Motor City Casino Rake Tricks

[JJNJustin]

Motor City Casino in Detroit has a few tricks they use to maximize their hourly profit on low limit games. They usually strive to have three low limit hold'em games going and they keep them all short handed. Usually there are two or three 6 or 7-handed $5-$10 hold'em games. Rather than break one table, they argue "There aren't enough seats to break the third table, a player may have to sit out."

If their $6+$1 badbeat max rake in a full game wasnt bad enough, when asked to lower the rake in the short handed game, they reply "We will lower the rake to $4 with no bad beat." Why they require losing the bad beat possibility, even though the two are independant pools, is the nature of their rake trick. Players do not want to play without the bad beat jackpot possibility. Many of them are counting on hitting the jackpot to supplement their losses in the games. Obviously the bad beat jackpot and the rake are two seperate pools and should have nothing to do with one another, yet the management uses this "trick" to discourage players from asking for a rake reduction when playing short handed. Even if a few wise players still request this reduction, they are overruled by the suckers who are playing to hit the bad beat jackpot.

Consequently, if you play at Motor City, you very frequently end up playing a short handed game will a full rake that is high even for a full 10-handed game. Given the added hands per hour in the short handed game, this results in increased profits for the house, and an increased rake burden for the players.

For example, if the table is reduced to 5 players and you are doubling the number of hands you play per hour, you end up paying twice as much money to the house, on average, as you would in a full table. This equates to a $12 max rake in a full ten handed game.

As if playing low limit hold'em was only marginally profitable enough, Motor City Casino has figured out a way to turn it into a primarily a house game, where the small edge a good player can utilize by playing better than his opponents is effectively neutralized by an extremely high rake.

They compensate for this high rake burden by providing junk food in the form of greasy tortilla chips, mayonaise laised white bread sandwiches, and left over cookies from the buffet. That's a fair trade-off, isn't it? Now instead of supplement your income by playing poker, you can waste your time, sit on your arse, and ruin your health all at the same time!

I've also heard a rumor that they plan on expanding their poker room to include the entire floor. Good luck on finding players who aren't too broke to sit and play at the tables.

-J