why do some rakebacks have sliding percentage scales

[playersare]

zoo,

in light of debate over per-hand earnings rates for bonus/reloads vs. rakeback (with utmost respect to both sides of the argument), I will try and calculate the dollar potential for both systems under a variety of betting limits and table conditions.

the purpose is to serve as an unbiased reference to all 2+2 members to determine if it is fiscally strategic to replace and/or supplement any whoring opportunities with the equivalent rakeback scheme, dependent on hands played/MGR per month, preferred chip limits and table layouts. the results will be posted in a variety of useful comparitive formats, such as earnings per-raked hand, BB/100 or actual $ per hour/table, 6-man vs. 10-man, MGR threshold req's and possible others should they come up.

the consensus in this board is that bonuses and reloads are probably more lucrative to low-limit and recreational players due to its pure advantage of superior per-hand raked payback percentage relative to their bankroll committment. however, at higher limits and/or high-volume of raked play per month, a rakeback can and may earn an aggregately greater amount of dollars spread out over a larger number of hands played per month, taking into consideration that the number of bonus/reload hands available to a full-time player to exploit on a percentage basis, may not be significant enough to pursue, particuarly if it means playing at a site which does not offer the same profitability in actual game play (BB/100) to justify the increased earnings per raked hand vs. straight rakeback.

to put one example into words, a high-stakes, high-volume full-time player may choose to earn $3000 in rakeback per month earning 10c per hand over 30,000 hands, rather than $1000 in bonuses and reloads which only require 5,000 to 7,000 hands (15c-20c per hand) as a low-stakes, whore-oriented player would. this same low-stakes player (let's say $1/2 limit) would only earn $200-300 in flat rakeback over the same period of 5000-7000 hands (now only about 5c per hand), because his rake revenue per pot (the portion eligible for rakeback) is only 50c-$1 vs. $2-3 for a high stakes game. this clearly illustrates how there is no definitely right or wrong answer regarding how one pursues his/her supplementary poker income.

there is obviously some line where the combination of limits and aggregate hands played per month (the second part being more important) where the rakeback will earn more total dollars than an equivalent scheme of bonuses and reloads. this of course assumes that all useful and/or desired higher-paying bonus opportunities for the month are already exhausted. this is what I'm going to try and figure out.

the primary thing that makes is difficult to accurately estimate true rakeback earnings on some affiliates is that the payment percentage varies in relation to the aggregate MGR for one billing period. it looks like half of the 'companies' that provide this service pay a flat rate on "any amount" of rake paid, while the other half (including some of the better-known brands) will rakeback higher percentages for high-volume accounts (>$1500-$2000) while only returning 5-10% for MGR's of $100-500.

this sliding scale system is not tied to a specific poker site (i.e. all Party + skins), rather it appears to be set up at the discretion of the individual affiliate. so I'm wondering if certain rakebackers pay on a sliding scale because they themselves are also paid on a sliding scale from the original poker site. while the 'scale' affiliates do generally pay a few percentage points higher than the 'any amount' structures at high MGR volumes, the monetary playing commitment required to acheieve the maximum rakeback does not necessarily seem to justify the slight benefits of this versus getting a flat rakeback % on any and all contributions.

any feedback on this and other rakeback concepts and theory (without naming actual names of course) is appreciated before I start crunching all the numbers.