I didn’t win all of the $564 at JWG.  $464 was won at JWG, and as I’ve explained in a previous post much of this money – I would estimate about half – was won because there was a bug in their site.  The remaining $100 I won at Hold’em Poker. 

I started playing at Hold’em Poker because I joined this site called Emperesspoker, where you get paid to click on links to poker rooms (I know pathetic).  You get $5 for joining the site and you need to click on $195 worth of links in order to get any money from them (you can click on about $.5 worth of links a day).  You also need to become a real money player at one of their affiliated poker rooms, such as Hold’em Poker. 

I am quite averse to depositing any of my own money into a poker room, especially since my track record in poker rooms prior to JWG hasn’t been stellar.  But I figured that I could justify a deposit of $25, given my success at JWG.  And I’m glad I made this decision.  Until last night, when I lost about $8, I’ve won money every day at the site since I’ve joined, and I think that this winning streak has been going on for about three weeks, playing almost every day. 

When I play at Hold’em I almost always play at the $.1/.1 no-limit tables, where the maximum number of players is five.  I usually start with $10, the maximum you can start with at one of these tables.  If I start out winning, then I let myself play until I get bored, which is about an hour or so.  However, I typically start out losing.  I then resolve that if I can get back to at least a 1$ up, I will quit, and I have been amazingly successful at doing this.  Of course, this approach doesn’t allow for making too much money, and that is in large part why I’ve won only $100 at the site.  But playing this way makes it such that I won’t play forever.  And I think that it also helps me to win money more consistently.  I notice that when I try to keep on winning, I get greedy, and as a result, I often make poor, costly decisions.

Playing poker at Hold’em is quite different from playing poker at JWG.  At Hold’em the hands move much more quickly, there is no chatting, there are many many more players and different types of tables you can play at.  It is a much more polished and typical type of poker room.  This is not to say that I prefer it over JWG.   If I’m not in a rush and I want to chat and have a friendly type of game, I go to JWG.  If I just want to play a lot of hands, and I’m in the mood for an effecient poker experience, then I go to Hold’em. 

 

PSO also offers an opportunity to get real money for FREE if you sign up with either Titan or Party, and you don’t even have to give your credit card information.  What a deal!  Of course, there’s a catch, namely you have to play a certain amount of raked hands in order to cash out your money.   But this beats playing for play money any day of the week, and the more experience the better.

I signed up with Titan, because I already have a Party account, and if you have an account with either place, then you’re not eligible for the deal.  I got $50 (it took about 5 days before the money got into my account, but they warn you that it takes this long in advance), and then I had to play enough hands to accumulate 4500 Titan points.  I’ve been playing the last two days for about 8 hours at the $0.50/$1 tables and I’ve accumulated about 325 points.  I’ll let you do the math to figure how long it will be before I can get paid, so to speak.

That’s assuming,of course, that there will be any money left in my account when I get to the 4500 tp mark.  As of now, I’m down to my last $10.  I don’t think I’ll be in for much more.  You’ll find out tomorrow.

The concept of a rakeback isn’t difficult to understand. It is based on the concept of the rake. Out of every pot the poker room takes out a percentage of the money as a commission. This fee is the rake. It’s how the poker room makes money. If you have contributed to the pot, no matter what amount, then you have generated part of the rake. How much have you generated? Your contribution depends on how many players there are in the hand. Approximately, your contribution to the rake for each hand you play is about %5 of the pot divided by the number of players in the hand. So, for example, if the pot is $60 and there are 10 players, then you have generated $0.30 for the poker room. And that’s just one hand! The rakeback is a percentage of the rake returned to the player as an incentive to play. In other words, the commision is “split” between the house and the player.

I believe that that many, but not all, online poker rooms offer rakeback, but it is the affiliates that by and large run these programs, and that you need to sign up with the poker rooms through them in order to get your rakeback. This means that the commission really gets “split” three ways, between you, the house, and the affiliate. I checked out www.rakeback.com and they said they get up to %40 rakeback of which they give %95 back to the player. Not a bad deal, or so it seems.

When I first read about rakebacks, I thought that it was a no-brainer. How could you not love them? If you were not getting rakeback, you were just wasting your money. I still think this way, but I am not so confident with my belief. After reading some articles and a bunch of posts in discussion rooms, I see that many affiliates think that rakeback programs should not be allowed. It seems to me that their main criticism of rakeback affiliates is that a number of them are unscrupulous, because they

(1) don’t always give the rakeback they promise

(2) spam poker chat rooms and forums and even hire players to spam for them

(3) try to poach players that have been signed up with other affiliates by teaching them how to create false identities to open up multiple accounts

These are, no doubt, all unethical practices. Is this a good reason to be opposed to affiliates who offer honest rakeback programs? Not in my estimation, unless the majority of rakeback affiliates are dishonest, which I see no evidence for.

I can understand why affiliates who do not offer rakeback plans feel pressure to do so. It is not in their financial interest to be in competition with rakeback affiliates. They can’t win. While this is a reason to be opposed to rakeback affiliates, it is hardly an ethical one, unless you are an ethical egoist. But I doubt that egoism is really an ethical theory. So as of now, I see no good ethical reason to be opposed to honest affiliates that run rakeback programs.

I think that if you do become an affiliate it would be in your best financial self-interest to offer a rakeback plan. And if you don’t offer one as an affiliate, then you may be swallowed by the rakeback wave of the future.

The system would have to work on a “share” model similar to mutual funds, so that profits were split evenly by all members.

Thoughts?