Thread by @pokerprojones

Three years ago, "more rake is better" was poker's biggest meme: lambasting @RealKidPoker for saying that charging more at the online poker tables could be better for players.

The funny thing is that @GGPoker has been quietly executing this concept and proving it to be true.

🧵

GGPoker traditionally has had high rake - especially at cash game tables. In particular, it rakes 3-bet pots preflop. While it has reduced it in spots recently to make it competitive in some scenarios, it is still high in many situations vs PS and others.

pokerindustrypro.com/news/article/2…

But GG also gives back a massive amount to players. It says it gives away $10mm every month in promotions alone.

There's a bit of creativity in that number, but even accounting for that, it is in a league of its own for straight cash giveaways.

pokerfuse.com/news/industry/…

Part of that is its "ThanksGG" system. That alone gave away $10 million last year, @pokerfuse just reported.

And that's no-strings-attached cash. If you're lucky or unlucky, you enter a no-effort lottery with cash prizes daily.

pokerfuse.com/news/industry/…

That alone is $3 million a month, and there's another ~$3.5 million in leaderboards. That's all straight cash returned to players.

And of course, on top of that there's the rewards program, which is generous for many players (though more opaque so harder to quantify).

At its core, the "more rake is better" concept was always this: Rake a lot, and return a lot. It gives the operator max flexibility to reward and incentivize different games and player types and change it up monthly in response to customer demand.

an aside: I'm aware that there was also a tangential debate of "more rake is better because regs won't play high rake games so recs have better games and better winrates despite high cost". I always thought was more of a distraction than a real debate on the online poker biz)

Back to GG and its leaderboards: note that the top line figures change every month. Presumably this is an effort to encourage more of a certain game type that potentially needs help. Within these, it uses happy hours, some luck-based scoring and more to micro-manage incentives.

Other operators of course offer daily/weekly/monthly leaderboards, but nothing at this scale.

And of course all this free money is paid for with the rake GG collects at the tables.

💰 Charge more
💸 Give back more
🎮 Control exactly how to distribute the $

GGPoker as a network has been executing this strategy since it launched in 2014, but arguably has really invested in this idea wholesale in the last two years. Its monthly giveaways are up from sub $1 million two years ago to $10 million today.

And for its effort, it has risen to be one of the largest online poker rooms in the world - indeed, among the largest to ever exist.

It is the first operator in 15 years to overtake PokerStars in cash game traffic and is now the home of big high-guarantee poker tournaments.

While PokerStars is back at #1 in cash for now, GGPoker recently crossed over 6000 cash game seats, a network high.

The last operator to have this many cash games was Full Tilt Poker when it relaunched under PS owner in 2012, a full decade ago.

Is this good for players? Clearly yes. Good for the thousands that play there now, obv - but good just for the competition.

Its been ten years since players could choose between competing online poker rooms with this traffic. And choice is good.

pokerindustrypro.com/news/article/2…

And we know PokerStars is directly responding to this. Executives come close to basically saying explicitly that they are reinvesting in rewards etc due to increased competition in the space.