Dutch Speaks Out on ZeroRake

[Instyle007]

Finally an intelligent post.

Instyle007

[Exsubmariner]

Actually,
The only site I know of that charges monthly membership is PSO. All the money is play money, though, and they use their ranking system to select people to be sponsored into tournaments. For people only willing to spend $15 a month on poker this works great. Frankly, it is the only viable model I see for doing what you are talking about without having a site full of 2+2'rs trying to take each others money. Those games would probably get so tight you couldn't put a needle through them. I know I wouldn't join. No fish = no action.

[Beach-Whale]

I don't understand the reason why a fish WOULDN'T join a site with a no-rake option. And besides, you could pay rake at ZeroRake if you wanted to.

If a no-rake site is well run and promotes itself well, there's no reason why it wouldn't be able to succeed.

[lorinda]

I don't understand the reason why a fish WOULDN'T join a site with a no-rake option

Because most fish have $100 and they want $30 before you even play a hand.

This doesn't impress the fish, who now need to double up to get just beyond even.

Lori

[Beach-Whale]

[ QUOTE ]
Because most fish have $100 and they want $30 before you even play a hand.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, Lorinda, you got it a bit wrong there. At ZeroRake, you don't HAVE to be a member and play rake free - if you choose to do so, you can play as a non-member and pay rake instead.

And Dutch's plan, as far as I know, was to take the monthly fee as normal rake, and just stop taking the rake when the monthly fee had been dropped for the player.

So no one is intent on forcing a fish to pay any member fee to start playing. This would never be a reason for a fish to not play at a no-rake site. I agree it would be stupid to implement it the way you think it is/would be.

[Shoe]

I agree with you on one point... that the major sites would possibly (not likely, but possibly) run a smear campaign against zero rake to protect their revenue.

The more likely scenario is this. People are going to play where the masses play. They want to play at a site where there are lots of people online, with a large selection of games. The reason zerorake failed is because 95% of the poker players don't even know what rake is. They don't see it, they don't care about it. They just want to be able to play for "free." And to them, free is no monthly membership fee, not zerorake. I know that sounds contradictory, it is. I know zerorake would save me thousands of dollars a month if I could play there full time. But I can't. Sharks don't want to play against sharks. Sharks want to play against all the other fish in the sea.

Now, on the other hand, if zerorake would have been the first major poker site, that is how every site would run today. Unfortunately, those profit minded people at the other major poker sites designed a much more profitable way to run a site.

[MS Sunshine]

Follow the reasoning here:

They had no games. That is why they failed. No smear campaign, no smug minions, just no games. I would have loved to been wrong, along with everyone else that pointed out that they were underfunded at start-up. No ads, no killer promos, no prop team so that there would be some games. nothing. nada. zero. zilch.

The big sites, and their evil minions the affiliates, didn't decide in some smokey backroom to have ZeroRake pushed in front of a bus. ZeroRake was in the middle of the street trying hug the oncoming bus. This was self-inflicted.

MS Sunshine

[Freudian]

They went about it the wrong way. The only way a rakefree site is going to work is by raking normally up to the 30$ or whatever a month, then no rake at all.

Asking people to put up the money up front will scare away pretty much all casual players. And a site without casual players is dead.

[Synergistic Explosions]

[ QUOTE ]
Follow the reasoning here:

They had no games. That is why they failed. No smear campaign, no smug minions, just no games. I would have loved to been wrong, along with everyone else that pointed out that they were underfunded at start-up. No ads, no killer promos, no prop team so that there would be some games. nothing. nada. zero. zilch.

The big sites, and their evil minions the affiliates, didn't decide in some smokey backroom to have ZeroRake pushed in front of a bus. ZeroRake was in the middle of the street trying hug the oncoming bus. This was self-inflicted.

MS Sunshine

[/ QUOTE ]

Fuzzy memory. Go back and read the zero threads when the site started up.

[Freudian]

[ QUOTE ]

Fuzzy memory. Go back and read the zero threads when the site started up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fuzzy thinking. No post on 2+2 had any impact on the failure of zerorake whatsoever. If anything it was 2+2ers filling up the few games that were going on there.