Player Rewards and Affiliate Details (final draft)
The overall goal of the Player Rewards is to incentivize players to play more and more, driving more and more rake and RDOGE volume (and therefore price). Further consideration is given to making the rewards lifetime, tied to the account instead of period-of-time based, to minimize the creation of new accounts and maximize the player’s commitment to RDOGE.
| Level | DOGEBones | RDOGE/1K DOGEBones | Rakeback Benefits | Promotion Access |
| 20 | 5,000,000 | 400 | 49.00% | |
| 19 | 4,000,000 | 375 | 46.50% | |
| 18 | 3,000,000 | 350 | 44.01% | |
| 17 | 2,000,000 | 325 | 41.51% | |
| 16 | 1,000,000 | 300 | 39.02% | |
| 15 | 750,000 | 275 | 36.52% | |
| 14 | 500,000 | 250 | 34.03% | |
| 13 | 350,000 | 225 | 31.54% | |
| 12 | 200,000 | 200 | 29.08% | |
| 11 | 100,000 | 175 | 26.65% | |
| 10 | 75,000 | 150 | 24.20% | |
| 9 | 50,000 | 140 | 23.30% | Annual Freeroll Unlocked |
| 8 | 35,000 | 130 | 21.43% | |
| 7 | 20,000 | 120 | 20.75% | |
| 6 | 10,000 | 110 | 20.50% | Quarterly Freeroll Unlocked |
| 5 | 5,000 | 100 | 20.00% | Monthly Promotion Unlocked |
| 4 | 2,000 | 100 | 19.50% | Monthly Freeroll Unlocked |
| 3 | 1,000 | 100 | 26.00% | DOGEBone Bonuses Unlocked |
| 2 | 500 | 0 | 31.00% | 100 RDOGE Welcome Bonus |
| 1 | 250 | 0 | 21.00% | 50 RDOGE Welcome Bonus |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00% | Weekly Freeroll Unlocked |
DOGEBones: These are a 1:1 representation of the amount of RDOGE raked from a player, using the contributed method (in which a player is given credit for an amount of rake proportional to their contribution to the pot). For example: Players A,B and C are in a hand at 50/100 with a 10,000 RDOGE pot. Player A put in 1,000 RDOGE before folding, and Players B and C each put in 4,500. At showdown Player C wins the pot and it is raked at 5% 3 BB cap for (10,000 * 0.05 max 300) = 300 RDOGE for 300 DOGEbones in rewards. 30 (1,000/10,000 * 300) go to Player A, and 135 each to Players B and C.
In the table above, DOGEBones are identical to the amount of RDOGE raked from the player over their lifetime play. DOGEBones are used instead of referring to the raked amount directly to avoid having casual players think about how much they’re being raked; they can just know that the more they play the more Bones they get. The 1:1 ratio makes it easier for more dedicated players to calculate their effective rakeback and switch from their existing sites. Furthermore, using Bones as a separate concept allows adjustments to the program afterwards without making too obvious changes; Bone ratio to rake can be altered as prices rise. Bones can also be awarded as prizes for promotional events in and out of the poker room, providing a cost-effective way to incentivize holder participation on the crypto-marketing side of things.
RDOGE Bonus: Levels 1 and 2 receive a welcome bonus of 50 and 100 RDOGE respectively credited to them in the cashier and immediately available for withdrawal. These immediate bonuses will help provide brand new players with some rewards before they climb farther up the levels.
DOGEBone Bonuses: From level 3 onwards, players will be able to trade their DOGEBones in for a certain amount of RDOGE credited to their account in the cashier and available for withdrawal immediately. This will be the main form of rakeback, and as a player rises in level the exchange rate becomes better. Compared to a straight rakeback program, this has the benefit to the player of being able to effectively have the highest level of rakeback from the beginning provided they don’t trade in any DOGEBones at a lower rate. This incentivizes players to hold on to them for better future exchange rate and reduces potential selling pressure until later (when price movement and volume are hopefully higher and better able to withstand it).
Promotion Access: At certain levels, players become eligible to participate in an increasing number of promotions which are funded from the rake (more on this below). Adding these in provides a diverse tangible benefit to reaching the higher tiers and is active for the lifetime of the account, to incentivize players to play under the same account and not create new ones. Because it is lifetime, a whale (losing player who plays and loses big) will have a reason to stick around and play freerolls even if they lose all their money, and keeping them engaged means they’re more likely to deposit again.
NFT Rewards: (REMOVED FOR NOW UNTIL NFT TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES AVAILABLE)
This obviously depends on our ability to integrate NFTs with the poker room, but would be a golden opportunity not present elsewhere. Many sites have some ability to customize avatars, but handing out limited edition ones that potentially have resale value would be a first. Furthermore, NFTs can contain all sorts of smart code and can be set up to “evolve” if equipped for certain levels of rake generated. This adds another level of gamification to the poker and can serve to further incentivize people to keep on grinding on the tables, particularly if a secondary market becomes viable. This doesn’t need to be released immediately and can be added later.
