Lowest beatable limit?

[Overdrive]

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In the Stu Ungar book they talk about a dealer who took $800 off of a 3/6 table in one hour.

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wow. even the players winning pots would have to rebuy

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From the book: "..in Vegas, dealers pretty much took whatever they wanted, and any player who complained was instructed to read a small sign posted in every card room alerting players that the house could take up to 50 percent of each pot. Although few dealers actually took 50 percent, some of them came close. As a result, the smaller games in particular were practically unbeatable. One dealer at the Stardust allegedly set the record for 'snatching,' as the practice was called. He snatched $800 in a single hour at a $3/$6 game - the equivalent of taking just about every chip off the table, based on the player's average buy-in."

[midas]

I going to invoke the best answer in poker - "It all depends".

If 5+ people see the flop playing 2-4 it is most likely a profitable game. If these same 5+ people call raises and reraises it is an amazingly profitable game. Conversely, if you are playing 2-4 at Foxwoods at 11:00 am during the week with 9 retired rocks, you need to go back to poker school.

[Dazarath]

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Do they rake $4 out of EVERY pot...or is that just the max rake?

Because at 2/4 it wouldn't be uncommon for some of the pots to fail to meet the max.



However, I'm betting that 6-7BB/100 in an unraked-type game probably isn't too far off from what you would have to do to beat 2/4 live in the long-run.

At 33 hands/hr this would be about 2BB/hr.

So 6BB/100 at 2/4 live would be about $8/hr IF there is no rake.

And I think this would be close to break-even with the $4 max-rake up to 10%.


33 hands might add up to $80 in total rake taken off the table in an hour ($2.44/hd).

And this would be 10 players paying $8 each approximately each hour (although the looser players are going to be contributing more to the take..and you are going to be contributing less to it).


Factor in the occasional $0.50 or $1 tip and maybe even a jackpot drop on top of that and it would appear that 7BB/100 or higher is what would be necessary to squeak out a long-term win-rate at 2/4 live.

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Thank you MicroBob. This is what I was looking for. As for the rake, I'm going to have to ask my roommate. I haven't played 2/4 live for a long time. I was just under the assumption that once the flop hit, the rake + jackpot was $4. Of course, if everyone folds and the SB completes, a $4 drop would leave the pot with exactly $0, so this may not be correct.

Another note, I'm not sure what you mean by the 10% max. I live in California, and I always thought that (here) they're not allowed to rake based on the size of the pot for some legal reason or other.

If you say that 7 BB/100 (unraked) is necessary to beat the Commerce 2/4 game, then the question about what's the possible BB/100 for a decent-good small stakes player?

[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.

interesting subject,

did a bunch of analysis, and here's what i came to (assumed a few more bets in the pot the lower the limit) ...

based on 5% rake to max $5 (is this standard? i don't really know)

at 2/4, rake = 2BB/hour per player
at 4/8, rake = 1.5BB/hour per player

now playing tight aggressive, you probably donate less than average to rake as you don't invest as much in the pot AND your winning pots should be higher (crash thru the max on the high side as you raise alot).

i have a few questions about the rake though,

on small pots, $30 say, what's the rake structure? generally (i.e. what are the break-points? do they take 5% of $40 or $2 as they can't take $1.50)

and how does the rake generally improve in 10-20? i realize that there will be fewer bets in pot (more $$$$ though) but i have no idea on how much the rake structure improves.

thanks in advance!!!

great thread!

terry, i was interested in your comment on the jackpot. how much are they taking out for that?

i have no interest in jackpots. if i go to casinos, will they have the absolute full rules somewhere??? i know vegas is very good that way, but i'm wondering about other places like ontario, canada where the gambling culture isn't as strong and labour pool isn't as deep (i.e. employees really don't understand poker, nor perhaps do it)

[AAmaz0n]

Yes, the California situation is different because the rake is not a percentage of the pot, but a straight charge.

If there is no flop, they dont't take the normal drop, but usually will still take $1 at the lower limits.

the price of poker really goes down as you go up in limits. At my usual place - the Bike - they take $3 +$1 for jackpot at 3/6, but only $3 with no jackpot drop at 10/20.

I've never really done the math on it, but suspect that even a good winning player couldn't beat the rake at 2/4 or less, maybe break even at 3/6 4/8 and start to show a bit of profit at 6/12 and up. It's way easier to get ahead in the yellow chip ($5) games where the rake is less onerous.

Shauna

amazon, thanks for the jackpot information!!!

i think 4/8 is reasonably beatable.... i said 1.5 or maybe slightly less rake per hour. and i think i was 30 hands an hour, so that 5 BB/100....

i think one nice thing about B&M being so slow is that very few people have the discipline or the interest to play tight=aggressive. you can easily fold 15 non-blinds in a row.

but it would be nicer to play the 10-20 limit.

can someone tell me what i need realistically to play at that level? i saw the comment that you don't need 300BB's to play tight-aggressive and i agree.. can you get away with 150 BB's??

don't get me wrong, no-limit cash or shorthanded limit are completely different stories

[Dazarath]

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based on 5% rake to max $5 (is this standard? i don't really know)

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I'm not really sure how other states calculate the rake, but it's not by percentage here in California.

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I've never really done the math on it, but suspect that even a good winning player couldn't beat the rake at 2/4 or less, maybe break even at 3/6 4/8 and start to show a bit of profit at 6/12 and up. It's way easier to get ahead in the yellow chip ($5) games where the rake is less onerous.

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I'm in the same boat as you. I have a "suspicion", but no substantial evidence. I was trying to enlist the help of this forum, to get a better idea of whether or not the small stakes tables are beatable.

Basically, this is what we need:
1) We need a set of stakes online that's comparable to the Commerce 2/4. I use Commerce because that's where I play while I'm at school. I opted for using 0.50/1. Maybe 1/2 would be better. The Party 2/4 games are definitely not comparable.
2) Then, we need to find a sustainable BB/100 for the online stakes. I've seen a screenshot where a guy ran at 5 BB/100 at the PP 0.50/1 game for 100k hands. I'll just use this since I have nothing else to use.
3) We also need to rake taken per 100 hands in that game. I posted in the micro forum, but I have not gotten any responses yet. This is for the purpose of calculating theoretical win in a non-raked game.
4) Using the calculated unraked BB/100, and an estimated -7 BB/100 in rake at the Commerce 2/4, this will tell us whether or not the game is beatable. An even better calculation would involve someone logging many, many hands at Commerce and calculating how much is lost to rake per 100 hands.

[donnellan]

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1) We need a set of stakes online that's comparable to the Commerce 2/4. I use Commerce because that's where I play while I'm at school. I opted for using 0.50/1. Maybe 1/2 would be better. The Party 2/4 games are definitely not comparable.

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Party 0.5/1 games are usually played at a considerably higher level than live 2/4 games. I'd guess that Pokerstars 5cent/10cent are closest, though the live 2/4 games are probably slightly tighter and and more passive in comparison.