[BluffTHIS!]

WSEX GM,

I don't play on your site simply because the lack of players and good action and no games in the stakes I want to play, makes it not worth my time to do so. I play fulltime but I applaud your decision and your reasoning not to turn your site into a "strip mining operation". And the key here really is that even if you did charge rake, or institute rake in the future, the reasons you give would still be valid for not allowing datamining or overagressive use of software aids that come dangerously close to giving an unfair advantage (and even if you just provided a HUD to all the fish wouldn't know how to use it). Every major site that does charge rake should really examine their decisions not to take more aggressive steps to ban datamining or HUD type software, and extreme multitabling, because those things trade long term viability of their market for short term competitive rake revenue advantages.

If you can grow your site without all these weak-tight rocks who want to 12-table with software aids and datamining, and also offer the higher stakes I want to play, then I would welcome playing on your site. Sure you need a base of regular pros who can fill games, but you need the good types who really are pros and have some gamble in them and are willing to play shorter handed games, and not this bunch of [censored] grinders here who run from a table when it is "only" 8 handed and want to overfish the pond til it's empty.

And you have the right analytical skills to see all this. If you combined that with a willingness to grow your poker business into its own profit center by investing a lot of your other sports business money into an aggressive marketing campaign, and provided better customer service than party poker does, there isn't any reason you can't grow it to be a major competitor with them. It's not the rake free aspect party has to worry about with you or others, but the willingness to offer better customer service coupled with measures to insure a level playing field and discourage overly weak-tight play that they should be worrying about IF someone adds to all that an aggressive commitment to marketing that made party what it is despite all its shortcomings.