoms offer ?

[TruePoker CEO]

"just give incremental rakeback instead - the more rake a player generates the higher % he gets back"

That seems to be the basic economics of VIP bonus programs.

[MicroBob]

some sites to 'contributed to pot' only.

This means that you don't get credit for being dealt in pre-flop if you fold.
you actually have to bet money on that hand for it to count.

Bodog was like this for awhile I believe.
And Pacific still does it this way I think.


Obviously 'contributing' to the pot is going to be disadvantageous to the tighter players out there.
Just getting to clear the bonus because you are dealt cards AND the hand happens to be raked is the preferred way to do it.



Some of the cryptos used to do it where the hand didn't even have to be raked to count.
If you did something like this I'm sure the bonus-whores would come flocking though.


I noticed that the points-structure at true was changed a few months ago (so that you only get fractional points if hand is raked less than $1).
Do all raked-hands count equally for clearing a bonus? or are you getting some sort of fraction of a raked-hand in that department too?

This is a big factor for some players.


Pokertracker compatibility and 2d version would be preferred also but this has already been mentioned before of course.


FWIW - others have stated that they would like you to come up with some more creative promotions.
I think that True has some of the more creative promotions out there already (all the freerolls for the various higher-status players, the tournament-standings promotions, etc).
But if you were to copy some of the promotions that Party, cryptos (and others) have been doing lately that would be interesting and potentially helpful to your site too.

[FlyWf]

Only hands in which you contributed to the pot count as raked hands. BoDog is pretty much the only site that still does this, but the Prima skins used to use contributed heavily.

Absolute has an absolutely endless string of 10x, Paradise also pumps out a decent amount of 10xs, so at the worst 10x. I suspect you got complaints for the 10x back when people could remember Party and Empire handing out 5x reloads. Now 7x is the good Party clearance rate and 10x is common.

Oh, yeah, increase the tourney bonus clearance rates. At least 50% when clearing a bonus. 10x raked hands with 70%+ tourney rakeback should go over pretty nicely.

[TruePoker CEO]

"I am getting 35-50% elsewhere in tournament bonus"

We will look at that as we do want to boost our torunament play .... It has been building and we are promoting it heavily this month, a good promo value for a really good S&G player)

Rake at Party/PStars $2-$4

We will look at pot sizes for $2-4 play. (Interesting that Party has retained a $.50 rake on a $5.00 pot at $1-2, and jumps to $.75 at $12.00, their returns must be phenomenal at those rates. We will look at the rake on our $1-2 game as well, but we will certainly stay well under Party's structure at that level.)

[livinitup0]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
... is your preferred return based upon all hands dealt or raked hands ?

[/ QUOTE ]

By raked hands I mean hands where you are dealt cards and the pot is raked. I prefer this to counting only raked hands where the play contributes to the pot.

I don't see how you can offer a bonus that counts hands that aren't raked. This would make it too easy for a fraudulent group of players to fill a table and post and fold their way to clearing the bonus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop please....this is not the opinion of most players.

Ok I signed up an account at TP a long time ago (before you could multi-table) If you guys want traffic you guys need to have continual reloads along with MGR sharing that isnt deducted. Absolute would have died a long time ago if they werent offering this.

Plus you could let your props play where they want and pay them a good rate. Im not going to work there if the manager is "forcing" me to play somewhere I dont want to. You dont have enough traffic to do that. This would increase traffic, especially at 1/2 and 2/4 where most of these N00b props want to play. You arent going to get a lot of 3/6 and over players either playing Full time there so I dont know why your props cant play at any table. At least the ones without a waiting list.

I really like TP actually, your support rocks and the animation avatar deal just attracts retarded players (+EV)
If you are interested in discussing your prop situation more in detail please PM me. Im interested in this and think it could really give a boost to TP. Plus you need to to have PokerTracker capabilities....this is a major thing.

[BigPoppa]

If you had a monthly 10x raked hands bonus, you'd see people adding you to their monthly routines.

If it was 7x, you'd see everyone doing so.


Another option is a bonus like that at Pokerroom and its skins, in which a 10x bonus is essentially 70 rakeback (you get more points when the pot is raked more, up to 2.1 for a $3 max rake).

[Eder]

I'm looking forward to a regular 10x reload...I have generally taken advantage of your previous reload intending to whore at 1-2 but end up playing 5-10 since the games are soft. It just goes against my grain to play on any site unless clearing a decent bonus of some type.

