The world of online poker rewards has remained mostly unchanged for the last decade or more, but with the poker economy becoming increasingly top heavy with skilled players, changes are now in progress in most online poker rooms. The feeling among online operators is that by targeting rewards to give more back to losing players, those players will be happier to play and deposit more. The number of sites who are adopting this approach has been growing over the last year or more.
Tonybet
The latest changes to rake and rewards on TonyBet include rake being applied to all Holdem and PLO cash games at 5%, from March 7th. OFC maintains a standard 1% rake amount. There is a 2.50 Euro rake cap in effect. Rewards will now revolve purely around the profitability of a player, with players who post a -100 Euro loss for the day gaining 55% of their rake back, and players whose balance for the day falls between -100 Euros and +100 will receive 25% rakeback. Anybody who clear 100 Euros profit or more in a given day will receive no rakeback.
TonyBet
888Poker
There is a very significant rake system overhaul taking place at 888Poker too, where traditional raking is being replaced by an altogether different system. Players are set challenges each day onsite, which encourage them to delve into the casino and sports betting parts of the site. Gold tokens are received for completing challenges, and some of those will still centre around poker, meaning that you can earn tokens from poker alone.
An 888poker representative stated on 2+2 Forum “we want to reward players for other activities, including long term loyalty to 888poker, rather than only for grinding”. The real details still remain unclear though.
The company will honor its current cash-back commitments to all player including VIPs: "We'd like to assure you that despite these major changes, 888Poker will fully honor its cash-back commitment to all players, including its VIPs, who are currently entitled to yearly cash back in the existing rewards plan," 888 representative said. "Moreover, any reward points players accumulated in the current rewards program will be automatically transferred to Gold Tokens, with equal value, in the new 888poker Club and will continue to be redeemable any time." March 28th is the date that 888Poker say that full details will be presented and implemented.
888 Poker
Global Trend
Over the past year we have seen operators change the way they reward players in a move to protect the recreational players. Those playing high volumes used to be the players of choice for online poker rooms, but priority is now give to net depositing players over players who are generating a large amount of rake. Most notable change came from PokerStars back in November but Unibet is another room which has followed the rewards trend, with iPoker also making similar changes over a year ago.
Louis Hartwell
Graduated in Media Communication at the University of Lausanne, Louis Hartman is a co-founder of somuchpoker.com. He began his career in Cambodia as freelance journalist. In same time he was making his living by playing poker every night at that time. Intense learner, he read dozens of poker strategy books to improve his skills during many years. With a strong interest about poker "behind the scene" in Asia and his communication skills, Louis launched Somuchpoker in 2014.
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