Rake Question (important)

Envision a short-handed (5-6 people) 2-4 or 3-6 game in your favorite online poker establishment. These types of tables usually get at least 90-100 hands an hour. This means that, at an average of $1 raked per hand (could be closer to 2 in 3-6), about $100 an hour is taken off the table by the house! Divide that figure by 5 (the number of players), and you get a newsflash: buddy, you're paying 20 bucks an hour to play 2-4 /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

In your opinion, is it still possible to beat a low-limit game? Forget about 2 BB, is it possible to beat it for 2 red cents an hour?

And oh yeah - correct me if I'm wrong: if you play in a low-limit game with people who are fairly selective about starting hands (meaning much less action), you will ALL lose. The rake will destroy you quickly while you're pushing chips around the table from one stack to another.

[Jimbo]

Although your hands per hour estimate seems correct I believe your rake per hand average is high. What site are you observing that there is a buck per hand rake in a shorthanded game? If this is simply an estimate it appears on the surface to be incorrect primarily due to the reasons you outlined in your post. Consider Occam's Razor here. The simpliest explanation is that not that much is raked (on average) per hand in these short handed games or they would not exist.


Jimbo

I think your calculations are far from the truth.
However, try to think the big advantage (from a rake point of view) you have playing on-line than B&M games where sometimes the rakes go up to 20% (yeah, this happens in Europe...). You correctly could say to me that live games have worse players and loose donators, but this is another issue.

I know many players on-line who are very good players but they told me that their long-term profit (on-line) comes out from tournaments winnings and not from cash games.

Marco

[MS Sunshine]

"correct me if I'm wrong: if you play in a low-limit game with people who are fairly selective about starting hands (meaning much less action), you will ALL lose."

No need to correct you. All the players will lose at different rates, but yes, everyone in the game can be losing if their ablitilies are close.

MS Sunshine

[MS Sunshine]

I know many players on-line who are very good players but they told me that their long-term profit (on-line) comes out from tournaments winnings and not from cash games.

I don't doubt your statement at all. I guess it is the people you hang out with, but I know mostly players that win at online cash games and break-even at tournaments. I fall in this group, can I hang-out with you guys?

I see the same players in the top 20% of online tournaments. I find myself behind this group, to the point of thinking about cutting them out of my play mix.

At this point, I'm still trying to improve myself at tournaments, because I think they will grow online and any growth will bring in a large percentage of dead money.

I find the larger buy-in tournaments, $100 and up, a struggle for me. I find that I'm playing in fields with 20% better players, 60% players that have playing skills similar to myself, and 20% that have no shot at all.

MS Sunshine