rake simulations w/ TTH

[nanoking]

I'm down $134.50 after 40 hours of live play. I've played 15 hours of 4/8 Holdem w/ 1/2 kill, another 5 hrs of 4/8 holdem w/o a kill, 10 hrs of 3/6 holdem, and the remainder playing 3/6 omaha8.

I'm thinking of changing my limit because of rake considerations. I'm trying to work out some simulations w/ turbo texas holdem.

I've been using the 7 handed advisor to approximate a winning, unimaginative player who doesn't go out on a limb w/ hand reads, but also doesn't make very good laydowns in some situations. He should be able to beat most games in the long run. Does anybody recommend using something else? I would like to use a minimum +EV player to probe the threshold of where rake turns a winner into a loser.

Since the software doesn’t seem to be able to just do a “drop on the flop” like in LA casinos, I set the “rake” to 0%, set the toke to the amount of the flop drop (including jackpot drop). I ran 100000 hand simulations against a field of low-limit players and a field of tough players varying the rake. If the advisor is breaking even then a real player would be at least a little bit of a +EV player in that game.

Loose game with flop drop:
Rake/Win results (rake as fraction of small bet) for a loose game with a flop drop:
Rake: 0 Win: 3.4k BB
Rake: 0.5 Win: 800 BB (only remaining positive player)
Rake: 0.66 Loss: -250 BB

I could be more rigorous and run the 0.5 rake case for more hands to see if the Advisor is truly playing +EV at that point. I’m not going to bother running these 100k hand batches multiple times and calculating standard devs, etc. So all these values are plus/minus a lot. But still, it looks like you can’t beat a game with rake larger than about 0.5 a small bet. Certainly, a better player than the “advisor” is still swimming upstream against a 1.0 or 1.33 small bet rake (e.g., 3/6 holdem with $3 rake and $1 jackpot).

For a tough game, the results are dramatic. The advisor loses almost an order of magnitude more than at the loose game. At a table of all tough players, all players lost about the same.

I guess these are obvious conclusions, but to go from thinking that I’ll just be handicapped by the rake a little at low limits to knowing that all games with rake greater than X are unbeatable (no matter how good you are) seems significant to me. But it’s still tough to see where rake vs. player strength is optimized. Maybe this is all moot because once the limit is high enough it all goes to time charges? I’m too new to know the rakes for all limits off the top of my head.

Sorry for the length, thanks for comments/responses,

NK

[Ed Miller]

IMHO, all this proves to me is that none of the TTH bots plays particularly well. Then again, I don't hold TTH in particularly high regard anyway. I assure you that low limit games are fully beatable for more than 1 BB/hr, even with a sizable rake.

Move up if you have the bankroll and can beat a bigger game... you will get better results. If you don't or can't, then stay with the smaller games... you are not throwing your money away.

[nanoking]

Thanks for the reply. I guess that was the real question I was asking, if low limits were beatable in the long run even with high rake. But I'm always trying to find an more analytical way of looking into it.

I guess my worst fear of live poker is that I'll be playing super tight or super sharp to beat a 3/6 game when I could've had an easier time at 4/8 or 6/12. But you having said it's beatable I can relax a little and gain some more experience without having to write it off as such.

NK