In poker, all the players are profitable to the house. I think it's up for debate whether it's good for poker rooms to get rid of winners, but if there was a benefit, it would be an indirect benefit, not a direct one.

It depends how prolific they are. Someone running a winning bot farm is taking more money from the losers than the house would be if the losers kept winning/losing against each other. This assumes that the house wants losers to win alot to stay addicted. If they just get beaten all the time they might quit sooner, they may also run out of money sooner.

A bit like how lottery tickets costing $1 will make you win $1, $2 etc. prizes so you buy another ticket and so increase the revenue (a percentage of which is profit), the same for the house. 2 losers winning money off each other all night means they both lose and gave lots of money to the house. A winner taking the 2 losers money in a fell swoop means a lot less money for the house.

er, every hand played in poker is profitable for the house (except for the ones where all players fold before the flop, prior to which no rake is taken). Bots, etc. don't matter. The only reason to prevent bots and collusion and other forms of mischief is to make your poker room a good place for people to play.

I think the point the poster you're responding to was making is this: If people lose their money quickly to bots/collusion/cheating (or simply skilled players), they will quickly run out of money. If they play each other, they can play more hands, so more profit for the casino.

To exemplify the two extremes, assuming 10% rake: Player A has $10, and loses $1 every hand: after 10 hands, he's broke and $1 went to the casino. Player B and Player C are equally skilled and equally lucky. They keep playing $1 pots, trading back and forth. After twenty hands, both have still have $9 while the casino already earned $2. They could essentially keep going until they have given all their money to the casino.

Well that is how it works. The casino provides the service of collecting players together to form a game, serving a fair platform for them to play on, ingesting and disbursing funds (which is no small matter), and then attempting to prevent them from cheating each other. That is the business model for poker, and it's extremely hard to make it profitable. If you factor in the time it takes to do all those things, as well as managing the software 24/7, it's a wonder anyone bothers to host it at all these days.

[edit] As an individual player, obviously, whether IRL casino or online your goal is to outpace the rake. You factor the rake into your expected losses and find a casino with a low rake (ours was actually 3%) and try to get away as a winner. But of course as a casino owner I love grinders and they're who you want day in and day out.

3% rake is amazing. Where's that?

If your games are transparent and verifiably fair, you don't need to "make sure" that half your customers lose. You just post the payout odds, and have a fat enough wallet to cover the volatility. There is no "work" involved in deciding who wins or loses.

That said: If you're making a book (for sportsbetting) then yes, you are trying to balance the difference rather than predict a winner. That's a totally different thing from running a casino.