The Rake's BB/100

[GTSamIAm]

Does anyone know how to calculate the exact BB/100 that the rake takes from you? This is Pokertracker minded.

[Nathan183]

One of the tabs, could be summary, but I'm not sure has information on all hands in your database for each level. It has average rake. Divide this number by the BB for the level and multiply by 100.

I think that's correct. I don't have PT available to me right now.

[GTSamIAm]

That number makes no sense.

[GTSamIAm]

Nevermind. It's easy. Take the total rake and divide by the number of hands played total.

[jason1990]

On the general info tab is a column labelled "Total Rake." I believe this is the total rake taken out of the pots you have won. (The one on the summary tab is the total taken out of *all* pots.) So you could just divide that by the number of hands and multiply by 100. This gives $/100 of course, so convert.

But is that really the cost of the rake? Would you have made that much extra without the rake? After all, without the rake, pot sizes would have been different and you and your opponents would have therefore played differently. So would you have made more or less than PT indicates?

[OrangeKing]

I think a simple way of estimate the average cost of the rake is just to look at the tab that shows the results of every player in your database (including yourself). At the bottom of the list, it gives cumulative data for everyone, including BB/100.

If you let the program include your statistics in the evaluation, the overall BB/100 should represent the rake - after all, other than rake, the combined winnings of you and every player you've ever played with should be 0.

[jason1990]

I like this idea. Combined with mine, it allows you to compare how the rake has affected you versus how it has affected the average player in your game. I've been affected a little less than average, but I don't have a sense of whether my sample size is large enough for this to be significant. If it is statistically significant, what does it say about my game?

[Alex/Mugaaz]

That you play less hands than other people.

[jason1990]

[ QUOTE ]
That you play less hands than other people.

[/ QUOTE ]
You think that's all there is to it? The rake only affects me when I win a pot. And, in principle, it is proportional to the size of the pot. So my total rake should be proportional to the gross amount I won. So it seems to mean I won less than average. Since my net is higher than average, I of course lost much less than average. So perhaps it means my standard deviation is smaller than the average player. Granted, if that's true, it may be due in large part to playing fewer hands.

So is this true? Does the average losing poker player have a higher standard deviation than the average winning player? What is the typical range for a loser's SD? Take a typical loose passive calling station, for example. What kind of winrate and SD can he expect? Now I'm meandering away from the topic at hand, so if anyone has any interest in this subject, perhaps we ought to start a new thread.

[GTSamIAm]

Yes. It is possible and true. Experts report lower SD than the mere good player. Read Gambling Theory and Other Topics.

And the averages for all the fish in my PT database:

65 Players, 103 Sessions, 8968 hands, 145 hours

BB/100: -3.09
VP$IP: 43.99
PFR%: 1.96
W$SD: 48.12

[hellite]

I hope you guys are joking but here goes:

You are in a 10 handed $3/$6 limit game that goes all night. No players leave the table, and all players end the game at the same time. The table is raked between 0.00 (no flop) to 3.00 every hand. You catch the most atrocious string of cards you have ever seen and do not play a hand all night. Meanwhile your buddy is playing almost half his hands all night and winning! He drags pot after pot with the most unbelievable luck. You are very upset after the game ends. Your friend is walking away up $400. You walk up to your friend and say, "well at least I didn't pay any rake tonight." Your friend laughs and says, "You payed the same amount of rake as I did fool." You walk away wondering how lucky some retards are. Meanwhile, your friend with the cash is saying, jee I thought he was a good card player, but he does not even know whta the rake is. HA!

EVERYBODY PAYS 1/10 OF THE RAKE. IF YOU ARE DEALT CARDS 1/10TH OF THE RAKE IS YOURS. WHILE IT SEEMS THAT THE PERSON WHO WINS THE POT IS THE ONE PAYING THE RAKE, THIS IS INCORRECT.

[jason1990]

[ QUOTE ]
EVERYBODY PAYS 1/10 OF THE RAKE. IF YOU ARE DEALT CARDS 1/10TH OF THE RAKE IS YOURS. WHILE IT SEEMS THAT THE PERSON WHO WINS THE POT IS THE ONE PAYING THE RAKE, THIS IS INCORRECT.

[/ QUOTE ]
Say we all put $1 in the pot, you win, the house takes $1 and pushes you the remaining $9. Whose dollar did they take? Maybe they took mine. Maybe they took yours. Maybe they took $0.10 from each of us. Or maybe they took $0.55 from the guy next to me and $0.05 from everybody else. How does the answer change if 2 people folded before putting any money in the pot?

Probably the best you can say is that they took it from "the pot." After I put my money in the pot, it's no longer mine. I use this fact when computing pot odds, so it makes sense to apply it here. So when the house takes money from the pot, they're not taking money from me. Similarly, when I win a pot, that money is not mine until it is pushed to me. Since the house takes their rake before they push it to me, they didn't take it from me. So no one's paying rake! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Really, though, the idea that the winner is paying the rake is only necessary in this thread in order to interpret one of the statistics in Poker Tracker.

[bobman0330]

[ QUOTE ]
EVERYBODY PAYS 1/10 OF THE RAKE. IF YOU ARE DEALT CARDS 1/10TH OF THE RAKE IS YOURS. WHILE IT SEEMS THAT THE PERSON WHO WINS THE POT IS THE ONE PAYING THE RAKE, THIS IS INCORRECT.


[/ QUOTE ]

This seems to me to be quite wrong. Imagine playing a raked (capped at $4), NL holdem game, wherein your strategy was to play only AA. Not a great plan, but you'll end up playing very few pots and winning most of them. Using this strategy, your expectation will be very close to your expectation using the same strategy in an unraked game.

Two main things that increase your contribution to rake are:
-Playing a lot of pots; and
-Playing small pots