Let's talk about rake, late 2025 edition.

Another factor to note is that MGM Springfield--and to my understanding, at all their venues--went to 8 handed tables about 2 years ago.
This often ends up with tables runing short handed more frequently. One one empty seat and one person walking and your 6 handed, a table of 5 and a table of 4 can run for awhile before one breaks and then they consolidate. Doesn't change the rake amount listed, but probably does impact "cost" of a player to sit.

Yeah, eight-seat tables now mean a lot of hands are 5 or even 4 way. Everyone just bleeds the tax.

Sure, and if you haven't seen a group of businessmen griping about their biggest cost having gone up recently, you're clearly not in business 😀

Everything you say is true, but it doesn't change the fact that the rake is a huge cost. I track my rake and it's just under $20/hr (including promo drop and tips, less rakeback). Having a rakeless edge of over 10 bb/hr doesn't "nullify" the rake, it's just a major drag on your winrate. You're right that one obviously cannot focus on rake minimization to the exclusion of profit seeking, but this also does not make rake ignorable. I'm happy to pay $20/hr for the house to spread the game and it's not too far off the raw cost of many hobbies, but it's still a significant cost.

yeah i mean the ignoring rake thing (even more so at low stakes) is just so absurd that i cant really respond to it

on par with the not tipping thing comment tbh

Our tables dropped to 9 handed (after always being at 10) last year and by far the biggest affect is often playing ~6 handed due to walkers / etc., all with no reduction on our 9+1+1 take. Pretty convinced the sole difference in me running at 75% of my historical winrate this year (although lol sample size and still well within reasonable variance) is the fact the blinds are coming around 1 or 2 more times per hour than they used to.

GcluelesstaxbleedingnoobG

Dealers work for tips. Tip your dealer. You have to buy special tip-chips as you aren't allowed to pay from the pot (that would make the game illegal).

They have "club fees" and "dealer appreciation" fees on their tourneys. There's a community box to throw cash in that's used to pay for the concessions. There used to be a bunch of similar non-profit social clubs in Columbus of disputed legality. They argued First Amendment freedom of association, and the city mostly looked the other way as long as the games weren't raked. So it was an annual membership fee plus a daily use fee. Most of them shut down when the Casino opened up and pressured the city to crack down on them. The Tank managed to survive and when COVID shut down the casino for a bit they started thriving again. Last time I was there was probably about two years ago and their daily fee was still nominal. I don't remember exactly what it was, I want to say it was $20 something. Back in the day when I lived there it was a flat $20.

There are plenty of games around the country with a time rake instead of a table rake. The Tank is the cheapest I've ever seen. It exists for the love of the game, not for profit.

Well, obviously its a cost, but its a cost that is going to exist. Ignoring it is the only rational action unless you happen to end up in a spot that is so close on EV that the rake might actually flip it from positive EV to negative EV - but let's face it, the majority of players aren't cutting EV decisions that close. If you present a situation on this board that might be +3bb EV or less, everyone is going to say that the spot is too close and to pass up on it because there are "easier spots" - and there are. Nobody is intentionally trying to get all the money in as a 51% to 49% favorite. And that's how close it has to be for rake to change the "right" play. (Say $200 stacks, pot is $391 after rake, 51% equity $199.41, getting it in here goes from winning $4 to losing $0.59). You take the coinflips when you have to, but I don't see a lot of pros seeking them out.

So if you aren't ending up in those spots that are that close on a routine basis, and you're probably passing up on equity edges that are that small in a low-stakes game. The vast majority of the decisions you make, you likely believe your EV is higher than that on the decision.

I would love for all those who think it makes some huge difference, to go to any random spot on the board and identify a position where "if it is raked I would do this, if it isn't raked I would do that". Show me the difference that you would make in a decision in real time based upon the rake. Then we can break that down, and I'd bet dollars to donuts if we run some solvers the instinct of the player worried about rake is to play too tight, and they make lower EV decisions when they are thinking about rake than when they assume there is no rake.

You want to gripe about whatever you like to gripe about, fine. But it isn't something that's changing, and if people are really letting their knowledge of rake influence their play, it's probably making them play worse and have lower EV. The fact that I played $1/$2 for 6 hours yesterday and was 3! exactly one time and 4! zero times on any street is far more relevant to what decisions are +EV than the rake. The casino earned their rake yesterday as far as I'm concerned bringing those players in. And these were players who are following the WSOP circuit. Almost tempted me to try my hand in the tournament, then I remembered that I like to enjoy life.

Got no business in this thread because I waited. I wanted to play for a living at 22, but couldn’t take the chance. I could have made millions selling real estate, but turned down that opportunity too.

I waited and jumped into another competitive field, coaching football. I never made a lot of money and there was certainly uncertainty at times, but I loved going to work every morning.

Then, like a wink of the eye, I became old and retired. I have steady income each month, so the wait is over. Sometimes, card rooms make me sick. Just feels sleazy at times and I don’t think I would have liked it as much as throwing around a football every day of my life.

I don’t have to win. But winning is everything, it’s the only thing. Without poker, I would have no drive. I spent my life helping boys become men and had a good time doing it. Now, poker is my huckleberry

So, rake and fair tipping makes it very difficult to win. Often the rungood doesn’t keep pace with the runbad. Games get short, terrible players are hard to find and all the reasons already posted make it a hard way to make an easy living.

