I'm not going into detail to much on this but don't you think customer support (wages), overhead costs such as gas, electic, building maintance, water, insurance, rent and IT support costs may have something to do with it? Sure some are out of a person's bedroom but the big sites have overhead.
Yes, granted they make lots of money. But why would I be in a business if I'm not going to make money?? Also if I have that much money I would have someone I hired
to tell me how to spend it
Yes, in the business world of anything you invest in isn't it a risk? But isn't it a risk in the investments world such as the stock exchange, bank bonds etc? Granted I might see a percentage of interest with the banks.
I don't keep thousands in the pokersites..do you? I've also been an online member for 4yrs and have never had a problem with the sites to withdraw my winnings..have you?
BTW you should never invest in a pokersite that is not established!!
Well, that is the protential problem, spending customer's deposits on overhead and other expenses, or investing it and losing it. We as players are not investing in a
poker site, we are just letting them hold our money so we can play. They should only be paying their bills out of the rake they take. The rake is theirs, the deposits are not. But since they are not regulated, you never know what may happen. I feel pretty safe with the big two (for U.S.), but beyond that, some sites seem to be pretty tough (or at least slow) to withdraw from, certainly more so than depositing.
In the stock market, sure, your investments may lose value, but you wouldn't expect your brokerage to be spending your money on themselves or their business expenses without some government protection of your funds.
I think our U.S. leaders should get it together and accept
online poker -- legalize it, regulate it, and collect taxes from it. That would make everyone happy, except maybe some of the poker sites, although it would open the market up to others that are afraid to do business with the U.S. now.