RIP Rakeback?

Interesting moves are afoot in the online poker world. It would appear that the rooms have had enough of being squeezed and cutting each others throats with higher and higher rake back offers in attempts to lure (or hold onto) the big players. With players playing one room off against another to squeeze a few extra % the average rakeback deal has increased significantly over the past few years... a line in the sand was inevitable sooner or later.

Last week I had an e-mail sourced from the Prima Network, they are capping rakeback across the entire network at 30% gross for all players. Anyone caught offering more than this will be shot at dawn. Further more, affiliates are only allowed to mention rakeback to new signings after they have signed up for the site. So no more dangling carrots. Now I don't play on Prima so not really a problem until it becomes a trend across more networks...errrm....!

A little bird told me about a month ago that Crypto were planning to do a similar cap. Surely not I thought at the time! But it looks like it's going to happen. Apparently, all the Crypto managers had a meeting in St Kitts and it's been agreed that a 30% cap will be applied to all Crypto players early in 2007. From what I was told it's not a 100% done deal yet but looks very likely. For the casual player this is not too much of an issue but if you are raking £8k a month and have a half decent deal at mid 30s% then this is costing you 5K a year... not a massive amount to some high rakers... but it's a WSOP main event buy in and I'd rather have it in my pocket than someone elses.

I've highlighted the benefits of avoiding the rooms that use $ accounts previously , it will be interesting to see where the best value poker room is for UK players once the dust settles with some new poker rooms coming onto the market, the rake changes and the shake up to the US market. What with everyone on Crypto at the same rakeback and BF still struggling to come up with a site that does not give you a migraine and allows you to play more than 5 hands without a disconnect it will be interesting to see what everyone can come up with now to keep their noses ahead of the pack. All the value will be in the promotions the skins run, I'm not talking about $50 bonus, I mean added value in terms of £X rake for an EPT /WSOP package etc.

The deal a group of us did with Hills last month after we jumped from BF was all good value for the player at 36% gross, but may be short lived in light of the news, if anyone wants to get on for a few months before crypto cap it then feel free, clear your cookies and click HERE....