HOW DO POKER SITES MAKE MONEY?

Ok, I consider myself an average tournament player, below average cash player. What I want to know is how are the poker sites making any money?
I log a losing session..maybe 1 of 4...losing month 1 of 12, never had a losing year.
I have at least 30 poker sites downloaded, think I am down at one(hint: I HATE POKERSTARS)
What I want to know is, who is depositing? Who is losing money? Are all the doctors watching too much wsop on tv with deep pockets and no common sense supporting us(and the sites)? Who in their right mind would keep depositing and losing? I know the sites make their money off of rake and tourney fees, but I don't know of one single online player who will admit to being a loser. Do you?

ALL LOSING PLAYERS POST YOUR NAMES HERE, I WILL ADD U AS FRIENDS

I didn't think so.

I guess where I'm going with this is, I believe the online poker sites are a pyramid scheme, a house of cards held up by depositors, doomed to come crashing down on our heads....just my opinion, I could be wrong.(shamelessly stolen from Dennis Miller)

If this is your belief (pyramid scheme) perhaps stop playing online & find something else to do...why would you continue to support/do something you don't believe in?

I was just wondering how the industry is supported...I make a tiny bit of money and have fun...I have a day job. Don't get me wrong, I love poker..I play every night....great fun for me, just wouldn't be fun if I was losing money every night. Seems like the peeps here are well informed...like to hear some insights on the matter...are there really enough losers out there to support all the winners and all the sites and employees, etc???

maybe there is, casinos are packed.

U seem defensive, please post your tablenames, I will add u as friend.(just joking, please dont send hatemail)

isuldur lost like 4 million last year, so yea people lose a lot

How do pokersites make money...? Rake...? If you lose, other players win, no matter if you lose or win, the site takes some of the profit... rake.

OK, the sites make money off the rake collected from each hand or tourney. Now what you seem to be asking is who is doing the depositing. Well, 80% (Low estimate) of online poker players are perennial losers.

/thread

Did you just call me a pernenremeral loser?!? :PPPP lol.

lol....post was directed at OP..

Intent was not to come across as defensive; in the OP it was acknowledged the sites make $ off rake & tourney fees (which doesn't coincide with the thread title asking how sites make $?) so I read the purpose of the thread as a claim towards sites being a pyramid scheme of some sort...just not understanding why one would support/do something he/she doesn't believe in...for me, I would not willingly participate in an activity I thought was/is deceptive...

If peeps are losing $, they're losing it to other players since poker is not a house game.

The casinos here make a good portion of their monies from sportsbook betting from what I understand (but I haven't analyzed any of their financial stmts so unable to confirm).

I agree poker is great fun & also agree that losing $ every night is not fun.

How do poker sites make money? Hand over fist.

Better question: How does someone with 30 poker sites on their computer not know how poker sites make money?

Well I deposited three times on pokerstars and went broke within a week everytime, so know I just play freerolls and hope I win. I think all sites mainly get their money from rake and tourney fee's.

Poker has nothing to do with a pyramid scheme.

Playing poker is like running your own casino, the casinos make money because people like to gamble and/or think they can beat the system and profit.

As long as there are people willing to gamble, poker players will profit.

If not, like any other biz, you will simply stop making money.

They don't care who wins or loses. They offer bonuses to get you to put more money on the site then play bigger stakes if they can get you to. It's all in the rake and tourney fees. And I've lost my fair share of money-mostly because I was learning the game and had no bankroll management. I still lose, but I'm gettin better and smarter at the game. Maybe you have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy poker and understand it's a gamble. If you really don't enjoy losing money you might consider the play money side. You can play but it won't hurt you.

Think he knows as he said in his post from rake. I think the question he asking is of the smaller poker rooms how they making money. Merge Network ( poker.com, carbon, reefer, Iron duke ect) isnt a big room nor a small as some but I also wonder with as little people that are online there how week after week they can afford the 50K. There are never enough people that play it to have have 0 ev. The ev is usually 30k or more and with only 4000 players at a time online there how they making up the difference. And this is just 1 game the have guaranteed games all day, most do hit close to the ev or within couple hundred. It my opionion that newer sites arent making money and wont till they have a following of players that play there reg. I remember when UB wasnt a big site back in the day. Now there rolling in the money cause of players that play there all the time. So answer is The biger sites are making money because of how many people are playing at there tables, and the casino games. Sports booking is huge money maker and perhaps that why merge aquired them to make up the difference in there poker loses.

I think you need to go on his list lol

WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE SPENDING MONEY ON FOOD?

WHERE DO THEY GET ALL THIS MONEY TO KEEP SPENDING ON FOOD AND HOW DO THEY KEEP SPENDING IT EVERY DAY AND WHY DO THEY KEEP SPENDING IT WHEN ONCE YOU EAT THE FOOD IT'S GONE I MEAN IT'S JUST LIKE THROWING MONEY AWAY.

I GUESS THE ONLY ANSWER IS THAT FOOD IS A GIANT PYRAMID SCAM.

lol food is that a substitute for poker and heck i thought rake was something u did in the yard
but seriously rake is how they make there cash and they do alright as far as a pyramid scam u believe what u want!

