Zero Rake Poker Business plan

[Alobar]

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Who's paying for all this if the players are not? I don't think its cheep to process cashouts, advertise, and stop cheaters.

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well obviously VISA, MC, Neteller, etc. Will rally behind the idea of a free poker site and wont charge any fees for transactions. And the TV stations and websites they will advertise on will feel the same way and give away free advertising. Cheaters just wont play there because they respect what tuff is trying to do, and because he made a statement saying cheaters will be shot.

Its pretty brilliant really

[Dennisa]

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1. Donations. You have a "tip the dealer" or some sort of setting that allows the player to throw a buck or some set % back for ongoing support. At every B&M that I know, the players tip the dealers voluntarily.





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Sorry to burst bubbles, but both of your ideas would probably make the site illegal in many states. Remember most states allow for poker provided the people operating the game do not make any money from it.

1. Donations:
In California and Colorado, if a rake, even just a small kitty for food donations are allowed, it is not longer considered a home game. Granted the home game will not likely get busted for accepting pizza money, this would allow an angle for busts if local policing agencies want to go after the rakefree site based in the US.

2. someone else donations to charity.

Hugely bad idea. I did some research on charity poker in California. I also work for a few companies that deal charity poker in California. It is legal to hold tournaments for charity within the state. PRIZE POOLS CAN NOT RETURN MORE THANT 10% to the players. No prize can be larger than $1,000. Tournaments can not last longer than 4 hours. I dont think any player would want to play under those conditions as a way to fund a rakefree site.

[Tuff_Fish]

California is downright draconian with charity gambling.

However, my reading of the rake laws is, if there is no manditory rake etc collected, there is no foul. Been a while since i looked it all up, will have to revisit.

Frankly, I can't see anything preventing anyone voluntarily giving money to anyone else for any reason at any time.

Tuff

[freecard4all]

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I can't see anything forcing anyone voluntarily giving money to anyone else for any reason at any time.

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FYP.

People give free money mainly for 2 reasons:
- to show they are "good people" (no chance someone will clap if you donate to poker sites)
- to support something (you can get an idea if you ask some people in the software forum how much they can make but I guarantee you get nowhere to 5/6 figures)

(I have no clue what's the capital needed but I guess $100.000 is somewhat minimum for that).



edit// no player will donate more than he would play on PS otherwise. What would be the sense of "free" poker site for him then.

And about Soros: if he could ever want to support "rake-free business" why poker?
I bet he would make "rake-free" (aka fee-free) stock exchange. So to make it easier for gamblers trying speculations [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[RoundTower]

I think it would be cool if people could live and work on Mars. I have a plan to do this, it shouldn't cost more than $100 or so and doesn't need any specialist expertise. What do you think of my idea?

[MicroBob]

can we play rake-free internet poker there?

[Grasshopp3r]

Donations are voluntary and tipping the dealer is not rake. If you have a case for Colorado, please cite it.

For Colorado, membership fees are considered rake only if they are tied to the game. There are very active games at the various country clubs in Denver and they all charge dues, but not specifically for poker.

[RevAgain]

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Somebody made a video of some of his tiltiest comments set to the song "Bad Day":
http://tuffish.ytmnd.com/

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Gold, thank you.

TF - payment processors charge a shít load, if a million dollars was deposited in the first week your site was up that probably costs you $50,000, certainly $30,000, and what do you think you need to be deposited on a site to get liquidity? A lot more I would guess.

[Grasshopp3r]

How much should it cost to run a poker site? Simple question, but I don't see any answers.

I think that a site could be started for less than $100k and would require perhaps $300k per year to operate. Here are some numbers in order to quatify the costs:

Expenses:
1. Players would pay whatever fees for deposits. It is done in other businesses. The MC charges are about 2%.
2. Cost of hosting a sever. About $1,000/month. Set up multiple servers for backup, total $5,000/month or $60k/year.
3. Customer service is scalable based upon the number of players. I don't know how to price that.
4. Security team to uncover collusion. Again, that may be tough to budget. One thought is that you publish all hand histories and let the players police it.

Revenue:
1. Donations. If there are 1,000 players with 1,000 hands per month, that is 1 million hands. If donations are $1 per hand, that is $1 million per month. For comparison, PokerStars runs about 100 million hands per month.

Remember, the cost is scalable depending on the number of players. The setup costs are low because you can get software that is in the public domain (ie., pokerspot)

[edfurlong]

What is the average rake per hand at real money games on stars? $1 seems way high.