Sites Have Motivation to Reward Poor Players. Period.

[TruePoker CEO]

Truepoker openly subsidizes losing players in our Mocro-Limit games because we want them to try our software and spread the money around the site. The practice has been euphemistically referred to as feeding the fish. We think it may work out better than spending that same promotional money on general media buys or grilled cheese sanwiches.

We are not abandoning other direct-to-player promotions, such as our WSOP4Free series, freerolls for frequent players, and TruePoints convertible to cash.

We are not doing loss insurance for any sinister reason nor any altruistic reason. We want to see how allocating promotional money to losing players for recirculation on the site benefits the games, us, winning players, and the losing players.

What we sell is a service, if we spend $10,000 on Card player, radio or television ads, that only benefits players as it brings in new players. If we spend $10,000 subsidizing poor players (via a monthly rebate), that money may provide for more play on the site, increase game selection and become available for winning by the better players.

We likely will try this for a while.

(We do NOT care if a given player wins or loses or what the result is in a given hand, we provide an honest deal. We ARE indifferent as to who wins or loses and welcome players of all skill levels.)

Truepoker CEO

[ QUOTE ]
Truepoker openly subsidizes losing players in our Mocro-Limit games because we want them to try our software and spread the money around the site. The practice has been euphemistically referred to as feeding the fish. We think it may work out better than spending that same promotional money on general media buys or grilled cheese sanwiches.

We are not abandoning other direct-to-player promotions, such as our WSOP4Free series, freerolls for frequent players, and TruePoints convertible to cash.

We are not doing loss insurance for any sinister reason nor any altruistic reason. We want to see how allocating promotional money to losing players for recirculation on the site benefits the games, us, winning players, and the losing players.

What we sell is a service, if we spend $10,000 on Card player, radio or television ads, that only benefits players as it brings in new players. If we spend $10,000 subsidizing poor players (via a monthly rebate), that money may provide for more play on the site, increase game selection and become available for winning by the better players.

We likely will try this for a while.

(We do NOT care if a given player wins or loses or what the result is in a given hand, we provide an honest deal. We ARE indifferent as to who wins or loses and welcome players of all skill levels.)

Truepoker CEO

[/ QUOTE ]

At first I read this and I was indignant, then I realized that this is probably a pretty good business idea to try.

Let us know how it works!