RDOGE vs USD considerations: This program is entirely based on RDOGE in terms of rake and rewards. Price movement is expected to impact the program dramatically. Players tend to play at stakes determined by the equivalent USD blind levels, so if RDOGE rises by 10x, it’s expected any one player will be playing at 1/10th the stakes, accumulating 1/10th the RDOGE rake and progressing 1/10th as fast. While this slows down things as price rises, we can make sure that the program is still worth it at the lower levels for newer players (and adjust afterwards as needed). Keeping everything in RDOGE simplifies the math for the cashier (provided the rake needed for player rewards is kept as RDOGE), and it provides strong incentive for players to get their volume in now to get their rewards up before price increases require higher stakes for the same progress.
Affiliate, Program and Promotional Costs
Affiliates: To keep things simple, affiliates are given a flat 10% of their referrals’ rake, paid weekly for the previous week to their cashier account. Some consideration is being given to a sliding scale based on lifetime volume, with affiliates receiving <10% to start and >10% towards the end to average out to 10%….but introducing complexity introduces openings to exploit as well, so I currently think a simpler model is best for speed of rollout and ease of use. These details are changeable in the future as well; depending on early results, we might sweeten the deal for affiliates by raising their personal rewards tier, giving them access to exclusive promotions and contests, etc.
Program Costs: I currently have the cost to run the program at a flat 5% of the rake generated by players enrolled in the program. This will include the design and implementation of the program, ongoing management of affiliates and player reward questions as well as data review and program adjustments. This is my best guesstimate based on projected costs of running the program; if it becomes significantly more of a burden than expected we can discuss changes in the future. Payment in RDOGE means I’m heavily speculating that the value of RDOGE will increase to make it worth the time put in, but that’s what we’re all doing!
Promotional Costs: Rake-funded promotions fall into two categories, Freerolls and Monthly Races. Both are funded by a percentage of rake generated by players in the program.
Freerolls: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Freerolls are available to players who have reached a high enough level to qualify. I currently have 1% of rake generated assigned to each of these pools, but tweaks may be necessary to ensure the weekly freeroll prize pool isn’t too small. Freerolls are a good promotional mechanism because it increases player engagement and scales well; entering more players doesn’t affect the overall prize pool, and it doesn’t feel like a diminishment of value to the players. These are also convenient focal points for marketing efforts, cross-promotions, etc.
Monthly Promotions: To add an element of competition and further incentivize volume, monthly promotions will be offered to the players who can collect the most DOGEBones during the month. Prize pool will come from 5% of the rake collected from all players during the month. While DOGEBones from outside the poker room can be counted, care should be taken to not make the impact too large, so that poker play is still the main way to climb the leaderboards and participation DOGEBones are a small edge among otherwise equal volume players.
Total Rake Impact: The total impact of all the above (Player Rewards, Affiliate Rewards, Program Costs and Promotional Costs) amounts to between 44% and 64% of the rake, as shown in the table above.. To support this and future site needs (such as security and anti-collusion/bot monitoring), the rake should be increased to be more in line with other sites. 5% with a cap of 3-5 big blinds (at a 50/100 game, the 100 is the big blind) seems reasonable. While about 1% higher than other crypto poker rooms, we’re also offering much better player and affiliate rewards than those sites, and the crypto benefits of holding RDOGE and ease of use is a compelling case as well. These numbers will very much depend on access to current table data for refinement, but based on my limited sample sizes, 5% 3 BB cap is about twice as much rake as 1% uncapped and 5% 5BB cap is three times as much, so site rake should only increase from current setup . Should the program fail to bring in many new players, the percentage-based costs ensure that the site is never paying out of pocket.
Technical Dependencies
For the above to work smoothly, there are several technical requirements:
Easy Affiliate Linking: Affiliates need an easy way to link players to sign up in a way that the player is credited to the affiliate. A referral code entered during the first deposit to the site is probably easiest with current implementation; short links containing the relevant data would be ideal. Some affiliate programs allow any player to be an affiliate and refer anyone using their account information; not only is a wallet address unwieldy for this, but I think we want more control over affiliates, at least in the beginning. For now, I’ll approve affiliates manually and generate a referral code for them when approved. This information will then need to be sent to the team for setup in the tracking system (below).
Affiliate Monitoring: Affiliates need a way to monitor the activity of their referrals and associated payouts. This system would need to tie into the poker site’s rake monitoring logs, at least weekly and preferably with daily updates. A fairly straightforward relational database and web interface seems like it should be able to handle this, possibly nothing more complicated than another tab on the main poker site. For the time being, we can manually export rake data periodically and I’ll manually update a spreadsheet, and see what can be done to make that presentable and accessible for affiliates and players.
Poker Room Mechanics: As of now, there are still quite a few poker mechanics that are not working properly for cash games, and tournaments are also missing some key functionality. While not an absolute requirement to launch an affiliate program, momentum can be severely impacted by anything that slows enthusiasm, and not having proper mechanics is a bad look likely to hamper the program.Fixing these should be a top priority.
Support: I plan on providing almost all the support for the program, and will need an official way of communicating with players and affiliates regarding this. A TG title of “Rewards and Affiliate Manager” or similar works, and if we can set up the support ticket system with Rewards and Affiliate options in the dropdown menus that should allow people ways to reach me for that. [email protected] email address would be good, as well as affiliates@. As we work on the interface, we can look at live chat integration as well.
Conclusion
Many of the above factors need to be refined before launch or even presentation to the community, but serves as an approximate idea of where we should be in many aspects. Further discussion should be planned ASAP so we can integrate the technical development into the existing development schedule.