Has anyone read the bill by Barney Frank?

[LeapFrog]

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They will be eaten alive by the rake...

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Can someone please show me where in the bill it mentions what sites will be charging for rake?

[Jeffiner99]

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The rake won't raise to some ridiculous amount, it's 10% live and 5% online (approx), some sites it's 6%, on one it's 0%.

If it goes over live amounts, more people would go play live, which means they'd have to lower the fees. Other countries take takes from sites, their rake isn't 50% or some scary number.

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QFT.

The games will have to be competitive with B&M. Also, if the rake is set too high, there won't be any winning players. Without winning players, I think there won't be enough regulars to keep a lot of games going, which would doom the new sites.

Even B&M casinos know to drop the rake for six or fewer players. I think we'll be fine.

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How can online casinos be competitive if they take taxes out of your winnings every time you cash out and the B&M casinos don't? (See the bill, that is the requirement -- taxes must be taken out by the online operator at the time of any payouts.) Maybe the casinos will agree to drop to the rake to keep customers, but the US GOVT won't agree to drop the tax rate. Who is going to stick around? I sure won't play online anymore. Will you?
I am not talking about paying taxes at the end of the year, I am talking about them taking out taxes every time you cash out. Who will play online under those conditions?

[TheEngineer]

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Try reading the bill you are so gung-ho about.

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Who are you Jeffiner? For a brand new poster, you sure are pushy and aggressive with us. I'm not saying anything about you, but if I were pro-ban, I'd join gambling sites and make posts like yours to dissuade the poker community from supporting the Frank bill. Did your pastor put you up to this? Or your GA group?

Seems you think Rep. Frank is trying to destroy online gambling. You think he's now in the pocket of the the religious right?

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Sorry I haven't been here long enough to be a trusted poster. I did go to Harvard law school if that makes any difference.

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Is that where you learned to talk down to us?

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I am trying to get you all to think like lawyers.

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I guess they don't teach people skills at Harvard? I guess lil' ol' me will have to get by with my MBA and my engineering degrees. Oh, the humiliation.

Anyway, you sound very agitated over this. You really think Frank is now anti-gambling? You think Ron Paul is cosponsoring anti-gambling legislation? If you think this is an innocent oversight, why not contact Frank's office and help him with the legislation? His office isn't all that far from Harvard. I've called them three or so times with different issues since UIGEA passed and I can assure you they answer the phone on the first or second ring, and they're always very friendly and helpful. His aides clearly think they are supporting Internet gambling rights. I guess Rep. Frank didn't tell them it's a "trojan horse"?

One more question. What type of bill (that could pass Congress) would you propose? If it's good, why not forward it to Frank and Ron Paul?

[AP0CALYP5E]

If the sites have to tax your cash outs, it's just a simple matter to subtract your initial deposit, then tax the remaining money since that remaining amount is your profit.

You deposit $500. You build up to $800 then cashout. The site just has to tax the difference($300) which is what you profited.

Fish won't be affected because they they deposit more than they cashout.

[SwordFish]

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losing players actually benefit from not being able to net on a Sched. C, because the IRS doesn't allow C-filing gamblers to deduct losses in excess of their wins. They just report gross winnings as Other Income, and deduct losses. Losses in excess of winnings reduce their tax liability.

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Deducting gambling losses in excess of winnings is not allowed.


SF

[Mitch Evans]

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They will be eaten alive by the rake...

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Can someone please show me where in the bill it mentions what sites will be charging for rake?

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Excise tax? The government is going to try and get their hands on as much as they can, and the players are going to have to foot the bill. I mean, don't they have to write the fine print at some point?

No big deal, let's forget about that. Once again, look at Harrahs, which will probably be the leading online poker room. They bought the wsop and doubled the fee (3% to 6%) on the 10K event. This year they have tripled (3% to 9%) the vig on most all of the other events. Do you really think they are going to give you awesome rake drops?

I think the way they handled the wsop says a lot about what a major corporation will do when they get their hands on something. Now the government... I suppose they are more fair than a major corporation?

[ike]

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They will be eaten alive by the rake...

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Can someone please show me where in the bill it mentions what sites will be charging for rake?

[/ QUOTE ]

Excise tax? The government is going to try and get their hands on as much as they can, and the players are going to have to foot the bill. I mean, don't they have to write the fine print at some point?

No big deal, let's forget about that. Once again, look at Harrahs, which will probably be the leading online poker room. They bought the wsop and doubled the fee (3% to 6%) on the 10K event. This year they have tripled (3% to 9%) the vig on most all of the other events. Do you really think they are going to give you awesome rake drops?

I think the way they handled the wsop says a lot about what a major corporation will do when they get their hands on something. Now the government... I suppose they are more fair than a major corporation?

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wtf do you want? your friendly neighborhood mom+pop online pokerroom?

[LeapFrog]

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They will be eaten alive by the rake...

[/ QUOTE ]

Can someone please show me where in the bill it mentions what sites will be charging for rake?

[/ QUOTE ]

Excise tax? The government is going to try and get their hands on as much as they can, and the players are going to have to foot the bill. I mean, don't they have to write the fine print at some point?

No big deal, let's forget about that. Once again, look at Harrahs, which will probably be the leading online poker room. They bought the wsop and doubled the fee (3% to 6%) on the 10K event. This year they have tripled (3% to 9%) the vig on most all of the other events. Do you really think they are going to give you awesome rake drops?

I think the way they handled the wsop says a lot about what a major corporation will do when they get their hands on something. Now the government... I suppose they are more fair than a major corporation?

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Talk about cart before the horse... Nothing wrong with a little speculation, but making pronouncements concerning the business models of online poker rooms that don't even exist yet is entering the realm of the absurd.

Online poker rooms have much lower overhead when compared to B&M. I'm not saying companies won't try the 'whatever the market will bear' approach but really you don't have to skim that much to make a tidy profit. In the event the bill becomes law the amount of competion in the US market will I'm sure also have an effect.

Too many strands in old duder's head here... we are just going to have to wait a bit for answers.

[Mitch Evans]

Looking at my cable bill, I'm being charged an FCC fee and a Licence fee. Looking at my cell bill, there are several surcharges listed. Why are these charges passed to the consumer? Maybe because every company does business that way? I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume gambling institutions will pass these fees onto their player base in some way.

Once the precedent is set, all sites will follow. The competitiveness will be in the form of incentives and not lower rakes, at least in my absurd way of thinking.

[Our House]

LF,

Nothing is 100%, but it is fairly safe to assume that the rake will be higher if online poker is US Gov't regulated. If B&M is any indication as to what is expected, the operators' taxes and licensing fees will be very high. Just like offline casinos, the online corporations would charge as much as they are legally allowed to charge.

Granted, online operating expenses are less than B&M. However, fierce competition has never been able to drive down prices in this industry. Rake isn't really a determining factor for most gamblers (BTW "most gamblers" does not include winners like us), and the sites/casinos know that. If you need a good example of online competition - take a look at World Poker Exchange. Rake Free; No Fish.

It's pretty much irrelevant what B&M operation costs are. If online expenses are more than they currently are for Party/Stars/FullTilt, the assumption that rates will be higher when expenses are higher is legit.