Issues leading to Room for improvement: Replaypoker High Stakes and Its Rake, Missing Tables, Minor Features

  • 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:

  1. rake CAP for high stakes
  2. incompleteness of tables(variants and formats)
  3. lack of “high stakes for top players”
  4. absence of tournaments for top players
  5. 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:

  1. 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]
  2. 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:

  1. Rake Cap is MASSIVELY HIGH for the high stakes, and needs to be adjusted(around 1/100bb for the new highest)
  2. 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.
  3. True High stakes are missing. For the good of everyone, explained above, it’s convinient to include new ones in the site.
  4. Mtts lack of high stakes buy ins, might consider to add some.
  5. 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.

2 Likes

Hi @teicano,

thank you for this post. I will take some time to read again and discuss internally some more.

I intend to give some feedback, hopefully tomorrow.

Rob

2 Likes

Thank you Rob. I really appreciate. Please let me know if some points are/look unclear, incoherent or incomplete, so that I’ll try to go deeper, fix or explain further

Hi @teicano,

Thank you for taking the time and effort to write this post. I feel the intention and it’s ultimately to improve the site and enhance the experience of our Community.

We appreciate you, @teicano, and hope you have a great weekend!

thanks @chipsmama,
I really hope it will,
Have a great weekend too!

1 Like

I 100% agree with every point @teicano has brought up. I have experienced them all as well and it affects how I play on the site.

Thanks @JK3 for sharing your opinion too.
It would be greatful if everyone around top 100 could share their own opinion.
A wide variety of feedback (everyone’s point of view and experience in the current high stakes) would more concretely express a weight about the importance of this topic, thus help to establish a priority rate about the need (or not) of these changes in the future.

I am aware only a small % of players do follow the forum, so we hardly are going to receive a significant amount of feedback(from top rankings). Not to mention all the high stakes inactive players to include in the equation.

So every single feedback from top 100 is very important, therefore thanks @JK3 for sharing it and hope others will do the same.

Hi @Chasetheriver
how are you?
I was wondering if you had a internal discussion, just to have some feedback about how the topic has been perceived. Thank you

Hi @teicano,

Here goes.

I suggest if anyone want to unpick any of the 5 topics, we start a new thread for discussion.


  1. Rake Cap is MASSIVELY HIGH for the high stakes, and needs to be adjusted(around 1/100bb for the new highest).

I should say from the get go, we do not intend to reduce Elite stake rake. We do not need rake for running costs in the same way as a cash site does, but we do need to ‘drain’ chips from player balances in order to recycle chips into promotions.

I can confirm you played over 6,200 hands with _Ryan at the end of April and contributed just over 500M in rake. For two Elite players to lock horns like this is not common. If it were a regular thing, we would be prepared to offer a custom table with a lower rake.

Realistically, if you want to go Head to Head with someone over a prolonged period to test each others ‘A’ game, but you dont want to knock huge lumps out of each other, you should play at a more Mid stake level.

I hope that doesnt sound too flippant.

  1. 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.

Replay has always tried to cater for individual requests for a new stake level or variant, We now have 18 stake levels and 5 poker variants, with 2,3,4,6,8,or 9 seats available, as well as NL, PL and FL.. One of the most negative feedback comments we get is that there are too many tables in an unfiltered Lobby. We looked at possibly removing stake levels, but for now not been able to work out exactly which.

Honestly, not trying to make a sale here, but premium Members can copy any table on the site and play it privately with friends.

On the point of ‘missing HU’ levels, there is Elite Squad, which is 50K/100K and falls between 10K/20K and 100K/200K. Is another interim stake, like 25K/50K necessary?

See below for my comments on stakes above 50K/100K.

  1. True High stakes are missing. For the good of everyone, explained above, it’s convinient to include new ones in the site.

I myself have been responsible for limiting the ceiling on Elite stakes. I like to claim that Replay is protecting recreational spenders. (Believe it or not, we dont want to gouge everyone).

If we introduce tables with a billion chip buy in, I can guarantee we would have players ask for 5 billion chip packages. Having higher stake tables will not ring fence the serious grinders from the weaker players.
Long term we would lose regular players and start to look like certain other play chips sites who sell chip packages with endless zero’s and say 50K/100K is beginner level. Thats is not what Replay wants to become.

  1. Mtts lack of high stakes buy ins, might consider to add some.

We are in agreement here and I am going to see what can be done. We recently added more 2.5M and 5M MTT daily. They average a quite healthy 20ish players on average. We can definitely add higher stake still, but I am wary that we may have MTT which do not start at all, or just see a single table of 6 or fewer.

  1. Other minor features(bb chips measure, customize bet sizes buttons, adapting multitabling interface) are very trivial but super comfortable for user experience.

Agree here too.

All of the above and much, much more has been suggested since forever and unfortunately we are limited in our capability to produce site enhancements on a regular basis. As a poker player, of course I would love to oversee a site with features to streamline playing.

Thanks for the opportunity to explain.

Rob

5 Likes

How about reducing the rake cap if there are only 2 (or 3?) players at a table? The problem I find with the highest stake ring games is that they just rarely run. If the rake at the highest stakes was lower when short handed, that might encourage people to play those stakes more often (there often is one player waiting for someone else to join).
The chips being removed via rake probably wouldn’t change that much, and might actually increase if the games did indeed run more often.

