The sites themselves are in a much better position to allocate loyalty rewards and rebates than the affiliate are in many cases, including rakeback. Some sites, like Poker Rewards and Poker Champs do just that.
So does Superior Poker.
No, changing your email alone will not allow you to open multiple accounts in most cases. If you do that, you have postponed detection until you try to withdraw only. Then you lose. It does take a little more to escape detection, I was just reading up on current methods for opening multiple accounts yesterday.
Most poker rooms themselves are not happy with rake back at all – all the ones I talked to about it have told me about the pain in the butt they have with players constantly wanting to change affiliates. First they want to move to a rake back aff, then one who offers higher rake backs, then one who offers higher rake backs and gifts, and so on.
Rake back and non rake back don’t mix. It’s one or the other, or you are losing.
The thing is that you don’t know how much you are losing to room spamming – there is absolutely no way to tell. You also don’t know how many of your players talk the room into putting them under another affiliate, and how many go through the process of opening an undetectable second account.
It is best to make up your mind and stick with it – do or do not advertise rake back rooms.
I am not so involved in this anymore because I know that the trend is dying down already because the rooms themselves are getting annoyed at the associated problems. There may be a few who will survive on this business model, many more who will just ignore it and hope it will go away, and an increasing number will actively forbid it.
In my opinion it is not a working business model in the long run and by now I am already satisfied that it will die down on it’s own.
Rooms that offer rake back on their own, or in better words, proper incentives to high rake players such as rebates and loyalty rewards, will rule because they make life easy for all. Retaining high rollers has always been an art, and rooms that do not learn how to practise it will lose their best players to other rooms anyway. Poker Rewards, Poker champs and Superior Poker have the right idea.
The list of non-rakeback Pokers, as last updated, was:
Party Poker
Paradise Poker
Superior Poker
Breakaway Poker
Poker Rewards
Golden Tiger Poker
Virtual City Poker
Vegas Lounge Poker
Poker Room
Pacific Poker
Poker.com
Royal Cardroom.com
I think free enterprise will take care of this one.