New to Forum - Basic Questions

[patentleather11]

Read the FAQ, very helpful. Had a few questions I thought I might throw out there (apologies if these are really basic, have been answered elsewhere, or both).

1) How do the rake returns work for sites? I've played a signficant amount of online poker, but never received any kind of offer for this.

2) What's the background on Empire Poker? Seen a lot of posts about it, but don't know the context.

3) Related to Empire Poker, what's the point of a skin?

4) Unrelated to this particular forum, but have seen posts in other forums where it goes something like this "Reliable read on villain has him as a 22.5/5.3 over 360 hands" - what does the 22.5/5.3 signify?

Thanks!

[playersare]

hi and welcome to the zoo.

1) rake rebate aka "rakeback" is not offered directly through the site, rather you get it from an affiliate recruiter who signs you up using their tracker code. check the classified ads on this site (upper left corner of the navigation menu) and see what's available.

2) Empire Poker has recently cancelled some accounts of players who have been deemed by management to be "bonus abusers" that don't make the company any money. while the percentage of people this affects is rather small, the bad publicity of this business practice has caused people to boycott and/or speak ill of their site in protest.

3) having "skins" allows multiple divisions of the same poker network to do their own marketing to attract new players. different skins may offer different bonuses and promotions which may attract a player who was not interested in another skin on the same network. in the physical realm, it's like how people who may not shop at The Gap will still make the parent company money by going to Banana Republic (more upscale) or Old Navy (more bargains).

For knowledgeable online poker players, the availability of skins allows for getting multiple bonuses on the same network, and also for getting rakeback on one site if they are already signed up on another site.

4) a set of numbers like "22.5/5.3" refers to a player's VP$IP (Voluntarily Put Money In the Pot) and PFR (Pre-Flop Raise). these are percentages relating to how loose and/or aggressive a player is. in this example, 22.5/5.3 represents a decent, though perhaps not awesome player (much like myself, lol). you can get more feedback on this type of info in the specific formus related to gameplay.