Sunday, May 15, 2011

Entry fee?




I was thinking about entering a play-money tournament this evening on PokerStars. When I looked at the registration page, I noticed something odd about the buy-in: It was 500+30 points.

I certainly understand why online poker sites have a separate buy-in and entry fee for real-money games: The buy-in goes into the prize pool, and the entry fee is what the site keeps as its price for running the game. But when it's all fake money, why do they bother having a separate "entry fee" that is not put into the prize pool?

I have scratched my head for about ten minutes now trying to figure this out, and it's about to start bleeding, so instead of continuing I'm posting the question here.

8 comments:

Mike Heffner said...

getting you used to rake, I suppose... :-)

Anonymous said...

Its in place to keep the play money games like the real money games for easier transition from play to real.

ManInBlAck said...

I HAVE emailed different sites about this. They all say the software is all the same, so no way to take off rake.

David Frier said...

If you play money for practice and keep track of your results, those would be skewed by no rake. Frankly I think the surprising thing is this: there's no rake in the play money ring games.

Anonymous said...

so when fish deposit and start real money they don't kick up a fuss at 20% rake on micro lol

Short-Stacked Shamus said...

What I want to know is which site offers the best fakerakeback?

jamyhawk said...

lmao at "fakerakeback"

dan michalski said...

Zynga charges an entry fee and takes a rake, too ... even though they've never had anything to do with real-money, supposedly.