I think prop players would be unnessary if a regular reload was adopted.

[mbishop]

[ QUOTE ]
If you could implement a way to allow players to collect tickets and then award the top x amount of players $X, a lot of players seem to go for promotions like that.

[/ QUOTE ]
Promotion wise, I feel its a lot better to do something like this with a drawing for prizes. The top players have more tickets, so they have a better chance of winning, but anybody who plays has some chance. And then maybe a lot of players will play a little extra to increase their chances, not realizing that they are still long shots. When Party ran this top number of tickets thing, I think most people knew they had absolutely no chance, so it didn't get them to play extra. The people who did have a chance were already playing so many hands it didn't make a difference to them either.

[MicroBob]

I would not play more for 'just a chance' to win something.

I suspect that many 2+2'ers are the same.


I would likely avoid any site where the only additional incentive was to just play for a 'chance' at something.

[thing85]

Realize that when I spoke of this originally, I wasn't talking about a "chance" as some random event. In the Party promotion (the recent ticket one) you basically knew where you stood. Only those who don't interact with other poker players regularly (so this excludes 2+2ers) had no solid sense of where they stood.

[MicroBob]

Yes.

but this is different than say, the latest Party BJ raffle promotion where you got a ticket for some sort of drawing for however many BJ hands you played (or something like that).


Prima and other places seem to 'chance' type promotions.

"10 players on our site will get 100% rake-back for their play on Thursday. The more you play then the more you could get back."

Stuff like that sucks and will never attract me to play there.


The Party scratch-card was kind of sucky imo (I went 0-for-4 though).
The Party 'lucky for some' was really weird in that I went 0-for-3 while other players got $75 or $100 on 3 straight days.



Earning 'most points' or 'most tickets' are decent promotions (and it becomes more 'chance' if there is not leader-board such as how Party did it for the tickets for trips or better).

But some of the other 'play X amount and you will qualify to have a chance to win this' is not ideal and I think True and other sites need to be careful to not go in that direction.

[Fraubump]

[ QUOTE ]

Prima and other places seem to 'chance' type promotions.

Stuff like that sucks and will never attract me to play there.


[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. I mean, for all we know, things like this could be a scam and nobody wins or there fewer winners than advertised, etc.

[DoomSlice]

And the fact that your table software just plain scares me.

Simple is safe.

[MicroBob]

Forgot to mention that UB has been doing a lot of these also (in a semi-similar way anyway).

They have those Player Appreciation days where at 12:00 they give 10 people a free hat, then at 1:00 they give 10 people $25 bonus-dollars (which is probably more ridiculous than the hat) then at 2:00 they give away 10 auographed copies of an Annie Duke or Phil Hellmuth book or something.


i can't imagine that these days attract much more play there. Yet they continue to offer them (I get e-mails over and over) and I think their marketing energies should be used to something a bit more constructive and that gives the players a bit more value.


If they really want to reward their players then don't give them a ridiculously poor chance at winning a stupid Phil Hellmuth book.

[StacysMom]

10x bonus is very acceptable. Anything less and you'll get whored pretty hard. As for promotions, I prefer promotions that don't require me to do stuff out of the ordinary. I like to play full ring limit. On Stars for example, I get rewarded with "platinum freeroll." Except, now Im forced into NL tournament instead of my normal game. Not only does this annoy me, for that time, Im not at the table paying rake... my .02

[excession]

Well most ViP Programs you have a hard time turning ViP points into cash - I mean you can get sweatshirts and entry into MTT's with them - but when you work out the $ equivalents they usually suck pretty badly.
Also they are usually awarded by whole or quarter point basis - e.g. $1 rake = 1 pt, 25c-.99c = 1/4 pt etc. which means the low stake players and higher stake ones often lose out in comparison to the mid-stake ones.

An actual progressive RB based on the amount of rake a player actually generates for you in a given month would be simply fairer and more transparent for all.

What I don't know is if you are a skin (and so only keep a proportion of the rake anyway) or actually would be able to offer RB at truly attractive levels for the highest rake-generating players.

According to my PT 10,000 hands of a mid stake game like $200 6 max generates $1600 or so in rake.

A semi-pro putting in 30 hrs/week 4 tabling that game at say 70 hands/hr is playing approx 35,000 hands/month

That is $5600 worth of rake.

