Q&A #87: Rake and Time Charges and How They Affect Winning Players

Foxwoods has the same time rake at $5/half hr for 1-2. The way I thought about it was in terms of how many buy-ins had to stack off to pay the house. So if a guy stacked off for a $200 buy-in, the rake was “paid” for 2 hours and all of the additional action was divided among the winning players. Did more than one person stack off every two hours? Oh baby, yes. There were some very weak players that sat down and burned off their buy-in in a couple of orbits. There was plenty of money on the table to pay the winning players.

Ed - Thanks a million.

Todd - thank you for your input too.

I forgot that the BB/100 was post rake! So if I could bring over my winrate to the casino it would actually be larger because there is no rake… just time…

Also, you are totally correct in saying that a larger than 17BB/100 winrate is achievable at the casino.

Todd - Yes it’s Foxwoods. I play there all the time. And in general I always do much better at the Woods than online. Right now I am trying to determine if it would be more profitable to play at the casino or online.

I want to analyze the situation, come to a conclusion and then take action. I think I’m going to commit just to play much more at the casino than online.

I prefer LIVE play because:

- There are no bots!
- There is no collusion! (at least it is minimal compared to online)
- There is no Poker Tracker!
- Reading tells in live play is awesome!

Back to the casino baby, probably 2-5 NL.

Todd - When I’m at the casino I play with a White Full-Tilt visor… introduce yourself… ask if I’m “Ducks” and I’ll let you know if it’s me. ;)

Funny how things are all perspective. Have been living and playing primarily in Australia for the past few years where there is one casino in each city and so no competition. The standard rake for NL is time and rake. That is, for 1/2 NL you pay 10% of the pot (capped at $8) and $5 per hour per player. It goes up from there…

Big blinds versus big bets confuses a lot of people. BB/100 is a term that originated with PokerTracker, as far as I know, and it means big bets per hundred hands. When it was created, limit poker predominated. So, by convention, in NL a big bet is two big blinds. In $1/2 NL a BB is $4, not $2.
Everyone I’ve talked to likes the idea of referring to big blinds as bb and big bets as BB, but that attempted-standardization hasn’t been widely adopted yet. Let’s do our part to spread it, since it would eliminate this ongoing source of confusion.

I think a good NL earn rate is much higher than 3 BB/100. My goal is 9 BB/100, based on 2+2’s Voluntary Statistics Survey. The survey participants were playing games tougher than $1/2 NL live (I think in the range of $100-200 online). 9 BB/100 at $1/2 NL is $36/100 hands.

Online versus live:
If you want to improve fast, online beats live hands down. You can see twice as many hands per table/hour, and most serious players play 2-4 tables. Then you can analyze your play later in PokerTracker, and post the hand histories for discussion on a forum. All the great young players are coming from online, and it’s no surprise. It would take forever live to get the kind of experience that an online player can get in a few months (if they’re very serious) to a few years. Online players will just improve faster than live ones, assuming they’re committed enough to improve.

Also, Ducks’s comments about bots and collusion worried me. It sounds like you’re a bit paranoid, Dukcs. Sure, bots and collusion exist, but anyone that talks about them that much probably thinks they’re a lot more prevalent (and effective) than they actually are. Remember, the best bot in the world still hasn’t beaten a decent pro player (they always choose Phil Laak to play them for some reason)… and that’s at the bots’ best game: heads-up NL Hold’em. And online sites have better tools for detecting collusion than live casinos will ever have.

I get to Foxwoods occasionally too. It’s my closest casino. If I ever won there I’d probably be back (only three sessions so far: I probably just ran bad those sessions). I do a lot better online so far.

Correction to above post: the bots’ best game is heads-up LIMIT Hold’em.

Well, i guess in France, the rake is monstruous.
In a 2€-2€ NL game :
2€ if the pot reaches 10
4€ if the pot reaches 50
6€ if the pot reaches 100 + 2€ for the jackpot
8€ if the pot reaches 200
10€ if the pot reaches 300
and so on, capped to 14€ when the pot reaches 500€.
In a 2€-4€ NL game :
2€ if the pot reaches 10
4€ if the pot reaches 50
6€ if the pot reaches 100 + 2€ for the jackpot
8€ if the pot reaches 200
10€ if the pot reaches 300
and so on, capped to 24€ when the pot reaches 1000€.
Fot the 5€-5€ NL game, it’s a 25€ per person time rake.

Ed,
Where in AC do you normally play, if I can ask? I play there occasionally. I wouldn’t be hunting you down!….but It would be cool to run into you.
-Joe

Good article, Ed. Wondered if you had any thoughts on Harrah’s recent rake increase to 10% max $5/$1 JP? (for both no-limit and limit games—a few of us are still playing small stakes limit.)

SelfMade - thanks for the BB correction.

What sort of data do I need to be collecting to evaluate a hand fee rather than a rake or time fee?

This article came just as I’m evaluating the rake structure of the $5/$10 Limit game here (the only one in town).
This game is perfect for me as I’m new to live limit HE (though not HE in general) and it fits the profile of Ed’s ‘Small Stakes HE’ book - it seems to be 6 to a flop minimum with not a thinking player in sight; every hand, all day long (haven’t tried it at night yet). So I’m having fun exploring the ideas in the book and not getting beat up while I practice.

The rake is $0.75 per hand though and has made me wonder if in the end I will end up paying for this experience rather than have it pay for itself.

If I consider how much money is taken off the table ($7.50/hand) then how can I estimate how much more this would be than a regular rake? As we are seeing average 6 - 8 people every flop and loose passive afterwards, pots are generally rather big (10BB at min and much more when I’m in there raising away and they’re calling!).
So if I roughly assume all pots would be big enough to hit the cap (not actually true of course but not far from it), is this rake simply $3+ in excess of a reasonable rake? This sounds very bad to me, even though to call this game soft is a severe understatement.

Would love some help on getting a grasp on the right maths to solve this.
Do I need to know average pot sizes as well as my own percentage of pots played, won and lost ? How to piece it together ?

Any comments at all about per hand fee issues are appreciated.

Thanks (oh and Ed, loving SSHE btw, learning to play is fun when you’re not the fish!)

online play was great for the first 5 years. i learned more than i could have imagined, but it took both live play and online to get better. now i pretty much only play in casinos. legislation change brought out a different side of online poker i do not care for any more. and 2/5 and 5/10 nl is very beatable in the casino. my exclusive casino is the taj, look me up if you are there, im the only one there ever with the vt hat

I am not sure what the rake is online, but there is a site that all Texas Holdem players should check out I just came across it about 2 weeks and I have been using tips from here to win. I picked up about $200 in the last few days which is a lot for me because I am cheap. They have small tournaments and large ones about 80 per day and the customer service is cool. Its better than sportsbook.com who I used to love. Check it out for yourself

http://www.Texasholdemallin.com

Have fun