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On the rest, as you stated I have already put my view across on this. I think these deals are a 'necessary tool' to use but in my opinion the marketing resources and bonus money for this should be directed towards much more recreational and smaller staked avenues. What these actual avenues would be I honestly can't tell you, but there has to be something to give the new player incentive to actual new and recreational players of online poker rather than the places where all of the Regs look for the next good deal.
Good reply Dub, if my intial reply was too blunt or disrespectful I apologise, it's just I feel so very passionately that so many Regs just don't get what keeps this game ticking around and grow due to the actions I see them put on forums and in chatboxes (defo not accusing you of the later BTW) that I've decided to go in blunt and see what happens from now on.
Best of luck at the tables.
I don't know how it will effect me
But this is another negative forum thread, recs/regs at each other......
Used to check this forum multiple time per day, now its a few times a week.
I think to understand a lot of where people are coming from on this thread you have to look at the forum demographics. I think it would be fair to assume that it is mostly regs and sharks posting on these forums. Recs just don't have so much of an inclination, sharks have the bonus that it improves their games and regs get the 'community spirit'. So a higher proportion of forum players than site players will be winning players and grinders, so you will get more negative here than ingame.
In addition, sites will want more recs than sharks. The looser the game, the more rake and also the more players, because sharks go where the fish are.
There are also a lot of people posting here that claim to speak for a majority of others. You don't. You speak for what YOU can get out of the site. And this goes even for people like Matt Bates (not knocking you btw) when they are supporting recs. They aren't supporting them because they want recs to be better off, they are supporting them cause they want to keep recs happy because more recs = greater profit margins. People play/don't play for different reasons, community, promotions, software (lol sky), fish.
Now, I class myself as a winning player. I have made a lot of profit back in the days and even though I am mainly a freeroll player, I still make on average £100 a month profit. But I am also a rec (I play for fun in the evenings, taking what I can get from different sites and spend next to no time making my game better, because I have other priorities). I have a routine. I play sky first if there is any promotion I need to clear points for, then open 3 or 4 other sites for the freerolls there before I clear bonus points on my main site. Sky games always tend to start earlier than my other sites (and I am on at least 20), no idea why.
The first thing you guys need to remember, when talking about recs, is we just really don't care about rake costs. If I wasn't on this forum I would have no idea that rake is higher here than elsewhere cause I just pick a game and stake I wanna play and play it, and I would presume that most other recs are the same. Any recs who do take the time to do so tend to fall into the reg category and are no longer recs
So looking at that versus rakeback (or cash4points), recs will almost certainly look at how many points/tokens they get.
Now I want to look at the mayhem promo/c4p V the new loyalty scheme for someone like me (because people have been praising the mayhem freerolls). For starters it must be made clear, I (and I know for sure, many others), will stop at a given point. I play 25 points a night, and I play simply for the 1k freerolls. I stop on 25 points.
I probably make 5 in a week, so 125 points gets 5 x £1k freerolls + £1.25 C4P.
By doing the same in July 100 points get 5 x £1k freerolls + £2.20 Token (I am not buying the '20p goes back to sky on rake so doesn't count argument' because what sky get doesn't matter one jot, it is what I get that counts). That is a no brainer. (Looking at the table posted, its green for most other players too, but I wont go into that because I simply don't care about the expected value for others, only myself). Recs wont be earning many points, I would be shocked if many recs earn anywhere near what people here talk about. The problem is you grinders expect to get loads of points, recs don't.
Whilst the recs may not care about rake etc, the site certainly MUST care. Because for their business model to work, they need to keep recs playing as often as possible. The business has the figures that are sensitive that they will make these decisions on and we will just have to trust them on this. If they fail, their business will fail. My gut instinct here would be that sky probably make such small profit on poker compared to casino/betting that they wont care if poker fails, but without the facts and figures we will never know that.
All in all, I think that this is a good move for the customer but it feels like a poor business decision. Because more people will stop at a given level rather than push on for the next level. Again though, only the suits will have this info so we will never know. One thing is for sure though, if this new system doesn't work, they will change it.
It is easy for you regs to handle if you are that unhappy. All you need to do is stop playing on mass and pledge to come back only when the system changes. The forums here are fairly open, I have faith it wouldn't be modded and you could organise this.
I am also sure it wont happen for a couple of reasons:
1) the more regs who leave, the fishier the site and the more players will join it, and you guys know it.
2) laziness
3) it wouldn't make a big enough difference because only a small % of players use the forums.
I do have to have a say about those who suggest splitting the 1k freeroll money over the day and having £250 freerolls, this is THE worst idea in the world. No-one is going to grind for a £250 freeroll, but plenty of recs would for £5k worth. For me, the 7.30pm is a bit early, I would make it 8pm every night as most ppl would be able to play (there is a reason the big sites don't have big guaranteed during the day, it is because most people play after work).
I do have two specific questions to sky though and I would like a specific answer:
Will other freerolls continue? (the £1k ones must be counted as part of C4P bonus, so if the others stop, then they only take the place of ones already available and as such aren't an added incentive).
