is the rake in this game beatable???

[pancakes]

I live in Oklahoma and the indian casinos here recently started spreading poker and the only stud game they spread is $1-5 with no ante $1 bring in, but the rake in these casinos is relatively high ($4 max plus $1 to the jackpot), now the players in this game are extroardinarily bad passive(calling) players a standard raise in that game will even raise eyebrows it is usually full of hold'em players waiting on their seats or people that the $4-$8 holdem games are too steep for I have only put in about 4 hours or so at this game and have showed a profit but I dont think the large rake in this game allows for much profit, and the pots are usually relatively small, so I was just needing opinons on if this game would be worth putting in the time to concentrate on???

[Andy B]

Is this game beatable? Absolutely. With bad players and no ante, it will be plenty beatable. Will it be worth your time? Only you can answer that, but I would guess that a very good player could make something on the order of $8/hr in a game like that. I don't know how things are in Oklahoma, but there are fast food workers making more than that around here.

Another consideration is that playing in this game probably won't prepare you for bigger stud games. For one, I would guess that there aren't any at that casino. For another, bigger stud games are usually structured very differently. They usually have an ante and structured betting limits. If they have a $5-20 spread game with no ante, giddy-up.

The rake will rarely render a game unbeatable in and of itself. The most important factor in determining the beatability of a game is the difference in skill between you and your opponents. If you're not a good player, a lower rake isn't going to help you that much.

There is some discussion of this and other possibly worthwhile subjects on the draft sticky here (http://www.geocities.com/andyblackwood/sticky.html).