The questions are:
1) How much can that player make by either spreading his play around various sites or by playing non-stop at one site? (ie what can you make either by bonus-whoring 35k of 6 max hands/month or by signing up and running with Party/Stars or another VIP program) and
2) Can you better that? How much can you afford to give back?

[mbishop]

[ QUOTE ]
I would not play more for 'just a chance' to win something.

I suspect that many 2+2'ers are the same.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, I agree completely. I wouldn't either.

Fortunately for all of us, there are a lot of non 2+2ers playing out there. My opinion was such a promotion might appeal more to the masses. I guess my point was that if a site were going to do devote effort to a "special promotion" there may be more value (to the site) to come up with a promotion for all the players. But if they can do VIP promos to, nothing wrong with that.

[mbishop]

For some reason I got the impression that a lot of 2+2ers saw most of those promotions as kind of "gimicky", though I don't know what I based that on. But if people do really like these, I've got no problem with it.

[LinusKS]

I'd look at Stars, if it were me. They have no affiliates, no rake-back, and no first deposit bonus, but they rival Party.

Instead, they offer low rakes, good software, and native English speaking customer support.

[rsigley]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd look at Stars, if it were me. They have no affiliates, no rake-back, and no first deposit bonus, but they rival Party.

Instead, they offer low rakes, good software, and native English speaking customer support.

[/ QUOTE ]

doesn't hurt to have the last three WSOP champs promoting your site either

[AceofSpades]

Of course stars already has a large player base. I think once you hit critical mass with % of players where a player at low and medium stakes can play as many games as they want at any time, then you really don't need bonuses as much. But before you reach that stage you have to have extra to attract players.

I think 7x is a pretty good rate, but 5x to $100 would definitely cause me to register and play there. I don't really bonuswhore much so I would probably keep playing there if you had adequate game selection, and good software. Also you might want to consider a no deposit bonus that you can't withdraw (just withdraw winnings) say $20 which might attract players that don't play at any sites. I know this is how I started playing online poker with the $10 at royal vegas. Of course I did end up busting out, but at least that creates a relationship with the players and your site.

Joseph

[Spy Dog]

[ QUOTE ]
... is your preferred return based upon all hands dealt or raked hands ?

[/ QUOTE ]

All hands dealt.

[TruePoker CEO]

Thanks for the information.

(We already allow any player who plays 1500 raked hands average to convert our TruePoints to cash, albiet at about $.01 per hand. What we are looking at is a better program for VIPs.)

Your estimate of $1600 in rake being generated from 10,000 6 player hands implies $.16 x 6 or $.96 in rake per (raked ?) hand on average ..... What would the current rate for a VIP program/rakeback/or whatever send back your way ?

[TruePoker CEO]

Thanks.

[TruePoker CEO]

"Only hands in which you contributed to the pot count as raked hands. "

Thanks, I had forgotten that sites ever did that.

We never have, never will ... because we try and frame promotions to allow you to play a "regular" game. If you show up and play, we are happy to pay.

The only exception to our "regular game" rule was when David Sklansky wanted us to try a 7-2 promotion, paying a bonus for any winning hand shown, with 7-2 in the pocket. It was pretty funny because we had $15-30 players playing any 7-2 to the river ..... think maybe our bonus was too high.

David

[TruePoker CEO]

As always, Bob, thanks.

"I noticed that the points-structure at true was changed a few months ago (so that you only get fractional points if hand is raked less than $1).
Do all raked-hands count equally for clearing a bonus? or are you getting some sort of fraction of a raked-hand in that department too?"

Prior to November, we did not rake any hands for less than $1.00, as we did not have "chips" below that amount. We have since introduced micro limit games, and give a proportional fractional "raked hand" credit for pots raked less than a dollar.

I thought of another point to ask:

Does any site stack a bonus on top of a rakeback, so the player gets both from the same hand ?

[TruePoker CEO]

We also do a lot of that, reward ring game players with a freeroll tournament. That seems to have been driven in the industry by two things: tradition/inertia (not a good reason)and by the relatively large prizes a tourney promotion can advertise.

I have tried to get away from that, which is leading to a VIP program in lieu of promos. Alternatively, we could allow a player to sell his "promo tourney" seat and have done so on occasion.

[MadMat]

[ QUOTE ]
We also do a lot of that, reward ring game players with a freeroll tournament. That seems to have been driven in the industry by two things: tradition/inertia (not a good reason)and by the relatively large prizes a tourney promotion can advertise.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've never been a fan of promotions for ring games being tourneys, even freerolls, I've always felt that I'd probably make more money just playing my regular game than playing the "bonus" freerolls - but then my tourney play leaves more than a little to be desired!

