Beating the rake

[OffTilt]

[ QUOTE ]
Tell ya what. Take a LL player who wins at a clip of .025-.03 bb/hand and have them play one (1) table of online $3/$6 for 100 hours and then have them play 100 hours of B&M. I guarantee you they'll have more money from B&M play.

[/ QUOTE ]

Please give me the reasoning behind what I consider an absurd guarantee. I'm all ears.

OffTilt

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Start winning hundreds at Texas Holdem with Power Holdem+
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[Vehn]

Hmm you're right, that doesn't make much sense.

Let me try and restat my point: no one should be playing 3/6 poker at the current rake levels anywhere. SO much money is being dropped. Too much. Saying online is vastly superior to B&M is a fallacy. On an individual scale it may be somewhat correct, but again the online players as a whole get the shaft much more than B&M players.

[Wake up CALL]

[ QUOTE ]
Hmm you're right, that doesn't make much sense.

Let me try and restat my point: no one should be playing 3/6 poker at the current rake levels anywhere. SO much money is being dropped. Too much. Saying online is vastly superior to B&M is a fallacy. On an individual scale it may be somewhat correct, but again the online players as a whole get the shaft much more than B&M players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now Vehn your point is much more clear in this post and I am able to address it properly. First I agree that the rake in any low limit game is brutal. The problem is that if you are a winning player you will win more online at the same limits and yes a lot of this is due to the lower rake not more hands per hour if you compute your profit on an equal number of hands played. Your assumption assumes there is a finite amout of money which will eventually all be raked. For all practical purposes the amout of money for 3/6 games is infinite (particularly considering the current online explosion). This means that no matter how much total money is raked it will not reduce your earn rate as long as the percentage is constant. This is why you can easily beat a 3/6 online game longterm yet may very well eventually go broke with the same skill level in a B&M.

Does my assertion make any sense?

[Vehn]

Yes I understand what you're saying and again on an individual basis you are probably correct. First off I have a question and then I will go into a diatribe. The question is: why do you assume that the money is infinite online but not at a B&M? I don't believe that is the case.

Second here is my diatribe. In my opinion there is no better way to learn how to play winning poker than online. You can stress fundamentals, starting hands, position, aggression, all that, for cheap. But here's my question. Take a look at the mid/high limit hold em forum. It is dominated by posts from B&M hands and discussion. Why is it that it seems that very few people (here at 2+2) play online mid limits? Why is it that (very) long time internet players in the small stakes forum, who seem to have a reasonable grasp of the game, don't move up to the mid limits of online play? The answer in my opinion is too much money is being raked off the table in comparison to the toughness of the games. I think counseling people to play online past the learning stage is in general a mistake. If you want to make serious money you need to play in a B&M. There is simply no doubt in my mind that if I would have spent the past year playing online instead of at my B&M I would not be anywhere near as successful. Maybe I'll think of a way to clarify my point here later as I kinda blurted this out.

[Wake up CALL]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes I understand what you're saying and again on an individual basis you are probably correct. First off I have a question and then I will go into a diatribe. The question is: why do you assume that the money is infinite online but not at a B&M? I don't believe that is the case.

Second here is my diatribe. In my opinion there is no better way to learn how to play winning poker than online. You can stress fundamentals, starting hands, position, aggression, all that, for cheap. But here's my question. Take a look at the mid/high limit hold em forum. It is dominated by posts from B&M hands and discussion. Why is it that it seems that very few people (here at 2+2) play online mid limits? Why is it that (very) long time internet players in the small stakes forum, who seem to have a reasonable grasp of the game, don't move up to the mid limits of online play? The answer in my opinion is too much money is being raked off the table in comparison to the toughness of the games. I think counseling people to play online past the learning stage is in general a mistake. If you want to make serious money you need to play in a B&M. There is simply no doubt in my mind that if I would have spent the past year playing online instead of at my B&M I would not be anywhere near as successful. Maybe I'll think of a way to clarify my point here later as I kinda blurted this out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually it was a trick I employed to get you to agree that for all practical purposes the available money for a 3/6 limit game was infinite. Once you agree to this stipilation your point has no more relevance since you implied the games would dry up due to being exhausted by the rake although you did not use those terms.

