TruePokerCEO, if you really want innovation, how about this deal?

[SinSixer]

Yeah im sure TruePoker (and other smaller sites) are loaded with strong players.

In fact what makes them such good players is they know how to find the best games. That is, against other strong players.... a small site... with poor table selection.... yeah, great opponents = easy money...

[SinSixer]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes its laughable
what about the players already there theyre going to want 75% too
so for every player who is playing 10k hands a month you need to bring in 3 new 10k per month players, added to the fact that the games will get tougher with all these rocks joining the idea is laughable

[/ QUOTE ]

You are almost close to a complete thought. First of all, 10k hands a month would not be considered "high volume", and therefore would not qualify for the highest level of rakeback. This would be a tiered system.

But yes, these 10k hands a month players, generating 1k of rake a month btw, should already be getting at least 25% rakeback now. That offer is already out there, see the classifieds. If they were playing 10k hands a month without this bonus, there would be no reason to believe they would even care about 75%. Back to the point, Assume getting 25% rakeback is the starting point with 10k hands. The house earns $750

So, if they want the higher rakeback, and you hope they would, all they would have to do is play more hands. Lets assume 30k hands bumps them up to 50% rakeback. Now they generate 3k in rake, but get back 1.5k. The house doubles its take and the player made out ever nicer (250 rakeback to 1500). Think he will be back next month? Wow by offering more rakeback, the house acutally made more money.... lets see that again....

Next month that players decides to be in the 75% rakeback club. He has to play about 25k more hands for a total of 75k. He generates 7.5k in rake and the house keeps $1875. The house acutally gives back 25% more to this player, but MAKES 25% more then if this player stopped playing at 50k hands. The only reason this player is playing this much is to earn the higher rakeback.

Those other players, that play this many hands anyway, because it is their life, let's face it, they don't do it at TruePoker. With this incentive they might. Now youve captured this customer who makes you a ton that you had no chance otherwise of getting his business.

[StacysMom]

I would just like to reiterate the necesity of a truepoker non 3d mode or skin. I played about half an hour, lost like 5 BB's on not interpreting the game state well, and cashed out. If this is not possible, no amout of rake reduction will get me there.

[lostmyass]

Wow, you guys are really amazing !

Let's put it as plain and simple as you possibly can.

The players whoa re playing 30,000 + hands a month are going to play no matter what. Cut off all bonuses, rakeback, and increase rake - They will still be there. That is what you don't get.

You guys sit here and talk about how sites can gain momentum and doubel their players by introducing rake back schemes... Please... for once... just one time - Use solid figures and back them up. Anyone who runs an affilaite program could speak up here. Guess what, they won't ..

And not JUST because they risk losing money..

[SinSixer]

[ QUOTE ]
The players whoa re playing 30,000 + hands a month are going to play no matter what. Cut off all bonuses, rakeback, and increase rake - They will still be there. That is what you don't get.


[/ QUOTE ]

How many 30k hands a month does TP have? Please take your own advice and provide a real number to back up your argument. If TP had more then a handful of 1k hands a day players, I would be suprised.

[lostmyass]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The players whoa re playing 30,000 + hands a month are going to play no matter what. Cut off all bonuses, rakeback, and increase rake - They will still be there. That is what you don't get.


[/ QUOTE ]

How many 30k hands a month does TP have? Please take your own advice and provide a real number to back up your argument. If TP had more then a handful of 1k hands a day players, I would be suprised.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really hope you were talking to yourself out loud there or you just proved my point.... They offer promotions out the ass and everything else you can imagine. When was the last time Absolute had any players who weren't working off a bonus ? Think before you speak...... And i use AP as an example since they are basically doing pretty much damn close to what it is being suggested TP does.

There are other marketing stategies that would be much more efficient than giving away 75% of the god damn rake, etc... You are thinking as a player not as a business owner. And trust me as a player you will get burnt out on any offer quickly... Look at true money games... look at AP, offering bonuses NON STOP which is what everyone here claims they want to play at one poker site and one poker site only.

