How tough is it to clear the TruePoker signup bonus?

[playersare]

ok, math time again...

let's assume the average 2+2 zoo member plays reasonably well at least in terms of the tightness of opening hands part. we'll set a fair flop percentage of 25% (I know some of you are closer to 20%, but let's ease it up a little just for the experiment).

this means that out of an average 60 hands per hour (of which an average of 50 are "raked" by the standards of most poker sites), our Player X will actually monetarily participate in about 15 flops (or 12.5 raked flops).

first, let's calculate the bonus earning potential at the $1/2 fixed limit level. Since the usual "any raked hand" criteria is for pots $5 above with the house taking at least a quarter, then 50 raked hands = 50 player points towards bonus fulfillment. At sites like Absolute and Paradise, this translates to $5 of cleared bonus per hour.

at True Poker, the rake definition at $1/2 is a minimum $12 pot to induce $1 rake (they don't rake quarters). Question is, how often does a $1/2 LHE pot reach $12? I took a random sample of pre-flop and average pot figures from major poker sites and this is what I jotted down:

Pokerroom
10 man: $14/41%, $14/36%, $14/42%, $18/41%
5 man: $11/61%, $9/62%

Poker Stars
10 man: $16/40%, $7/27%, $10/28%, $10/21%, $10/28%, $10/21%
6 man: $9/50%, $11/56%, $8/52%, $10/55%, $9/51%, $10/63%

Ultimate Bet
10 man: $14/41%, $8.50/31%, $10/36%, $12/35%
6 man: $11.50/54%, $10/56%, $10/54%, $9/51%

Interpoker (holy 1/2 whoring action today batman!)
10 man: $9/32%, $14/38%, $12/37%, $13/30%, $9/34%, $8/31%
6 man: $8/70%, $12/74%, $13/65%

conclusions?
1. do $1/2 limit pots played by "experienced tight" players generally reach the $12 minimum to be raked by True Poker? ANSWER - NO

2. will a $1/2 player regardless of the skill level of his table as a whole, earn the same number of player points per hour as he would on Absolute or Paradise, which have the same bonus payback structure but only require $5 minimum pots instead of $12? ANSWER - NO

so now, let's go back to Player X who sees 25% of flops. Let's also say that he plays 10 man tables and wins 10% of all hands (presuming every player at the table has a fair shot of winning before the deal each time). So therefore he will win an average of 6 pots an hour, out of the 15 total hands (and 12.5 raked hands) he sees out of that 60 dealt per hour. This is a 40% win percentage on seen flops - fair to everyone so far? 30% might be more accurate but again, let's pull out a little slack just for the experiment. Let's move on.

What we need to figure out now is, DOES THE RAKE SAVINGS ON SMALL POT WINS AT TRUE POKER OFFSET THE FASTER BONUS EARNINGS RATE ON OTHER SITES.

Let's set two control groups. One group will have all of Player X's winning pots BELOW $12 (actually, several assorted levels below $12), so there is no rake penalty on True Poker. The second group will have all of Player X's winning pots ABOVE $12 which will induce the $1 rake. Then we will subtract the rake taken away, by the bonus added, for a sample of true poker's "direct" competitors.

Remember that the rake penalty applies only to pots that Player X has won himself. He does not care about raked pots won by other players.

Also for simplicity and control group sake, all winning pots are the same exact amount for every hand under each table structure. For real world interpolation, the data from these charts need to be combined on a hand-for-hand basis.

