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That’s a rough rake. Yeah, I’d start to analyze it by saying that most pots hit the rake cap, so a “standard” rake would be roughly $4 every 10 hands, or $0.40/hand. Since you’re playing tighter than your opponents, you might win fewer than 1/10 of the pots, so perhaps you pay only $0.35/hand on average.

So your rake is roughly $0.40/hand higher than average. If a good player could win $20/hour in a soft $5-$10 live game with a “standard” rake (I think that’s doable), then perhaps you could manage $8/hour in your game, since at 30 hands/hour and $0.40/hand extra, you’re paying $12/hour extra.

That’s rough. I don’t think it’s unbeatable, but it would obviously chop a good player’s win very considerably, and it would turn most marginal/decent players into net losers.

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!)

Caesars, Borgata, and now the Taj mostly.