High Rakes are Killing Limit Hold 'em
A successful poker room is like a pyramid. That is, there are more small games than large games and the regular small stakes players tend to feed into the larger games.
However, in small limit hold 'em games, the rake is now so large, that it's very difficult to develop regular players. (Thus, you don't have the players to start games and keep games going.) This result can lead to an upside down pyramid which in turn leads to less games in the future. And the answer to this is to reduce the rake in the small limit hold 'em games.
(In the small no-limit games, even though the rake is also high, it's still not high enough that a core of regular players can't develop.)
Right now we can see this in The Bellagio Poker Room where I usually play (which in general is well run). There are almost always more $30-$60 games than $15-$30, and no games of smaller size.
For more discussion, see my Cardrooms book where I address what I think are appropriate rake sizes for small limit hold 'em games:
https://www.amazon.com/Cardrooms-Everyth...
All comments are welcome.
So the school bus driver making 40K ---should be making $80K in 25yrs? The teacher who's making 45K ---should be making 90K in 25yrs? It doesn't work like that! Yes, for some people the statement holds true, but for most it's a joke.
It does work like that in most of the exact sort of job you are mentioning. Typically public-sector employees get a cost of living increase of 2-3% per year, regardless of any additional increase for performance or promotion. If you get an extra 3% per year, you will more than double your salary in 25 years. And a bus driver who is making 40k per year today was indeed probably making around 20k in 2000.
A successful poker room is like a pyramid. That is, there are more small games than large games and the regular small stakes players tend to feed into the larger games.
However, in small limit hold 'em games, the rake is now so large, that it's very difficult to develop regular players. (Thus, you don't have the players to start games and keep games going.) This result can lead to an upside down pyramid which in turn leads to less games in the future. And the answer to this is to reduce the rake
an average player age of around 70 is killing limit holdem. see also: zero stud games, zero lowball games. the games died because all of the players LITERALLY DIED. Capped NLH is an incredibly flawed game which requires sklanskys "invisible antes" to continue existing but people keep showing up and putting those antes in so here we are! But even with NLH the games get smaller every year and the average age of a big losing player gets older and older with no big losing younger players to replace them.
an average player age of around 70 is killing limit holdem. see also: zero stud games, zero lowball games. the games died because all of the players LITERALLY DIED. Capped NLH is an incredibly flawed game which requires sklanskys "invisible antes" to continue existing but people keep showing up and putting those antes in so here we are! But even with NLH the games get smaller every year and the average age of a big losing player gets older and older with no big losing younger players to replace
Average age of 70? LOL. I play a ton of mid stakes Limit Holdem live and I can count the number of regs over the age of 60 on one hand.
How often do you want them to win?
Even if they’re real terrible -20bb/100 players, they win/break even almost half the time (40%) in a 200 hand sample.
This is all explained in my Cardrooms book. They should, on average, win 1 out of every 3 four hour sessions that they play. They'll still lose in the long run, but they'll have enough wining plays to encourage them to keep coming back.
The problem is really not that rakes have increased. They have mostly just kept up with inflation. The bigger problem is that the stakes of games have not increased to also keep up, because they have all been swallowed up into low stakes NLHE.
When I started playing, a typical card room would spread like three stakes of NLHE, at least four stakes of LHE, and a handful of O8, stud, or mixed games. Now 90% of the games in almost every room are 1/3 NL. There isn’t even a possibility for most players to discover if they could be winning players in any other game, or even if they like any other game.
Yeah, maybe a room spreads a single 3/6 or 4/8 LHE game for the purpose of appeasing a handful of OMCs. But why should anyone care if they can win at this game? If you actually work and become a winning player, there’s no higher game to move to, so no one who want to become serious about the game would want to invest the time to try it.
The problem is really not that rakes have increased. They have mostly just kept up with inflation. The bigger problem is that the stakes of games have not increased to also keep up, because they have all been swallowed up into low stakes NLHE.
When I started playing, a typical card room would spread like three stakes of NLHE, at least four stakes of LHE, and a handful of O8, stud, or mixed games. Now 90% of the games in almost every room are 1/3 NL. There isn’t even a possibility for most player
Rooms are spreading what people want to play. They'd love it if they could spread more limit games.
