- Disclaimer: please read this post with a pure heart, radiating in empathy and compassion, without taking anything personal. That is the very starting point to make use of the time I’ve dedicated writing this post in order to improve the quality of site and the joy of the community. Thank you for your understanding and time dedicated reading it.
Hi everyone,
This post is intended to share some insights about the (so called) high stakes of the site, in the view of a “replaypoker top 100 player”; it covers the issues I have been experiencing and that I never have spoken about but kept inside until now.
The post is not intended to alarm anyone or request immediate change. It has been written just to bring awareness about the problems that top players face in their everyday experience and that hopefully will be discussed and fixed along the path.
Hopefully, in long term, it is going to prevent top players to stop playing or run away from the site. And also may it bring back the ones who have already left the site or are not active anymore.
The post is divided in 5 little chapters, ordered in terms of priority rate( 1.highest … 5.lowest) and their content is:
- rake CAP for high stakes
- incompleteness of tables(variants and formats)
- lack of “high stakes for top players”
- absence of tournaments for top players
- other simple features(stack in bb, customize bet size buttons, more playable,user friendly multitable option).
1) RAKE CAP
What is rake? Usually (like in the site), “rake is a percentage of pot, capped in absolute terms, that is charged as a fee from a room or casino” [Rake 101 chapter, line 1].
There are two terms related to rake:
(1)gross rake: the amount of rake generated at a table
(2)net rake: gross rake minus “rakeback” (in replaypoker they are “missions”)
Why, in real money context, the caps are very aggressive at lowes stakes, and come down exponentially with every higher stake?
Mainly two reasons:
- Cost product/service: “Every table has the same cost to run, no matter the stakes… …The operator has to make a profit, so they charge what they need to keep the table going. The lower the stakes, the more big blinds are required to reach the monetary goal to upkeep and profit.”(in other words, the higher the stakes, the less big blinds are required to…)[Why so Controversial chapter, line 10]
- Players edge: The higher the stakes, the smaller the edge. So two(or more) aware top players in a high rake structure, will never play each other since they are aware it would be a lose/lose situation and tables would never start.
How is it implemented in real money sites?
If you go to Net Rake Comparison Table, and play with the Limit submenu, you will see rake is very high in lowest stakes, and, moving up to 200/400, goes veeeeery low.
The rake % remains the same, but what makes the difference is the CAP amount.
Comparison of real money sites with replaypoker. [Rake Changes: Thursday, November 2nd].
in replaypoker, the rake % is coherent with real money rooms.
the MASSIVE difference is in the CAP: in real money is mainly about 1/100bb, whereas in replaypoker it is 2bb, so 200times more.
Me and _Ryan have played one week ago, 4tabling each other on replaypoker.
Curious on the impact rake had over our game, I’ve made some calculations and these are the results:
We were playing heads up, and seen flops were about 50%(which is equilvalent to number of raked pots)
Average pot (spanning from 0 to 40ml++ pot) was about 10mls.
We were playing in average 100hands in a span of 10minutes.
So after 4 hours of session(4hours=10minutes x 24), we have played about 100hands x 24=2400hands.
pots played were about 50/100 and average raked pot was 10ml x 5/100=500k.
So each played hand, we have generated approximately 250k rake, and after 2400hands we have generated about 2400 x 250k=600mls of gross rake.
Shocking? For me it is. Not to mention missions, that cover at most 25mls in “rakeback”, then net rake=gross rake - rakeback = 600mls-25mls =575mls.
Ryan and me have about 14bilions each. this means that (in the best case scenario where one doesn’t bust the other first) it takes 14blions/575mls=25sessions like this one to go broke together.
Romance aside, it shows that, in less than a month, two top 25players go broke ONLY because of rake.
If this whole thing doesn’t shock you, then either i’ve expressed it badly, or please read it again.
We are talking about bilions. And whoever has come to this amount, knows how much time, dedication, effort it takes to build them up. And all these prerequisites might not be even sufficient [to build them up].(Hope you can see the problem)
Me and Ryan were even considering to play another site, whenever we wanted to challenge each other from now on.