One suggestion - if you are looking for a way to reward regular ring game players, how about a point system that allows points to be converted to amazon vouchers? should be pretty simple to set up and administer, much less overhead than aquiring and shipping promotional stuff yourself too!

I've come to quite enjoy the amazon vouchers I get as promos from places like Pokersource online and Ecasinodeals, and judging by the popularity of those sites with poker players I'm not the only one!

Mat

[BigPoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
Does any site stack a bonus on top of a rakeback, so the player gets both from the same hand ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolute does not subtract bonus from MGR.

UB only subtracts 1/4 of bonus from MGR.

Most others subtract the full bonus from MGR, but you may still end up with a positive MGR and be owed rakeback. A Pokerroom 10x bonus is approximately 70% rakeback for full ring, so you'd still get rakeback on the 30% profit the room made off your play even on the hands used to clear a bonus. If the room actually lost money on your hands used to clear a bonus (such as clearing a Party bonus at $.50/1), then you'd have a negative balance that would count against other rakeback earned.

[Nick-Zack]

[ QUOTE ]


Pokertracker compatibility and 2d version would be preferred also but this has already been mentioned before of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

This has been mentioned before as Bob said, but these are really important to get some players there. I just don't play at any site that isn't PT compatible.

[TomBrooks]

[ QUOTE ]
I just don't play at any site that isn't PT compatible.

[/ QUOTE ]
I also don't care about freerolls or chances at winning something. I just look at the bonus offer and rakeback situation.

[Beavis68]

5x is incredible.

7x is extra special

10x is fine for a site I enjoy playing and has games I like.

10x is great for me on paradise because the games are profitble anyway.

10x on AP sucks becuase I have to play above my comfort zone to find Stud8b and O8b games most times, and the games are very tight.

If you don't have Stud8b or Omaha8b running regularly and want me on your site it would need to be 5x.

[mmmpoker]

I'm currently a 0.0/+1.5 Ev Player. I played a lot a sites for their sign-up bonus to build my bankroll. I currently play a lot of Prima FL at 1/2 (2/4 when there is a full-ring)due to a few reasons.

1. The regular reloads are my profit.
2. Non-contributed raked hands at 0.25.
3. The games are fast.

Even at 0.50/1 I can clear the bonus reasonably easily and at that level make a profit from my play.

I'd also need to use Poker Tracker. I'm not sure how CPU intensive True Poker is, but I dislike playing Crypto because of the constant disconnections and the fact is at 1/2 FL their monthly bonus is more like 20x (with the exception of Willaim Hill)

Any reload at around 0.25 raked hand,10x non-contributed is acceptable to me. However, between the Party and Prima reloads I'm pretty busy.

Before BET365 reneged on its promotion, I also liked the raked hand requirements for freerolls and the monthly freeroll of 30K

Any offer that combined rakeback and 10x reload at 0.25 non-contributed raked hand would be outstanding.

I think sites should remember that any reasonable player will intend to move up in levels and raked hands at 1.00 are unreachable for beginners. I will remember sites that looked after me when I played lower limits.

[MrWookie]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the information.

(We already allow any player who plays 1500 raked hands average to convert our TruePoints to cash, albiet at about $.01 per hand. What we are looking at is a better program for VIPs.)

Your estimate of $1600 in rake being generated from 10,000 6 player hands implies $.16 x 6 or $.96 in rake per (raked ?) hand on average ..... What would the current rate for a VIP program/rakeback/or whatever send back your way ?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have never played on your site, but here are some ideas thoughts, and things that would get my attention about wanting to play there.

I think that Stars actually has done a good thing by disallowing rakeback. The less you get bad players thinking about losing money, the better. Their VIP program is competitive when you consider the value for their schwag, but most high level players just want cold hard cash, especially the ring players like me. I would never even give a serious thought to joining any site where their signature promotion was a mega tourney in exchange for points earned or whatever, no matter how good. Limit ring players generate immense rake, but since virtually every tourney is NL (and a tournament), few ring players think they'll get any appreciable value out of them.

What we both want is a system that encourages new players to sign up, that encourages the casual players to play a little more, and offers a sufficiently compelling incentive for high volume mid and high stakes players to leave their current incentives and join you. I suggest a system that's reminiscent of Stars' VIP program, but instead of giving out trinkets, give out cash. I don't know exactly what sort of point system you have set up or how much rake one tends to generate per point, but here is rough sketch of what I propose. I trust you can work out the exact numbers based on what you have in place.