My point about B&M being different from the online game is when you reach a certain low level of earn you will still be a winner online but become a loser in a B&M casino room due to the higher rake percentage.

Not trying to be too much of a smart aleck here but the number of people who play mid limits in the world may just not be reflected by the number of posters in the mid-limit forum. Actually once you can beat 15/30 online there is very little (although some) to learn in the mid-limit forum.

I would venture a guess that there are two to three times the total number of mid-limit online players compared to live players throughout the world. This being only my opinion with no method for proof I cannot understand the 2nd part of your post above.


Again you say the amount of money being raked has a negative effect online compared to B&M. We have come full circle yet you maintain this position. I have no more bullets with which to demonstrate the fallacy of that position, whether it is LL or mid limit.

[Vehn]

I never disagreed that the money available for online LL is for all intents infinite.

I never implied by my statements that there's anything significant to learn from the mid limit forum for someone who can beat mid limit games of any time. Hold'em is hold'em, mid limit hold'em is mid limit hold'em. What I was specifically noting was the overall lack of online mid limit games being discussed on 2+2, and the fact that very few low limit online players ever successfully make it to the mid limits of online play.

Let me try to make my point again without resorting to being condesending as you apparently have. At some point a game hits a wall so to speak of where the total amount of money being dropped off it per hour is too much compared the stakes and toughness of the average player at that limit and cannot be significantly overcome by non-expert players. In online games that wall so to speak is hit around the $5/$10 level, maybe even $3/$6, and continues on up to the mid limits. In B&M that wall does not exist. The average opponent is simply that bad and decent to good players can and do build a bankroll and climb the ladder, just as I have done. Here's a simple example that will attempt to prove my point. Online poker has actual accounts - its tedious/difficult to actually spend your winnings, you have to withdraw the money rather than just spend the cash. Yet you simply do not hear on these forums of low limit players making their way to the mid limits of online play. Tell me why that is?

[Trefo]

I believe the rake is usually 4 dollars for 3-6.....
But i won a little over 300 at 3/6 over a 10 hr session.....i usually play 5-10 but game was full so i sat down with a buddy at 3-6......game felt very easy for me and i was up more than i usually am at 5-10....Sometimes its better to play the lower limits if the tables right regardless of the rake.

[stripsqueez]

i disagree with the suggestion that to win good $$ at mid-high limits you have to play B+M - i have progressed through lower on-line limits to high limits - we could speculate about how good i am, but what i can state from my observations of on-line games is that there are plenty of punters playing mid-high limits who look a lot like loosing players in the low limit games - there is plenty of $$ to be made at mid-high limits on-line for an expert player

if you are right to state that the transition is hard to make on-line then there are simpler reasons why that might be so - ie - low limit is a different game to high limit, not neccesarily a lot easier and some may not be able to adjust - many on-line players dont care for the challenge of moving up the limits when they can make a good profit by being expert at the low limit game (look at david ross destroying the party 3/6 schools when he is likely the sort of player who could make the trasnsition to higher limits)

different people want different things - maybe (like me) your a person who regards the $$ as more like keeping score whilst you become as good at the game as you can be ?? - put simply - high limit players often come with a big ego

[warlockjd]

This online player has taken two shots at 15/30 (from 3/6)online which cost me a total of 250 BB, even though the tables APPEARED to be easier than 3/6.

I attribute it to slight statistical abberations, not paying enough attention to individual players (i.e. 3 tables at once), and too small a bankroll (4k and 3k respectiviely).

Seems like the lower rake should have helped me tho.

--My irrelevant $.02 [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

[rigoletto]

there is plenty of $$ to be made at mid-high limits on-line for an expert player

Very few posters here are experts - there are a lot of good solid players, and in general I agree with Vehn: there seem to be a jump in toughness somewhere around the 5/10 level online and from what I hear you can easily find 10/20 games B&M that compares to 3/6 online.