[1p0kerboy]

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To offer a counter opinion on this briefly...

If you buy something in a shop using a credit card, the shop itself does not receive 100% of the money you are charged. Usually, a small percentage goes to a credit card processor - maybe 3%.

If you've bought plane tickets online (for example), you might have noticed that you're charged an extra few percent if you pay by credit card compared to debit card. That's the company trying to recover that money from you, because it represents a significant cost at the end of the year.

In online poker, it's the same, but depending on which payment processor is used, the fees can be much higher. Those of you who used NETeller InstaCash in the past might have been familiar with it's fee of 8.9% (which some sites reimbursed and some did not). Fees for deposits made with Western Union can exceed 30% in some cases.

Lets say you deposit $100. The poker site will give you the full $100, but might actually receive only $91. The way they recoup those losses is to charge entry fees and rake in cash games (it's no coincidence that the fee on a $100 tournament is $9 at many sites).

These are just example figures and might not be completely accurate, but you get the picture. I wanted to counter the argument that 'it only costs poker sites $0.01 to run a tournament, but they receive hundreds of dollars in rake'. In actual fact, a big online tournament may cost thousands of dollars to run when all costs are considered.

I should also point out that there used to be a poker site, RakeFree.com (I think that's the name) that offered a flat-rate option to players. However, it never took off, because it never got the casual players that feed a poker community. The best sites to play at are those that have lots of weak, recreational players - but to have lots of those players, it must be easy to deposit. Unfortunately, that costs money.

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What about just passing those fees along to those that are depositing?