1.) Have a coupon where a player can redeem X points for $50-$100. The number of points would be comparable to a 7-10x reload bonus. Players can only redeem their points in this manner once every three months, say. There is no requirement to earn all these points in a single month, as there will be in the next entries.

2.) Have a second coupon where if a player earns enough points that corresponds to about 3-5k total hands (not just raked hands) of 2/4 limit (more points for higher limits, fewer for lower) in a single month, they can redeem their points for what corresponds to roughly 20% of the rake that would be generated while earning that many points.

3.) Set the next level at a number of points corresponding playing 8-10k hands in a single month. Give these players roughly 25% of the rake they generate.

4.) Next level: 12-15k hands or so in a single month, 30% of their rake.

5.) Finally, 20k hands in a single month, 35% of their rake.

All of the bonuses that require people to earn X points in a month could be redeemed multiple times per month, but it'd be foolish for the users to do so. It'd be just in case someone wasn't sure they'd be playing so much, but then they logged some more.

The beauty of this system is that it is completely devoid of the word rake. Users who aren't in the know just see earning points by playing lots of hands and getting money. Users who are interested in rakeback can work out the math and figure out just how good your percentage is. Furthermore, this system explicitly offers something to lower volume players while strongly encouraging them to play more. Even better for you: if a player only plays 9k hands in a month and misses out on level 2, then you only end up paying him or her at the level 1 rate for their first 5k hands. Thus, you can make an offer that looks more enticing than a traditional affiliate rakeback scheme if someone earns exactly the right number of points, but you'll profit more because people won't. But for us as pros and semipros, we see a cleverly disguised 35% rakeback and start drooling. Heck, if you want to really turn some heads, kick the percentages at the top (or all) levels up by 5%. You could even consider adding a higher level, for 25-30k hands or more in a month. Ooooh, I just got another idea: if a player reaches a certain number of total points accumulated in a year, then you can let their cash redemption points roll over from month to month for the next year. This will further encourage people to play more, because when they do, they'll be able to save them up for the big pay out. Do you currently have a store that gives out shirts and crap? Overflow or otherwise unredeemed points from the monthly things could readily be transferred to be used only in the store, but can no longer be redeemed for cash.

Ooooh, still yet another idea: first month or two of implementing this program, you knock some points off of the requirend number of points per level to redeem to really get the word out.

This sort of tiered plan can readily be tweaked in terms of the percentages, the numbers of points for each level, and the frequence w/ which the 7x bonus can be cashed in to strike a good balance between being profitable for you, and being enticing to all players. You know your player base and your cash flow numbers better than I do.

I appreciate you taking the time to consider this. I, and I'm sure many players here, would give serious consideration to moving a good fraction or all of our play that offered such a compelling pseudo-rakeback scheme.

[Cry Me A River]

Well, I'm a sucker for a big meta-thread and there've been some good posts so far so here my two cents (okay, a lengthy two cents).

I think the key here is to identify the types of players you want your bonus structure to attract. I'll devide these into three different player types:

Pros and Semi-Pros: Take the game seriously and their livelyhood may depend on it.
Bonus Whores: Move quickly from bonus offer to bonus offer and will not stay at a site unless playing for bonus.
Fish: Casual players to degenerate gamblers.

The single biggest piece of advice I can give you is that when you implement a bonus structure, you implement a structure you can live with even if 100% of the players who take advantage of it are bonus whores. The absolute worst thing you can do is implement a bonus structure that is too generous for your site and then you wind up jerking around players like Martin's Poker and Bet365 OR you wind up revising your bonus downwards, again like Bet365, to what is really a pretty standard bonus but because your bonus was previously so good it now looks like crap. I'm not a bonus whore, I seldom chase bonuses except for sites I normally play at. However, a site which can't abide by it's own bonus offers quickly falls into the 'shady' category. Given the inherant shaky nature of the online poker business and the amount of competition, being labelled 'shady' is the absolute kiss of death.

The second biggest advice, and this has been mentioned to a degree but I want to emphasise it, is that bonus quality is relative. A site with tons of players, soft games, great table selection and excellent software doesn't need nearly as aggressive a bonus as a small site filled with rocks running on crappy software. You need to objectively assess where your site lies in this continuum and set your bonus accordingly.