TABLE A - ALL WINNING POTS $5, SIX HANDS WON PER HOUR OUT OF 60 HANDS OF WHICH 50 ARE RAKED 25c OR MORE
True Poker - no rake offset by no bonus - NET $0
Party Poker (5 raked hands/$1 bonus structure) - $3 rake offset by $10 bonus - NET +$7
Party Poker (7 raked hands/$1 bonus) - $3 rake offset by $7 bonus - NET +$4
Absolute/Paradise Poker - $1.50 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET +$3.50

TABLE B - ALL WINNING POTS $10
True Poker - no change from $5 (NET $0)
Party Poker - no change from $5 (NET +$7 or +$4)
Absolute/Paradise Poker - $3 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET +$2

TABLE C - ALL WINNING POTS $12
True Poker - $6 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET +$1
Party Poker (5) - $4 rake offset by $10 bonus - NET +$6
Party Poker (7) - $4 rake offset by $7 bonus - NET +$3
Absolute/Paradise - no change from $10 (NET +$2)

TABLE D - ALL WINNING POTS $15
True Poker - no change from $12 (NET +$1)
Party Poker - no change from $12 (NET +$6 or +$3)
Absolute/Paradise - $4.50 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET +$0.50

TABLE E - ALL WINNING POTS $20+
True Poker - no change (NET +$1)
Party Poker (5) - $6 rake offset by $10 bonus - NET +$4
Party Poker (7) - $6 rake offset by $7 bonus - NET +$1
Absolute/Paradise - $6 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET -$1

**additional factors not deemed necessary to take into account
- Absolute Poker continues to rake 25c/$5 from $20 up until $40, for a rate cap of $2 at $1/2.
- True Poker rakes $2 at $40 and $3 and $60+ even at $1/2 levels. Party and Paradise rakes at $1/2 are capped at $1.

conclusions?
1. True Poker rake structure does not beat Party Poker's more generous bonus at any winning pot level, DESPITE not raking below $12. Any reasonably good player who sees 25% of flops and wins 30-40% of participating hands will easily earn more auxiliary bonus dollars on Party Poker than on True Poker.

2. True Poker's rake/bonus structure is only superior to Absolute and Paradise when the AVERAGE winning pot is above $15 at $1/2 fixed limit. The number of times that a pot exceeds 7.5BB in a regular ring game makes this advantage negligible. At all other levels from $15 below, Absolute and Paradise are at worst tied, or more often, more profitable on a rake vs. bonus basis than True Poker, based on the sample of average $1/2 LHE pot sizes listed at the very top of this experiment.

[playersare]

oh dear

I made a mistake when calculating Table C and beyond for True Poker. It should read as follows:

TABLE C/D/E - ALL WINNING POTS $12/15/20
True Poker - $6 rake offset by $5 bonus - NET (-$1)

the correct answer is negative (-$1), not +$1.

so whatever conclusions I said about the slim viability of True Poker's rake/bonus structure, please understand this.

it's actually much WORSE.

[tripdad]

the games move so slowly at True, that it seemingly takes forever to get any bonus. it feels like i played 2 tables for at least 3 hours playing $3/6 and $4/8 to notice i had cleared a whopping $10 bonus. i had also e-mailed support about a promo they had offered, and heard absolutely nothing back from them...it's been about 2 weeks now.

i cashed out having released only $10 worth of bonus.

***please note, i may be wrong about the number of hours i played, but it sure felt like i would have played around 600 hands at Empire if i 4-tabled***

cheers!

[lefty rosen]

It seems like we all are on the same psychic level I gave up on that site for the same precise reason when it came to the rake and bonus clearing I figured out that you couldn't beat the game for much. But one thing that I saw was that the tables were very loose(but that's what you would expect at a rake structure like that). [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Bytestream]

Don't waste my time [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Well, TruePoker CEO, is there any chance of the current structure changing in 2005?

[Kirko Bara]

If PartyPoker has the best promotions (doubtful) it's because they have the cash to pay for them. The reason they have the cash is because they are the biggest COMBINED with having the highest rake in the industry (together with Crypto sites). I've done rake analysis with over 100,000 hands from 0.25/0.50 limit up to 25.00/50.00 limit and used different sites rake structures to compare their different rakes. That's the only way I see it to compare different rake systems with acctual play involved. Party rakes WAY more than any other site (except Crypto which obviously has an insane rake system), especially at the lower levels where most players play (and because of this - lose). We're talking 30% higher rake drop than the site with lowest rake (UB) and 15-20% higher than the average sites (Paradise, PokerRoom and Prima).

