[Sniper]

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mewse,

The best deal in Poker, is the site with the largest fish tank...

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i absolutely agree. Party is the best deal. But for a new/small poker site, how do they plan on attracting players? I THOUGHT by now someone would have bought up a site with a small player base, say cake poker, advertise the crap out of it and offer like 70% rakeback..... even 50%, or 40$%

It just seems like EVERY site is locked at 30. Isn't that weird to any of you?

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Not sure how long you have been playing, but the 30% standardization is recent... and it kind of developed over time.

The type of competition you envision was killing the "Networks"...

Starting with Party, as an example... they spent all this money bringing in customers and then bam their players slowly learn they can get rakeback at Empire... bam players start shifting, the network is preying on the master... plus the non-RB affiliates who drive the majority of customers are getting raped, as their players take their MGR to Empire for RB, whoops... Party shuts down its network and buysout its partners... bye bye RB at Party...

Another network, Prima, learns the same thing as RB affiliates get smart and put their own site on the network... whoops, now you can get 65% rakeback again by simply shifting which skin you play through... the skins that bring in all the new players start complaining.. bam, new rules, rakback cap...

Not to mention all the other things going on that are increasing site costs (UIGEA, Neteller, etc)... higher Expenses, Lower Rewards...

ps... While in network shifts are easy, the number of players that actually chase RB deals all the way to a different fish tank, is very small.

How does a site bring in players... not by competing for current players, thats a losers game... the avg lifespan of an internet poker player is like 9 months (maybe less). The only way to build traffic, is to attract NEW players... continuously!


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Take my example

Grocery store A is huge, great customer service, clean, and charges $5.00 for a loaf of bread.

Grocery store B is further away from town, not as good a selection..... so why would people shop there? Well, one way is to charge $4.00 for a load of bread.

See what i'm getting at here. It just seems like the sites aren't competing with each other

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You're not thinking this one thru... Most people will pay a buck more to get something 1 block away, rather than go out of their way to save a buck. [and this is generally the correct strategy, for anyone who values their time]


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afterthought:

The only conclusion i can come up with is that although most rakeback players are high volume, they don't make up for a significant portion of players.

Anyone have any idea of what % of players receive rakeback? My GUESS would be under 10%, but i'm completely shooting in the dark there.

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Correct, RB players are a small group in the aggregate, their numbers had been growing significantly though.

I'll add another factor, based on some collected info (roughly)...

The Avg MGR for a Poker player = $100/month
The Avg MGR for a Rakeback player = $400/month
We know that there are some players with significantly higher MGRs, so the mean must be lower on both.

Bottom Line: The only way to truly build a Poker Site, is to organically bring in New players... and those players aren't (for the most part) saying... Hmm there's a bunch of rooms which should I chose?... those new players see some ad, offline or online, decide to signup, and that's where they play...

Thoughts?