Back to the those player types, and what I belive you need to do to attract them. I'll start with the simplest:


Bonus whores: A 5X bonus will attract every whore on the planet. A 7X bonus will attract most whores. A 10X bonus will attract some whores, depending upon the overall quality of your site. You really need to be aware of the downsides of attracting a bunch of whores - namely you're not going to make much, if any money off them and in many cases whores will cost you money. On the plus side, attracting a bunch of whores may be cheaper for you than paying props. It certainly seems to work for Absolute and Crypto.

If you want to attract whores, in a sustainable way, I'd suggest something around an 8X monthly reload bonus. For whores and pros/semi-pros the % amount of the reload is basically irrelevant (except for maybe n00b semi-pros with small bankrolls) and the $ value of the reload merely dictates how long they stay at the site before moving on. Something like a monthly 8X 50% reload to $100 would serve to drive steady whoring traffic to your site and should be sustainable (?) If you want a longer playthrough, make it a $200 bonus. Or, take a page from Absolute and make them bi-weekly or weekly. If you announced a weekly reload (as opposed to Absolute, whose reloads come almost weekly but are not advertised as such) even at $50 a week I expect it'd make some noise. It would also avoid the Crypto-effect where the first few days of the month the site fills up with whores but by the second week is back to normal.


Fish: I won't pretend to understand the way fish really think, but my impression is that their primary attraction to a site comes from A) advertising and B) The site their friends are playing on (or the site they were first recommened by a friend). You're already making inroads in advertising (though I personally can't stand the truepoker.net tv ad - If it was up to me, instead of using live actors playing the site's avatars I'd use the site's avatars themselves to act out the commercial in its entirety. Actually show off the SGI of the site, either using the existing script OR expanding upon the bios of the avatars (ie: short vignettes of the avatars leading up to their joining the poker game -> Or, what they do with their winnings after the game))

Reloads are probably important as well, particularly for fish who loose money, and the reload % is probably going to be important, I'd expect anything under 50% is probably not going to be significant enough so something like that 8X 50% is probably a minimum to have an impact. However, I think the biggest potential for innovation is refer-a-friend type promotions, particularly amongst college aged players where if you can get one player in to try the site you can quickly spread among the whole dorm. Every site has a referral program and they're mostly really boring and under advertised.

How about you do the normal referral bonus $, but in addition the 5 (or 10 or 20) players with the most referrals that month AND all the players he referred get entry into some kind of freeroll. For added fun you could bounties of some kind on associated players - ie: If Bob referred Fred, Mike and Ralph then if Bob knocks Fred, Mike or Ralph out he's awarded a $10 bounty. If Fred knocks Bob, Mike or Ralph out he gets a $10 bounty. And etc. You could fix the seeding so that associated players are less likely to start out at the same tables (probably not possible to eliminate this completely unless you have REALLY large freerolls). If you wanted to avoid spending a ton of money of this (and avoid dupe account abuse), you could just reward bonus dollars instead of real dollars, bonus dollars that would need to be cleared at the normal clearance rate.


Pros and semi-pros: This is, by far, the most difficult segement to attract as it is the most discerning. A new bonus structure may not even be the best way to go about it. This is the group into which I'd place myself, and it's pretty clear that the order of importance in attracting the customer is as follows:

1) Quality of games and table selection
2) Software quality, particularly ease of multi-tabling
3) Pokertracker compatibility
4) Rakeback
5) Bonuses


1) through 4) are fairly close while IMHO 5) needs to be quite significant to make up for deficiencies in 1) to 4). Simply put, there are an awful lot of sites who score well in 1) to 4) and who also offer reasonable bonuses that there's very little reason to settle for less. Stars is a big exception here in that they don't offer rakeback, however they do everything else so well that their VIP/FPP program which offers a lot of nice products makes the lack of rakeback tolerable.

If you want to attract more pros and semi-pros, I really think you'd be far, far better served implementing Pokertracker compatibility and improving multi-tabling (2D view) than worrying about bonuses. For many, many serious players Pokertracker is an absolute deal breaker that would require a 5X bonus or better to overcome.

That being said, assuming those issues were dealt with, I'd suggest you offer a competive, progressive rakeback scheme directly through the site. There are a handfull of sites which offer rakeback (which is kind of silly, if you're going to offer everyone X% rakeback, why not just reduce the rake X%?) however with most sites you need to go through an affilite who may or may not be reliable and who may or may not be subject to getting cut off at any time (ie: Party a few months ago). Offering a sliding scale rakeback that's completely above board would probably be welcome. Hey, credit card companies do it with cash back on purchases based on volume, why not you?