This implication/consequence is a joke, considering we are playing in a free money site.
As a conclusion the rake structure is breaking the competition among aware top players, and the only way it is roughly sustainable for the few top players still playing, is because they constantly face non-top players and unprepared new entries that suicide themselves playing their whole stack there.
But if that’s the truth, that means, there aren’t true high stakes anymore.
And that’s a point I will cover later.
On the one hand I totally agree on the CAP increment that has been implemented by site years ago: CAP was WAY TOO LOW(1/1000bb) back then. But now it is WAY TOO HIGH(2bb).
We should have something in between.
Before closing the chapter, I have to introduce another issue: the missions
Their problem is that, after one player completes the mission, he/she is induced to stop playing for the rest of the day. Every raked hand afterwards will be on their cost. Which is not what a free money site should induce(in fact this induces a lower traffic in the site which is bad for its economics).
A solution to this could be that each of the 5 mission has like a progression. for instance, being dealt Kc X times gives you some rake back. Once this specific mission in completed, it should move on to second step, where being dealt Kc X+Y times gives you some other rake back. And so on up to a limited amount of progressions. This should not hinder regular players from playing the game longer than an average player.
If that’s too much requesting, then instead, after a mission is completed, the new form of rakeback becomes like this: a %rake generated from now on goes back in the bank account.
But this is not a priority as there are other issues to prioritize. So let’s keep this aside and move on to next chapter
2) INCOMPLETENESS OF TABLES(VARIANTS AND FORMATS)
What does it mean? It means that for each stake, there are some variants(NLH, PLO, NLO, PLO hi-lo, NLO hi-lo, Royal, 7cardStud) and/or formats (Heads up, 4max, 6max, 9max ring tables) missing
Let’s get straight into the point with a concrete example:
In hold’em, heads up tables are scattered around the room: the highest is at 100k/200k, and the second highesh is 10k/20k, nothing in between: that clearly shows that these types of tables are missing, and a top 100 player would need to move back to these stakes if he/she wanted to play this format.
Actually as long as there is at least one available format(6max and 9max hold’em, 500k/1ml blinds), this is not the end of the World but one can turn a blind eye to this.
That is nomore the case when a entire variant misses in a stake: this includes Omaha Hi, where the maximum stakes are 250k-500k, and, more emotionally felt, Royal tables: the highest is 20k/40k. Let’s not mention 7cardStud, left to 500/1k
I must highlight that I’ve heard many players saying “oh if there were high stakes of this variant i would play it” and I haven’t heard that yesterday, but in the years.
These missing tables are a backfire for the site because if, for instance, someone loses interest in a variant but gains passion in another, this again is a gain for the site in traffic, not only short but also long term.
Someone might reply back “Well opening new tables occupies more resources to the site and maybe it can’t be afforded”
A “trivial” solution to this might be introducing a feature that enables players to “create customized tables” by choosing [variant, number of players, stakes].
Not only it solves the problem immediately, but also it allows the site to close all the tables that can be compared to ghost towns, and leave “always open” just the ones with most traffic every day.
To prevent some from “abusing” this feature, there could be set a limitation to the number of generated table by one single player, for instance up to 4.
If this again is all way too much work, at least consider adding just one table of every variant in the highest stakes.
3) LACK OF HIGH STAKES FOR TOP PLAYERS
This is less intuitive compared to the others but through the explanation I’ll let you dive you into the topic and understand what it means.
One might say: High stakes already are present!! 500k/1ml are!!
Well yes and no. Let me explain.
Since when the new high stakes were introduced into the site (more than 10years ago), only the very top players were challenging each other. That was feeling a real high stakes experience. And only top 10players could afford to sit in and fight.
In 2025 (and since how many years, who knows?) this is not the case anymore.
Personally, when i sit in, there are times where sensations are “it feels like I am playing the Duck Pond” (of 10years ago, which was like 20k/40k stakes) and still this is a overstatement. The level was higher back then at Duck Pond than nowadays Rivendell, sometimes.
