Q&A #9: Thoughts About Online Rakes

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Hello everyone. Back from the honeymoon… Elaine and I took a terrific trip to Paris. I’ve got a stockpile of questions, so I’ll bang away at them and try to catch up. Here’s the first one.

Jago writes,

I suspect that many “pro” players are unable to fully understand that the primary for focus for them should IMHO be not upon the game of poker, but rather upon the meta-game of making money from poker.

That said I have some questions for you:

Depending on the rake structure of the site in question, at the 3/6 adn 5/10 limits online each 30% in rakeback corresponds roughly to 1SB per hour??? I could work it out but I imagined you might know.

So playing at a 90 to 100% rakeback site or in a rakefree home game you could expect an extra 1.5BB per hour or 3BB per 100 hands over a raked game with the same oponents.

I guess if your table selection is good then there must still be games raked out there that are beatable by 1BB per hour, but they take finding.

My rule of thumb used to be that an extra 10% vpip in a full ring game was worth about a SB per hour. a game that is “too tight” is worth a little less but still profitable. Obvioulsy there is more to profitability than just vpip, but finding 40% vpip full ring is what an average player might have to do to justify playing in a fully raked game over and above one that is rakefree.

For 6max games the analysis is more complex, bearing in mind that the rake is also higher and that individual players matter more.

To be honest I have been shocked at the sudden move towards pokerstars. While I am heartened by the evident lack of intelligence exhibited, I can’t bring myself to chase the fish into the frying pan. I ought to by a pan I guess.

Online cardrooms seem to be separating into two categories, high rake “full service” cardrooms and low rake “discount” cardrooms. While the costs of the rake can be very high, as you’ve noted, I don’t think things are as clear cut as you make them out to be.

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