As a side hustle, I make a few bucks, but when my set of jacks is beat by a set of queens, I’m glad I waited. I think you need higher stakes to make a decent living and you can’t find those games easily. I like the mental intensity of the game, the challenge - but it’s not a very fulfilling lifestyle.

Most of all, I know I must work harder to find every edge I can, because it’s not getting any easier. It’s funny that sometimes I think I am working hard to improve. But I’ve got to pick up the pace. The wait is over.

I *think* (could be wrong, I'm not going to slog thru all the posts) that some may simply be saying that rake makes a huge difference on your bottom line. If you played a significant N hours making x bb/hr in a game that only raked $5 maximum, it's likely you would have only made somewhere in the neighbourhood of (x - 3) bb/hr had they been raking a maximum of $9 (which is a hugenormous difference given any reasonable x winrate).

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

Without rake, there wouldn't be a game, and your win rate would be $0. It isn't like you're getting nothing in return. That's my point. People are complaining about the thing that makes playing cards an alternative to working McDonald's possible.

ive actually never heard anyone not being explicitly paid for the position try to argue that rake is meaningless / positive for the game.

I mean... you can fairly easily compare solved preflop charts with no rake vs. rake, the differences are numerous. And the solver is tighter than almost anybody.

Yes, that's against perfect opponents and yours are dropping $666 an hour. But instead of looping that bit again, let me just reference this...

Well now you have.

I recall a floor manager at the casino with the rake structure listed below (a casino somewhere in Melbourne, Australia, kind of close to the CBD, actually in fact the ONLY casino in this city, with a population of 6 million and many tourists especially when there's a major tennis tournament on and the grand prix and stuff), telling me that rake doesn't matter because all you have to do is wait for a big AI win pot, win it, then leave. If you do this you only pay rake ONCE, and while, yeah, paying $25 for that one pot rather than $15 costs you an extra $10 that's relatively insignificant, especially when you consider that the AI pot is likely worth over $1000 --- like's in these terms, it's only an extra 1% effectively right? Said floor manager who provided me with this irrefutable argument for higher rake, funnily enough, seemed to keep getting promoted.

Let us know how your bottom line is doing when your rake eventually doubles.

Grake=rake*2=rake*3=rake*4,iyo?G

Good thing I haven't eaten yet today cuz I woulda puked up all over myself given that 1/3 NL rake.

Gusingfirst9secondstothrowupandlast1secondtofold,imoG

If you aren't beating the game, your options are to find a different game or get better. The reason you aren't beating it is irrelevant to your bottom line. Whining about the rake isn't going to change anything; rake isn't going away, and rake is going to go up with inflation. That's the real world. You can whine about it, or you can adapt and make money.

Someday $1/$2 is going to disappear because of inflation: $200 today isn't what it was 20 years ago. $200 in 2000 is $377 today after inflation. I'm a bit surprised there are still $200 cap games in existence, as many $1/$2 games have transitioned to $300-$500 caps. There is a reason $0.50/$1 with $100 cap live games didn't exist in 2000, which is about what a $200 cap $1/$2 is today in terms of buying power off table. So even without rake, attempting to make a living off of playing $1/$2 $200 cap games is going to become less practical every year, and it wasn't ever really practical to begin with.

Yami, this is mostly the take I'm responding to. At a typical LLSNL game (i.e. small stakes with small BI / stacks), the size of the rake that you're not too concerned about is probably one of the single biggest factors (if not the biggest) in deciding how much you can beat the game for.

(i.e. I'm not disagreeing with any other takes like being surprised at what the minimum stakes still are, the fact they'll undoubtedly change in the future, what you can make a living off of, etc. All's I'm sayin' is the size of the rake at LLSNL is kinda pretty much the be all end all of how well you can possibly do in the game. It's... an important factor.)

Gthat'sallI'msayin',nothin'less,nothin'moreG

The room cut the 1/3 game when first introducing the new rake structure and then brought the 1/3 back due to POPULAR demand, sadly enough. The above discussion regarding inflationary pressure is relevant; also at this particular room there are extra costs for the House to provide mandatory responsible gaming measures, which involved employing a bunch of staff in this role, extra costs which were implicitly cited as another key reason by the House for the rake increases.

even Sydney, which has the same additional measures, has only gone to max $20 which is still eye watering but I was very surprised they didn't follow Crown

I bought them all baklava the other day, I stand by my statement that I feel good about the situation.

Nah ah, some of us just badly fuck the math up and forget to convert bb/100 into bb/hr and take a week to delete their post even though they realized they were wrong much quicker than that!

So each $1 of rake is roughly (yearly_hours_played * $4)?

That seems unlikely to be true at 1-2, at least when it goes from 10% capped at $60 to 10% capped at $70 ... as you'd have to play 4 hands an hour that go over 35bb.

Seems plausible if they take it on the flop.

I did the math based on loose, deep-stacked 2/5 where the rake was being maxed out most hands. The $1/hand in rake equating to $8, 000/year I referenced is the actual average $/hand paid in rake, not the potential max. In your example of 1/2 with 10% rake maxed at $6 vs $7 that's not actually adding $1/hand of rake. The average paid per hand might only go up by something like 20 cents (assuming the pot goes over $60-$70 something like 1/5 times).