Hi @Chasetheriver

Thank you for the deep explanations; I’ve loved to read them all.

I want to highlight that the post was originally intended to recover “traffic”/players at high stakes and enhance game experience in primary respect to replaypoker economy.

  1. As @lihiue states above, the games rarely run.
    Now, is it because of rake? Would og top players and recent inactive players join again if rake was lower? (To get the game going and so generate as much or more rake during the day). Honestly I don’t know.

All i can say, as facts, is that, if it wasn’t for @DARLINGGIRL, (me and @JK3 recently) sitting and waiting, top stakes would never run, unless something exceptional happens.

Funny thing, when the table has 4++ players, then very often the table becomes full in a matter of minutes (because of midstakes and lower stakes players joining)[Just to say, if there were few more regs still in the game, it would be consistently running(and generate tons of rake). But also now, if for some reason @DARLINGGIRL is going to be inconsistent too, games would almost never run. And so rake hardly-ever generated].

Surely the wealth destruction [Reduce Chip Inflation - Suggestions & Feedback - Casino.org Forum] is perfectly working anyway: the lower volume of generated rake is complemented by the inactivity/abandonment of top players.

I really appreciate and value @lihiue idea, which is also similarly expressed in [rake 101 chapter, line 7].
On the other hand I totally respect the decision of not touching Elite Stakes rake at the moment, because it might be a riskful action for the site economy and that’s not optimal at all.

  1. All the variety of games (variants, number of players and mode) is what distinguishes this site from any other.
    (Sad to hear about complaints: filter is a truly amazing feature of the site, life saving. Just use it!
    You can hide empty, full tables, stakes, modes, number of players, tag favourites.. it gets you right into your games if you know what you want!! Maybe a “filtering tutorial” to instill confidence?)
    I did miss Elite Squad. My bad. I totally agree with all that has been said.
    If in the future I’ll ask for 1table 500k/1ml for each variant (omaha hi, Royal and maybe 7card stud) will it be possible?

  2. I totally agree with it. 100%
    Maybe the opportunity to set up 1v1 challenges like this one (but in a much more trivial way, for example -fixed stakes, -number of hands, -side bet) could be an idea for the future.
    For instance, paying a fee to replay(like 100mls) to set up a challenge could be a very interesting idea.
    I think this compromise would safeguard recreational spenders and recycle tons of chips for promotions in an additional way.

  3. Love that, maybe introducing them with a contained promotion could be a motivation(to get more volume of players and familiarity with new high stakes tournaments in lobby and their start time).
    And in order for the promotion to be valid, a mimimum number of tournaments must be played.

  4. We all might love to see, but also, to be fair, replay offers so much that we should be extremely grateful for the way it already is!!!

So thank you so much @Chasetheriver (I’d say on behalf of everyone) for discussing all these points internally and give such a deep, insightful feedback and picture.
I feel like to better understand the prudence in adding higher stakes, the complexity to produce site enhancements, the need to recycle high amounts of chips.
Your explanations have been very helpful to me and hopefully to everyone who has had the opportunity to read this post.

thank you again!!

3 Likes

Hi @teicano Having a rake discount for full ring tables that are short handed is one of the things in number 5 on your list. I can find out how much work that needs to implement.

Heads Up tables do already have a reduced rake structure coded into the template. I can think again about spreading a 250K/ 500K and a 500K / 1M table to see how that works out.

Players being reluctant to start their own games is a typical Replay characteristic. The majority of entrants in MTT are via Late Registration.

Happy to answer any questions anyone may have,

Rob

2 Likes

Because showing BBs instead of chips on table:
Player Madhof made 3.5 years ago an extension to do this. Madhof stopped to play on Replay, and the last needed changes on the extension was then made from me. I have not learned javascript, but other programming, and I can understand.
If I look to this extension, then I can say it can not be really many to do for Replay to add this feature for all players to the tables.

What is to do:
Adding a checkbox to settings or table
Adding a variable
The code is then something like:
If ShowBBs then Caption = Chips / BB
else Caption = Chips
easy
May be changes on the bet slider/textbox are needed too.

What we have now is something like:
Caption = Chips

Doing this on an extension is much much harder, finding all the numbers, table size, doing it on a timer,…
It can be Replay has to add this to many table types, but it is not really many to change. Copy and paste.
Many would like to have this, and I can not understand why Replay don’t do it.

And sorry, I’m not on Top 100 rank list, only near rank 1000.

@Chasetheriver we did discuss playing at lower stakes - but we were 4 tabling and there aren’t 4 heads up tables at any given stake

Edit - disregard, I was just informed new tables are generated when you sit at them

2 Likes

I agree with Teicano’s points. I particularly would like to see more high stakes MTT. As a top 300 player who only plays infrequently, I prefer the MTT format in general, and with the MTT rake being significantly less than the high stakes rake, I play MTT almost exclusively. From 6 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET, there is nothing over 1mil buyin running. I think if you had a 2.5m or a 5m starting at noon ET, there would be a healthy 20+ players consistently!