Dominique said in another thread something that made a lot of sense : rakeback encourages all affiliates to overbid each other. It started with what, 20% and now it’s up to 30%+ with gifts and ipods and poker tables and what not. Rakeback also educates people about what they’re worth which, no matter how you look at it, is bad for everyone. I would give rakebacks to my friends.. that’s just normal and I would do it on any site. But when a site tells you all about rakeback, it just encourages you to be an even more savvy customer. Even if our sites all have informational goals (hopefully), we inform about the games and the industry, not about administration and economy. Everyone here wants to make money. Rakeback affiliates only want to hog all of the players. Pokerchamps’ system seems reasonable for everyone.
If not for Pokerchamp’s system, all sites that have revenue sharing should take a hard stand against rakeback deals and, most importantly, warn and shut down the affiliates that contravene it. Yes, they get some players that will spend more on their site. But there are 3 downsides : 1) As was said, they have a lot of complaints. 2) They shut out affiliates that can’t compete due to not wanting to overbid. 3) Their players become more educated and become deal hunters.
Let’s face it.. at a poker table, you want to play against dumb players. Educating them a bit is good so they continue playing. If you educate them too much, they become unprofitable to play against. That’s just my humble opinion.