There are rarely any limit holdem games above 20-40 at commerce since they were forced to pay a 4 handed jackpot last fall due to a legal demand letter and in response raised the qualifiers and doubled the drop.
All the 40 and 60 games went to the bike. But I’m at commerce right now and would love to say hi, old guy (but still under 70) at seat 5 in the 100 mix if you are still here.
There are rarely any limit holdem games above 20-40 at commerce since they were forced to pay a 4 handed jackpot last fall due to a legal demand letter and in response raised the qualifiers and doubled the drop.
All the 40 and 60 games went to the bike. But I'm at commerce right now and would love to say hi, old guy (but still under 70) at seat 5 in the 100 mix if you are still here.
I hadn't heard about this, very interested to know more about it.
If you have details, maybe you could post in the Commerce thread?
There are rarely any limit holdem games above 20-40 at commerce since they were forced to pay a 4 handed jackpot last fall due to a legal demand letter and in response raised the qualifiers and doubled the drop.
All the 40 and 60 games went to the bike. But I'm at commerce right now and would love to say hi, old guy (but still under 70) at seat 5 in the 100 mix if you are still here.
games leave commerce, then come back, happens whenever other casinos do huge promotions, this time a little different since commerce screwed themselves by messing up the jackpot and destroying the high limit poker area, maybe high stakes poker at commerce really is over. Im at commerce most days from around 10 until around 3. Including today!!!
I hadn't heard about this, very interested to know more about it.
If you have details, maybe you could post in the Commerce thread?
this is not what commerce execs say happened. they say they didn't have a current license for the aces over tens jackpot so they had to revert back to the quads lose jackpot they were licensed to spread until they get approval from the gaming board. Their story makes a lot more sense since the commerce doesnt pay the jackpot, THE PLAYERS DO, the commerce doesnt care at all about paying it out as long as it happens at the rates they predicted because they have already raked all the JACKPOT DROP money they pay out. The commerce wouldn't destroy the entire top section by changing the jackpot payout just because they had to pay one 4 handed jackpot, paying that jackpot cost them ZERO, losing 5-7 games daily to bicycle club is costing them millions.
I hadn't heard about this, very interested to know more about it.
If you have details, maybe you could post in the Commerce thread?
this is not what commerce execs say happened. they say they didn't have a current license for the aces over tens jackpot so they had to revert back to the quads lose jackpot they were licensed to spread until they get approval from the gaming board. Their story makes a lot more sense since the commerce doesnt pay the jackpot, THE PLAYERS DO, the commerce doesnt care a
One would think, but I was there and the story I got differs. I was at an adjoining table when it hit and they were told the jackpot isn’t valid 4 handed. Which is the rule as it had always been related whenever I played there.
What I was later told by a player who participated in the jackpot was that the guy who would have gotten the big end then searched the Commerce website for the jackpot rules and found a page with the rules that didn’t disclaim jackpots for 4 handed play. It appeared the rules had been copied from another room (the bikes iirc) without being edited. The player had his lawyer send the bike a demand letter with the publicly available page, and the bike then paid the jackpot.
This triggered them doubling the jackpot drop and switching to quads as qualifiers. I was staying at Commerce almost every weekend last summer/fall putting in the 35 hours every weekend in the 40 LHE games. They treated me great, not just the floors, but the poker manager and front desk staff too, but I was forced to switch to Bike when all my games moved there.
BTW: The Bike made its jackpots harder too recently, and just a week ago took them off the 60 games. So far hasn’t seemed to hurt the 60 at all. The 40s seem sparser (though I only play them briefly now while waiting for bigger games so take my census with a grain of salt).
Anyways back to the original topic. The mid stakes LHE player pool at the bike is almost entirely regs from Commerce, and age ranges are same. I can only think of two 40/60 regs that I’m sure are over 60, dozens are in their 30s-50s. I think a better perspective isn’t that the player pool is too old, but too small and never seems to have any new blood to replace older players who stop playing.
So maybe i need you to teach me how not to be such a huge PLO fish in case my games die before i do.
