According to an email sent to licensees late last week, iPoker will make a network wide change from the “average contributed” rake calculation to the popular “weighted contributed” system on March 1. The switch will affect how much rake is attributed to each player, and thus the effective rakeback a player receives.
The current system only attributes rake to those who contribute to the pot, and that attribution is shared equally among all participants. Under “weighted contributed” the same players receive attribution, but points are allocated proportionally.
According to a representative from iPoker, this change “... will reflect a linear correlation of the retention systems and the players’ true contribution to the network.”
Although iPoker officially does not permit rooms to offer rakeback directly to players, VIP systems heavily reward players through points, bonuses and “rake races,” all of which are tied to rake allocation.
It had been rumored that iPoker was considering a change to the opaque, convoluted rake attribution systems championed by Bodog's “recreational player model” and Ongame Network's “Essense” system, that use proprietary algorithms to give more rewards to recreational players. This move to weighted contributed will be a relatively minor change to most players’ rewards.
iPoker first switched from the classic “dealt” method to a contributed system in January 2010. Many sites have followed suit: Full Tilt Poker switched to Weighted Contributed in October 1, 2010; PartyPoker followed suit in August 2011. PokerStars is the latest to make the change, making the switch this month.
