Party Poker Alters Rake Structure
August 26th, 2011 | by Zachary Smith |
According to many reports in online poker circles, Party Poker are in the process of completely changing their rake structure for their cash games and so far the response to this has been nothing but negative. Currently Party Poker uses the “dealt” method but by the end of today (August 24) they will have switched to “weighted contributed.”
The dealt method sees players awarded loyalty points just for being dealt cards in the hand and is preferred by tight players who can literally fold their way to masses of points, the so-called “rakeback pros.” Currently Party Poker awarded two Party Points for each dollar it takes in rake. So at a five handed table where one dollar rake is taken from the pot each of the five players would be deemed to have generated $0.20 of rake and would therefore receive 0.4 Party Points each.
Weighted contributed is completely different and only awards points to players based on their actual contribution to the rake taken by the site, essentially rewarding players who play loosely and create large pots. In an overly simplified example imagine a hand gets to showdown where $1 of rake is taken because the pot has reached $20. In the hand the first two players, call them A and B, fold and have contributed nothing to the pot so they will be awarded no points. However, Player C puts in $5, as does Player D and Player E puts $10 into the pot. Player E folds. In this instance Player E would be deemed to have generated $0.50 of the rake as he put in half of the pot and he would receive one Party Point whilst Players C and D would be awarded half a point each.
Many say the weighted contributed system is fairer as it actually rewards players who are active in hands and generate large pots but there are also a huge number of players who are used to the current system and prefer it due to it increasing their likelihood of being able to earn lots of loyalty awards for essentially folding preflop and playing tight, extremely tight in some cases.
Along with the change in method, Party Poker are also changing the amount of rake they are taking from pots. Everything below $3/$6 stays completely the same but now $3/$6 and above will see the highest levels of rake taken from pots and this is what has angered the regular grinders the most. Currently the maximum rake that is taken in games ranging from $3/$6 to $10/$20 is $0.01 per $0.20 in the pot up to a maximum of $3 depending on the number of active players. But with this new method Party Poker will rake $0.05 per $1.00 in the pot up to a maximum of $5, a huge increase.
How this new system will effect Party Pokers traffic, which has already faltered lately and seen them lose their place as the second largest online poker site to the iPoker network, remains to be seen but if the word from the Two Plus Two forums is anything to go by you may see many mid-stakes grinders leaving Party Poker for pastures new.
Tags: Party Poker, Rake Structure, Structure