Affect of the rake on my profits at .25-50 and .50-1

[ParentFriend]

I just started playing poker online, and I was looking at the rakes for different limits. I play at Pacific Poker as they're the only online poker room that allows 18 year olds to play. The rake rates look like this:

Table Limit: 10¢-20¢ and 25¢-50¢:
$1 pot - $2 pot - $3 pot - $4 pot - $5 pot - MAX
---5¢-------5¢--------5¢---------5¢------5¢------25¢


Table Limit: 50¢-$1 and $1-$2
$5 pot - $10 pot - $15 pot - $20 pot - MAX
---25¢------25¢-------25¢-------25¢-------$1


Now I'm not sure if I've deciphered this correctly, but does this mean that for a $4 pot at .25-.50 the total rake would be 20 cents? Likewise at .50-1 the total rake for a $15 pot would be 75 cents?

In a ten player game, my fair share would be 1/10 pots. Because I play much tighter than my opponents and I'm not winning any extra pots by bluffing, is 1/15 a good estimate for how many pots I'll take down? In that case at 30 hands an hour I'm winning 2 pots an hour. Assuming these pots are at the maximum rake, that's a 25 cent rake and a $1 rake for either .25-.50 or .50-1. So the difference in rakes I'd pay is $1.50 an hour. Therefore I'd need to be winning 4BB an hour for it to be worth it to play at the .50-1 limit, assuming all other things in the games are equal? What's off with my reasoning here?

I think I might have a problem with assuming that the rakes will be maxed at the .50-1 table, but I'm not sure how much this matters. Any help? Thanks.

[Nottom]

First off, even at a loose table the average pot is probably no more than 10BB so to expect the rake to be maxed is a big assumption, especially at the lower limits for each rake rate.

Its also important to think of the rake a a % of the pot when comparing different limits, not just a set amount.

In the .25/.5 game the rake is 5¢ for every $1 upto $5 so thats a 5% rake for all pots less than 10BB and starts getting smaller after that point.

In the .5/1 game the rake is 25¢ for every $5 upto $20. So that is again a 5% rake but it doesn't drift off until 20BB.

Seems like a slightly worse deal, but also note that the rake in the first hand starts at 2BB, while the rake in the second doesn't start until 5BB ... this is very good because it won't be raking all those small pots that you may pick up on the flop.

Anyway, back to your numbers. On an online site you should see around 60 hands/hour. If you win 1/15 (which is actually a pretty reasonable estimate) you will win 4 hands/hour. With an average pot of 10BB you will pay $1 in rake at the .25/.5 game and $2 in the .5/1 game or 2BB in either case. If there are a lot of small pots (where the rake doesn't kick in) the bigger game would be preferred, in a game with lots of big pots, you would prefer the smaller game since the rake will be capped, but in an average game I would expect similar rake percentages.