The structure would work something like:

X hands = A% rakeback
Y hands = B% rakeback
Z hands = C% rakeback
etc.

(Instead of hands you could do dollars paid in rake but I think you risk alienating fishy players if you highlight how much they're paying in rake)

I haven't offered any numbers as I have no idea what you need to cover your nut, however keep in mind the going rate on rakeback and obviously it depends on how your rake compares to other sites: ie: if your rake is significantly lower than Party's then you shouldn't need to offer as much a % of rakeback. However, if your rake is higher then you're going to need to be more aggressive in rake back. Keep in mind, everyone's using Pokertracker and knows exactly how much they're paying in rake.



In summary, this is what I would suggest you do:

- Get Pokertracker compatibility fixed ASAP. This is your number one priority. Next some sort of 2D interface. It doesn't have to be pretty (see Ultimate Bet and Prima's mini-views. Nobody cares that they're both butt-ugly).

- An aggressive and creative refer-a-friend promotion. Freerolls for top referrers, maybe branded merch for top referrers (or raffles for branded merch where each referral gets you a ticket in the draw, more tickets = more chances to win). Guerilla marketting on college campuses...

- A weekly $50 8X reload bonus. I wouldn't fix this to any particular day, just make it so a player must wait a week between reloads for a new bonus. So for example, if I deposited today (Tuesday at 5pm) I'd get a 50% reload to $50. Then anytime after NEXT Tuesday at 5pm if I deposited again, I'd be eligable for another 50% 8X reload. This will help prevent bonus whore clumping as players will tend to be depositing on different days. If $200/month is too rich, go for $25 a week. On second thought, will this frequency of reloads kill you with Neteller fees? If so, just stick with the monthly reload. However, I really like the idea of fish being able to reload every week-end and then gamble it all away... Maybe instead of waiting a week between deposits, you could simply "reset the clock" every Saturday (or maybe Friday would be better!). So your first deposit between Saturday(Friday) and the Friday(Thursday) of the next week would be eligable for the reload. And this would reset the next week. Or just have a reload every Friday evening...

- A "progressive rakeback" (I really like this term!) scheme that gives a higher rakeback % based on volume of play. In particular, give mid an high limit players incentive to stick around past the bonus ($50 a week bonus is peanuts to high limit and many mid-limit players anyway).

[excession]

^^^^^^^
great post

[kdog]

[ QUOTE ]
^^^^^^^
great post

[/ QUOTE ]

[TCBSTEVE]

[ QUOTE ]
... is your preferred return based upon all hands dealt or raked hands ?

[/ QUOTE ]No site gives anything on a "dealt hand" wheres theres no rake. No, even half way serious poker player would expect you to give anykind of credit for a hand thats not raked. You can't afford to do that and we know that. One dealt hand with no rake does'nt sound like much, but when that ONE hand is dealt thousands of times a day, it turns in to huge numbers of no revenue. Heres the bottom line, give bonus whores like myself a fairly easy to clear 5x - 10x bonus with frequent reloads and we will come play and stay. One other thing thats critical is not having to contribute to the pot. Given credit for a raked hand when you're dealt cards in a hand where the pot is RAKED. A min of .25 rake for a hand to count is reasonable. .25 is the min. for a hand to count at most Prima sites.

[maxtower]

TruePoker CEO,

I tried to PM, but your box is full. I would move to your site requiring no bonuses if you offered the following...

1. Multitabling
2. No-limit SNGs that have better payout structures than party or stars. What I mean by better is a structure that pays out more than 30% of the participants. I play hundreds of games a month and this would greatly reduce my bankroll variance. For example, I now play a 6 handed NL game that pays out top 3, or 50% of the participants. So 1st gets 50% of the pot, 2nd gets 30%, and third gets 20%.

Of course one feature I am waiting on from a poker site is a "design your own tourney" structure. Why shouldn't I be able to type in the blind level increase rates, buyin amount, payout structure, and number of seats. Seems like that would be really easy to implement. Just fix the rake at 10% of the buyin.

Max

[BigPoppa]

One more thing....let SNG and MTT buyins clear more than 10% of the vig in bonus.

I think the $.50 in bonus cleared for each $1 in vig that a Pokerroom 10x pays should be about right.