Is there a time limit on tokens? (No brainer, they need to have at least a month on them and they need to be easily found in the software, so a software update may be needed for recs).
Regarding the £2.20 tokens, you need to make them as attractive as possible and software permitting I would suggest:
All £2 Mtt/Sng be made eligible for the token in full, none of this having to put your own 10p's in. This does make a difference.
A nightly £2.20 Mtt linked to the tokens with either an added amount or bigger guarantee. Or better still, a £3.30 buyin game that you pay £3.30 cash or use a £2.20 token, nightly at around 8.30pm.
Make the freerolls different each night. BH/Plo etc etc etc
Make the freerolls shallow, recs prefer small and often rather than the big win.
I would also like the £2.20 token to be able to use as cash. Join the table with £2.20, anything more you leave the table with, you keep, anything less and you lose the token, but I expect the software overhaul needed for this would make it unrealistic.
All in all, I think this is a good promotion that will enhance the site.
''Make the freerolls shallow, recs prefer small and often rather than the big win''.
Might wanna practice what you preach.
Anyway, back on topic. Think Matt's idea about having a dedicated tournament for the £2.20 tokens is very solid. And the BH rake on the £2.30 ones really should be cut now to tie in with this.
What about rewarding the lower stake players with an extra token each month if they hit the points criteria every week? Little incentive for encouraging regular weekly volume.
Point 2 - I am all for this, anything that is extra value works for me. It would be my intention to use the tokens to play low buyin mtt's which I tend to shy away from atm (I tend to grind sng's for points on here, even though i'm primarily a mtt player)
Wish I was good enough but I suck these days. My strategies back in the day would/did make a bundle. But poker moved on and I didn't. I still use what is effectively a push/fold strat that was effective 15 years ago that is very outdated and I would be laughed off the forums lol I think so. When you get quality freerolls they can boost a BR massively. That said, only the suits with the figures will know.
I think this is where we need to decide on a definition of a 'rec player'. For me, a rec player is a recreational player who plays for fun when they have time/the inclination. As soon as you start talking about people calcing rake and stuff like that, you stumbling into a world of regs. I don't know where you draw the line. I guess even though I count myself as a rec, many others would call me a reg. Who knows
What would you say the definition is?
I only play 0-2 times a week so i would say i play recreationally for fun when the mood takes me. I am also a very small time winning player I havent had to deposit for 3 or 4 years and have withdrawn a few times along the way.
Saying that people who play recreationally have no idea about rake levels/what deal they are getting seems abit harsh. I imagine (my opinion not fact) that it comes down more to personality type. I as a person am very aware how much money I have at any given time. If I was playing a new or existing hoobie you can gurentee that I would look at where I can do this cheapest or for the best considered value be that rake/rewards in poker or facilities/saftey when i go climbing or something similar.
Another point people tend to be ignoring is that I think from back when I used to play more often Sky is one of the softer sites around. That is a reason for most of the regs/sharks to play here. Small player base means they can identify good players early make notes and any new names tend to be recs. That is probably the reason people play here not the RB.
I am against the rewards changes, I just think for the sake of balanced ot was worth making these points
To use your safety/facilities for climbing point- I bet the first few times, you looked into it you did indeed look very carefully and make some decisions about where to climb. But after a while, you slowly got comfortable in your favourite place(s) and if prices went up slightly you wouldn't make any big changes in where you climb. (again im talking generally).
Humans are players of habit and would simply stick to the same places and do the same things over and over again (I have a strong belief this is the difference between winning and break-even/losing players, the winning players make constant changes whilst the others just make the same moves over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
Recreational players play for fun (for recreation). The deeper they concentrate/play/study, the more they become regs rather than someone who just plays poker every so often for a buzz.
Of course, sky have the added thing that they are a betting site, poker is just a spill over for them (I don't think many would argue that betting/casino makes way more money than poker. Infact there are some very well known poker sites who are putting more and more into betting/casino and their public accounts show that poker is just a side show for them these days.
In addition you would almost expect betting sites to have higher poker rake because they don't have to be so competitive. For instance, look at the biggest poker site, they have to keep players coming to them, compared with sky and others linked to betting sites who basically just take the over-spill from the betting section (again, creatures of habit, we are likely to pick one site and use it for everything). Take into account sky make plenty of money from betting despite having some of the worst odds in the industry and you should assume things won't change anytime soon.
Some people seem to think that sky poker is a charity to be giving us money for nothing. The truth is they are a business designed (perhaps more than any other industry), to take as much money from us as they can possibly get away with. The margins are being squeezed all over the net in this industry too, its not just sky or a takeover that is creating this. Legislation and taxation doesn't mean less profit from the sites, it means more charges for the players.
Sports betting 50 million
Casino 44 million
Poker 8 million
I would suggest sky show similar % figures
If it's the 3rd/ 4th biggest in the world Sky's profits will be significantly less.
Was expecting Sky to say validity was one week, so a fortnight ain't too shabby.