So - at Party you get the best promotions, but you pay for them in hard cash... this is one of the biggest flaws of the whole "bonus-whoring" discussion. So you get a nice bonus for playing at a site - but still nowhere what you pay in rake... Bonus-whoring at a high-rake site with high pay-back will then yield worse results than playing at a lower-rake site which might pay less back...

The Quirky Kirko

[moondogg]

[ QUOTE ]
So - at Party you get the best promotions, but you pay for them in hard cash... this is one of the biggest flaws of the whole "bonus-whoring" discussion. So you get a nice bonus for playing at a site - but still nowhere what you pay in rake... Bonus-whoring at a high-rake site with high pay-back will then yield worse results than playing at a lower-rake site which might pay less back...

The Quirky Kirko

[/ QUOTE ]

Very, very wrong.

Your statement (assumption?) is quite simply not true. For low limit players (.5/1, 1/2, 25NL, etc), the bonuses at Party and Crypto way more than pay back the rake necessary to clear them.

In December, while earning $347.50 of bonuses at Party, I paid less than $100 in rake.

Also in December, while earning about $334 of bonuses at Crypto, I paid less than $200 in rake.

This of course does not even include the increased profitability of playing at Party or Crypto (at the right times) itself as compared to sites like UB, despite the higher rake.

[playersare]

I hope you guys didn't totally ignore all those numbers I just threw up there ahead of these newer posts.

the analysis I made (and has yet to be challenged) proves that the majority of bonus structures are set up well enough to overcome a good player's rake penalty on pots they win in actual play. Ironically, one exception is True Poker, a site that wants to insist that their rake/bonus correlation is "more favorable" but in actuality cannot even best mediocre competitors like Absolute and Paradise, and is never more than zero-sum break even at BEST in of itself.

and as also noted, Party Poker despite raking 10% at low limit $5 pots, is easily offset by rakebacking an equivalent share of 14%-20% of bonus dollars a hand (and 90% of the time you're getting paid on someone ELSE'S winning raked pot), making it one of the most profitable whores in existence.

the reason Party Poker makes tons of money despite this, I'd have to assume that a majority of players are not whore conscious and then are subject to getting eaten by the higher low limit rake without a bonus to cover it. basically, a lot of fish are playing just for the sake of playing, hoping to make money by getting "lucky" on hands, but not getting paid extra while they're just sitting there. but 2+2 cats could care less as they are constantly working off reload after reload.

Party Poker also spends a lot less than other sites on -EV marketing schemes like freerolls, money added, high hand/royal flush, and players point club. only thing notable is the bad beat jackpot, and of course that is paid for in advance by extra rake. Yes, I know they just started promoting a new players point club, but until they actually offer something for people to redeem, they are making money just the same.

it's been said that the rake kills, but now the bonus saves. and big time.

don't hate Party Poker just because it's beautiful

[Subby]

Nice posts in here, playersare. Real good stuff.

Thanks.

[richrf]

Hi playersare et al,

Newbie here, so please be patient as I try to wade through the subtleties of "online raking" and bonuses.

As I understand it, bonuses are "cleared" as you play hands. Now suppose a player, just takes a seat and never plays a hand other than their blinds. (This could be done by automatically folds and blinds for example). Would this be the fastest way to bring money into the bank? If so, could this money then be transferred into a NetTeller account? Also, if this is legitimate, what kind of game would move the fastest so the money can be cleared to fastest.

This is all hypothetical, but I am trying to understand the structure of rakes and bonuses and looking at from extreme cases would help me better understand what is going on.

As an aside, if I was to get involved with micro limit games, do any sites offer "bonuses" for these types of games (my guess is that they would be micro-sized bonuses) and could they be cleared in the same manner as I described above?

Thanks for the explanations.

Rich