Grabbing my popcorn about Bodog rakeback announcement

[Beanie]

Poker is a lot like life. Most people aren't satisfied as long as someone else is getting more than they are getting but at the same time people aren't satisfied when everyone is getting the same thing either.

I remember when everyone was arguing for caps, then they all realized that caps hurt their price based business. Then came the rake races.

What you said was genius in this context.

[pokerxfox]

While I wish Bodog the best, and they have been good to me in the past, I have to wonder about this approach. I know that our players rake a ton more on average, though we have less of them, because many of them are from training sites or they are my students. If you knew how few players we have on our site you would feel bad for us. If you knew what they rake on average you would puke and then ask us how we do it.

For sites like ours that tend have lots of serious grinders and don't really promote to average players (we don't really advertise at all) the new system will have Bodog tossed off of our rakeback site right away if we don't make money on winning players. Why would we want to expose our winning players that generate a ton of rake to a site that will pay us nothing for them?

They might be missing the fact that there are tons of other options out there, and there will be no reason to send players to Bodog unless we get a good percentage on all of our players, not just the losers. If they are paying you 30% on 80% of your players, and 5% on the other 20%, you are still only getting 25%, so they will have to offer very large margins on the losing players to interest affiliates long-term.

This would also completely screw up rakeback if the providers are suddenly getting paid much less on the winning players who are their primary rakeback customers. Dealing with rakeback will get even tougher, and I can attest, as I'm sure many rakeback affiliates can, that the big pounders who generate $5k or more a month are not playing without rakeback, so they will just leave. Cake is happy to have them, and fits a similar type of player, so many of our rakeback people will probably end up there instead of Bodog.

I hope this works out in a way that allows us to work with Bodog more than we do now, but it doesn't sound like a winner so far.

[JTJagger]

The obvious issue you are missing here is Bodog doesn't want these types of players. They don't want players that will take funds away from their recreational players who would otherwise lose it on the casino tables.

Poker and to a lesser extent sports betting are recruitment vehicles (albeit profitable ones). Bodog ultimately wants players playing in their casino, so winning poker players, even high raking ones, is bad for business.

Your grinders will be better off elsewhere.

[cbe2869]

I think implementing a policy like this is bad for a couple reasons. It one ups iPoker in setting a lousy new policy on how affiliates are treated for sending knowledgeable players to a poker site. It will be really lousy if other networks jump on this bandwagon. Plus, it's a stupid policy for Bodog. Bodog doesn't need more fish they need more players. It is well known that Bodog is already one of the fishiest sites. Most of the grinders already avoid Bodog due to the software and not being able to 12-24 table.

I don't really agree that poker and sportsbetting are just recruitment tools either. Sure the casino is guaranteed incremental income but I don't believe it is or ever will be Bodog's primary focus. I would imagine that their casino income is a pittance compared to their sportsbook operation. The sportsbook has always been their bread and butter.