No matter what the site does people will bitch... LOL

Figuring out how to find the right mixture is the key, out of all site's absolute has come the closest but they did an extreme overkill. The three bonus e-mails a week and 2 personal e-mails from their employees asking me to come back and play ALONG WITH the once a week (at the least) junk snail mail I get... EXTREME OVERKILL.

I did howeve rplay absolute for 5 hours or so a week before all this [censored] got too excessive.. Now I hear absolute and shudder..

[TruePoker CEO]

"Every Friday they send an e-mai labeled "PAY DAY" even if you don't have any money coming... "

Sounds like a pretty good idea, thanks for the tip, that and the follow-up marketing are an area we need work on generally, not just for new projects.

"Only reason I can't handle True Poker is their software, out of all the sites out there it is the one site I truly despise using the software on. Even Americas Card Room bothers me less.

This is meant as no offense to you Dave, but if I was head of marketing the first thing I would do is offer variations of the software for end users so they didn't have to see all the goofy 3-D stuff. "

No offense taken, one of the benefits of talking to 2+2ers is to hear what potential players dislike and what keeps them away. This lets us prioritze projects we already have, such as plans to offer 2D, as an alternative.

David

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
No offense taken, one of the benefits of talking to 2+2ers is to hear what potential players dislike and what keeps them away. This lets us prioritze projects we already have, such as plans to offer 2D, as an alternative.


[/ QUOTE ]

You may want to get the thoughts of some 2+2ers on what they would like to see in a 2D interface. You have an opportunity to do this better than anyone else and it would be a shame if you blew it.

Stu

[grimel]

David,

I looked at your site demo. Waaaay to dark at the far end of the table. I can't believe I'm saying this - use a brighter color combination (NOT like full tilt or absolute). Going 2D would have me there.

I'll probably still open an account just to help ODR have tables in the evenings.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]

The players whoa re playing 30,000 + hands a month are going to play no matter what. Cut off all bonuses, rakeback, and increase rake - They will still be there. That is what you don't get.


[/ QUOTE ]

Online poker is a free market environment. Consider the auto industry, an oligopoly that has far fewer competitors than on line poker. How far do you think Ford would go if it just decided to follow the logic that people are always going to need cars and jacked up its prices by 50%? The fact is competition is fierce in the auto industry, that is why when someone starts something like a low intrest campaign, others follow suit.

The online poker industry is not mature yet. Right now, Party Poker would probably have to do a lot to alienate the pros who play there since game selection is so good. And it certainly seems true that the online rooms with more traffic offer less in the way of promotions, since they don't have to. (In a sense, their game selection IS their promotion.) But as the market matures, expect to see better deals being cut by sites, especially to their regular customers. Expect to see sites that don't do this suffer. I expect to see on line poker become much more commoditized over the coming years. One of the things that will drive this is new and smaller competitiors trying to seize market share. As that happens, margins will come down. How this will manifest itself is really the topic of this thread.

Personally, I like the idea of a rake rebate whose percentage is based on the number of hands you play per time period. Say if you play 500 hands/week, you get 10% of your generated rake back, if you play 1500 hands/weak you get 15% of your rake back, and so on. The exact numbers would be the result of careful analysis on the sites part. Another twist you could throw in is something like the person with the most hands in a weak gets double their rake back.

I think the best way to figure rake from my perspective (though I may be wrong here) is just total rake collected on a hand divided evenly between the people dealt in. Dividing it between the people who saw the flop certainly contributes to looser preflop play, and giving it all to the winner of the hand certainly contributes to looser play all arround, but I still like just dividing it between the people dealt in best.

The only real down side to this method is that you make people (who weren't already) concious of rake, and some may be taken aback by how much money actually gets taken off the table. This makes things like frequent player points look a little better, but unless there is some real value to them (considerably more than $0.01 / hand) I don't see that system winning over savvy frequent players. (Though again, from the sites perspective, they really only care about getting a high volume of players. We frequent players, as you suggested, will follow the schools. But there is a symbion there since having a lot of frequent players will increase the liklihood that someone just checking the site will be able to find a game. If a someone new cannot find a game at a site, they won't likely stick arround long.)

Well, I've rambled on enough in my effort to put off building a project schedule.