K.. I dont get all of this

Here are my thoughts on online poker. I dont understand all these raging debates. I think its pretty simple.. this is just my opinion and everyone is entitled to thier own and I can respect that.


Why would a site the size of Paradise need to rig thier games? Does anyone realize how much rake they make per hour?? If I ever find out that these places are rigging thier games, so help me god I am going to move to a small island and start up the straightest online poker room the world has ever seen and make enough $$$ in 6 months to retire at 25. I guess what Im saying is from a business standpoint, it would be a totally assanine thing to do, because the risk of getting caught (thus going bankrupt and probably to jail) would not be anywhere near worth it compared to what you would make anyways just by having a straight game and providing good customer service.


Thats all.


-Smaegol

I think you’d run into problems. Let’s say you and your small group of investors come up with the money to cover the considerable start-up costs like hardware, software, payroll, and not least of all, advertising and promotions to entice people to play at your new site. And let’s say that although it was expensive you were successful at getting enough new accounts to actually spread some games so that your customers had a reasonable chance of finding action when they logged onto your site (no small task). And let’s say you and your partners pop open the champagne and high-five each other until your palms are red and swollen. The world is your oyster; life is good.


But, in short order, some dark clouds appear on the horizon. Because of the speed of Internet poker, the good players (pros) are slaughtering your precious customers at four or five times the rate of a B&M poker room. Ouch! The life expectancy of an average player online can be measured in minutes, and your games are drying up. (For a fuller discussion about what happens when games are overtaxed and players are overmatched, you might want to refer to what Mason Malmuth has written on the subject).


Not a good thing, as you can see, because if you don’t have enough customers to spread enough games, your customers aren’t going to hang around. They’re going to cash out and take their money where they can find a game. You and your buddies put up your life savings and took out second mortgages to get this thing going, but the pros are stomping all over your customers and your dreams, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh well. If only you hadn’t made that silly commitment to be honest.


Tom D

Ok - so you change your mind and decide to change the shuffle to benefit bad players and novices. A few weeks everything goes great and you and your buddies open another bottle of champaign.


However the pros start to complain about bad beats and leave in droves.


Much worse, your programmer, the one who made the change, goes to your competitor and sells the story for $100K. The competitor leaks it to the newsgroups. Everybody cashes out. You are swamped by angry demands from players to compensate.


Now what?

You must not get the paper, or the internet. Scratch the second one.


People cheat. Powerful, rich, well connected people cheat, usually for really big money. The idea that a company doing well is some defense for the consumer against greed is so silly on it's face and so often contradicted I can't believe it gets mentioned three times a week here. Study human nature. You'll hate what you discover. Mother Theresa was an exception.

the 'programmer' would be one of your partners sharing champagne. wouldnt that be the smart way of keeping him happy? he wouldnt risk his rep of doing something like that without due compensation.


b

Screw the pros. You want them to leave. They only make up a tiny percentage of the market and they're a big liability. You're taking all the risks, spending your money to entice players, hiring people to handle stupid customer complaints, paying the bills, fighting the battle of your life trying to compete with Paradise and not blow a seven figure piece of cheese. Can you think of any possible reason why you would want a handful of pros to beat up your customers and send them packing?


The perfect world, IMO, for a poker room (B&M or Online) would be to have every seat filled with the kind of player who likes to play for entertainment and wouldn't know how to win even if he wanted to. That way, all the money would stay around as rake-in-wating rather than bleeding off to the pros.


Tom D

It's built into the system. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it's why we need--and have--so many regulatory authorities to protect the consumers.


Tom D