[Terry]

When I first became interested in poker in the early 1990s I played the $2/4 game at Palace Station in Vegas because it was the lowest game around. Even though I had read / studied all the books available at that time, I simply didn’t feel confident enough to take on the “pros” at the bigger games ... in part because I actually understood variance and bankroll requirements.

Over the course of a few years I played about 2000 hours in that game. The max rake was $3 but was taken $0.25 at a time, so many small pots didn’t take the full rake like the California games in which the drop is taken off the top. Over the course of those 2000 hours my win rate (with very accurate records) was $11.93/hour, tokes included.

When they put in a jackpot and started taking an additional $1 drop the games started dying out toward the end of the month as many of the marginal Social Security type players were going broke. After a few months so much money got tied up in that jackpot that a room that used to have several games 24 hours a day frequently went completely dead, no games at all.

I got tired of driving there only to find no game and finally made the move to $4/8 ... found out I was better than I thought ... win rate over $17/hour ... moved up to $10/20 and did even better.

Guess I got off on some tangents there ... the summary: Low limit percentage rake games are definitely beatable. Jackpots can kill small poker rooms. If you’re winning for a reasonable length of time don’t be afraid to move up – you don’t need 300 big bets, you only need a buy in.