I dont think you understand what a pyramid scheme is.

Online poker is not a pyramid scheme.

The difference between online poker and a PS is that if people stopped depositing then the game as a whole would stall. In a PS if people stop investing the scheme collapses because a PS hinges on diluting a commodity multiple times whilst maintaining its original price.

SO when a PS collapses people essentially become aware that the commodity they hold is not worth as much as they believed and hence they lose out.

If online poker stalled, your money is still worth what it was worth before so its not collapsing like a PS.

So if games got hard to find.. withdraw, you cant do that when a PS collapses because you $100 isnt worth $100 thats why the PS is collapsing.

The only way a pokersite could become a PS, (in reality a financial pump) would be if they offered finance packages to depositors and then those depositors defaulted, because then there would be more money on the site than the site could pay back out. As far as I know, this isnt the case.

^^^

OMG...in the US, food = pyramid (AND the Govt is involved ) >>> http://www.mypyramid.gov/.

Best I ever read on the internet.

So you think online poker is a scam? or is rigged?Tell me why you have over what was it......30 Poker rooms downloaded on your computer?Seriously guy i don't understand the logic here because if you feel like something wasn't legit you wouldn't take part in it right ?

When X amount of money is won or lost, the poker room gets a % of X no matter what. So with the money you're winning, you're making money for the poker room.

Sure no one likes to admit they're a losing player, but they're out there funding the winning players.

There are loads of recreational players where I work, they look on it as how much they would spend on a night out, but they're spending it on a night in instead.

I agree..... Plus you can't lose when its all play money anyway!

Obviously, money grows on trees...

I don't make enough money to eat.

Online gaming sites make money over and above the rake and tourney fees. They earn interest on the funds in your account. So many players leave funds just sitting in their accounts instead of moving the money to a site when they are going to be playing


How many of you have logged into a site you haven't been to for awhile and are surprised you have funds there? The poker site has been collecting the interest on that money all the time it was just sitting there

Whether a player wins or looses the house is still gonna make the same amount of money from them if they are playing the same stakes... you answered yourself in your own post.. rake.. I heard Full Tilt Makes 100k in rake a day? I dunno about the smaller sites, I think they just wait till they have everyone's money and disappear right?

I don't think OP meant scheme, but simply a pyramid.

top = Sharks
middle = average players
bottom = money depositing fish

OP is asking, why do the money depositing fish who lose keep depositing, and if they stop will the pyramid crumble because the $$ base goes away.

Here's how I've kind of seen the poker sites;

100K people, deposit $20 = $2M
10K of those play decent and triple their roll to $60 and decide to step up to a next level, but only $1K make it and triple their roll to $240, but the other 9K got a taste, so they redeposit (bringing in more money). And it keeps going until you have a select few at the very top who have slowly (sometimes quickly) made their rise and can stay there. Along the way, as they rise, they bring the bottom fish's money with them. Some go back down, then come back up, then go back down, then come back up. So, as long as you have new fish making $$, it WILL keep rising to the top. And, as long as you have fish (forever), there will always be new deposits made by the second, so there will NEVER be a lack of funds.

I myself am a fish. I have gotten a little better over time. Now, instead of losing my $$ within a week, I can make it last a few months... but (so far) it will usually go away. Why do I keep depositing? Because, what other hobby can I have that I can spend small $$ every couple of months on? To me, it's a form of entertainment. I would love for it to be more than that, but I've come to realize it probably won't ever be more than that, so I take it for what it is.

As the saying goes, "There's a sucker born every second", and 18 years later they will deposit their $$ on a poker site, every second. So no, the fish base will never go away and the pyramid will never crumble. Some will leave but, if it's a good site, for every 1 that leaves 2 will join.

Oh how old school.... You still spend money on FOOD???? As long as people like you keep investing, the food pyramid will never collapse........

Food is rigged...man, is that scam still getting over??????????????

Beer, now THERE lies the future of nutrition......

But do forgive me, I digress.........

thye take a share of all pots! the poker sites could care less who wins or loses just like bookies! they want action! rake is the word! gl to everyone at the tables! go northern iowa the ultimate underdog along with cornell!

I, for one, quit playing online poker.

If you do an internet search of all my accounts you will see I'm in the hole about $8000. All my graphs involve a steady, steady build, then a speeding bullet plummet.

Losing $8000 in online poker is especially difficult, since I'd ussually only deposit $100-$200 at a time, but over the years it adds up.

*cries*

That's why I play live now. I actually have an edge there. I can't read people in online, and apparently I give off all the classic tells.

Yes, an old post but found it when searching player names in CC games.

Take Fulltilt for example. &.. just for starters consider all of the tournaments running in one day & the amount of money they earn from those tourney fees. I mean just in the $750K alone there are ~4,000 players. That's $60,000 in revenue just from one tournament!!!!!!! I'd guesstimate there's almost $1million per day just in Tournament fees (adding in SNG fees).. maybe that's a low estimate? I know of MTT players who pay $5,000/mth. in Tournament fees!!! {and that's just ONE player!!). think about... $60k/yr. from one guy.
I'd think the question in this post might be.. "how could pokersites NOT make money?"

isn't it called rake ????