What happens is that, at the actual highest stakes, top players have to play against opponents that are closer to “middle stakes level” and, even worse, opponents that have recently made more than 50mls, and decided to give it a shot, unaware of what they are doing(bankroll management) and unaware of the level difference between them and the top players(i’d give them a 15% chance to not get busted and I’m trying to be positive with this extimation).
As you clearly can see this is bad both for top players, that might want a true high stakes experience instead of this, and it’s also bad for these new entries, that do lose their stack much more likely and quickly, which would not be so “heartbreaking/cruel” if less to none top players were in.
Let’s keep aside the fact that these players would first need a bankroll management course.
Surely players getting busted more times, increases the chance of them buying chips. But that’s only in a short term view. In long term either these players are going to become patological chip buyers or get so frustrated for the impossible challenge and harshness of the game, that they end up leaving the site.
I don’t think this is what we want, since i assume we prefer keeping the challenge as fair as possible. The support of the site as linear/constant as possible.
And give and leave people with the best vibes possible. This is the starting point of a healthy community.
And since I’ve been playing these types of players, and couldn’t let them understand the mistake they were making, and they were also fairly stating(“my free chips my choice”), busting their average 6months hard work in a matter of minutes has hurt me inside. And I guess them too. Adding higher stakes would surely decrease the amount of these inconveniencies(for the moment) and allow top players to challenge each other like 10years ago.
4)ABSENCE OF TOURNAMENTS FOR TOP PLAYERS
Last but not least, the buy ins of mtts. There is no way that a top player is going to play the 5ml buy in tournament for the competition. I’d say that up to a 100ml buy in tournament special event running on a weekly basis, and a high roller of 250mls as well, could re introduce mtt for high stakes players.
Honestly it’s not my concern and interest, the topic “mtt tournaments for high stakes”. I’m expressing this just for the community, since I have seen some top players joining tournaments just for the passion of playing mtts.
5)OTHER SIMPLE FEATURES
These days I was chatting about some very little features that were missing but would change the game experience significantly. One is the opportunity to see table stacks and bets in terms of bb instead of chip values.
Second, the opportunity to customize bet sizes, both preflop(usually measured in bb) and postflop(usually measured in %pot). If you need more information about this i’ll try to show.
Third, the multitabling user interface: the problem is mainly that, instead of table getting smaller, it doesn’t scale but tends to remain of same size as original. This is a problem when it comes to play more than two tables. Because at a certain point, the page won’t cover the whole table but just a part, sometimes not even sufficient to see hole cards, players options(fold-check-bet-..) and community cards all together.
A site like pokerstars could be a proper multitabling-model to follow.
Here we are at the end of the post. This is the summary to keep the points clear:
- Rake Cap is MASSIVELY HIGH for the high stakes, and needs to be adjusted(around 1/100bb for the new highest)
- Lots of cash tables are missing in the site. Either adding them or implementing a “create table” feature, would solve the problem. If that’s too much work, at least one table each variant for highest stake, to begin with.
- True High stakes are missing. For the good of everyone, explained above, it’s convinient to include new ones in the site.
- Mtts lack of high stakes buy ins, might consider to add some.
- Other minor features(bb chips measure, customize bet sizes buttons, adapting multitabling interface) are very trivial but super comfortable for user experience.
Please note, I’ve made sure to come out with points (1,2,3,4) that take the least programming interference possible.
In fact they are all about stuff already made. Only change would be numbers and adding missing tables.
(5) is optional/minor but, if possible, these little details have a massive impact for a poker player.
Just to make it concrete, the idea would be
adding stakes 1ml/2ml , 2.5ml/5ml 5ml/10ml and maximum CAP for any stakes being around 100k(in coherence with real money sites)
(But we can also start a discussion in order to figure out what is the best CAP among stakes, mutually for the site and players. So we can better understand the reasons beneath the choices)
These new tables allow top players to move up and let the others, with similar level, play each other.
The new tables will, hopefully, God Please, be a motivation for all the top players who left the site, to come back..
This would break down the top stakes stagnation and bring them back to life.
The lower CAP will allow top players to compete against each other, rather than slowly but consistently leaving the site.