Beating the rake

I also can't afford to go upto 20/40 which is the next step up.

Rake never makes a game "unplayable" unless it actually kills the game. But as long as you find 6+ people willing to pay the rake, the game is always playable.

"Beatable" is a different question and if a game/winrate is worth playing is a very personal decision.

Without rake, any offset of skill you have over your opponents translates directly into long-term profit.

With rake, the first offsets of skill you have simply move you out of the red, reducing your losses.

If the rake is high enough, the only people able to afford to play will be whales or players with a high enough skill floor that they tread water. Ordinary recs will just get skinned.

If you like to look at it in terms of the nights you bring more home than you left with, consider that the rake is turning those nights where you might have come home marginally up, into nights where you come home marginally down.

This makes better sense of it.

If you're a rec player not tryna grind out money to pay your bills, who cares? I mostly play in a 1K 2/5 game which rakes $7, and it's about the norm for the northeast region so the game is more than playable (and most poker players would still be overall losers even with zero rake).

As said above, if you’re playing for fun and enjoy it there is no issue with it. If you are a semi pro or full time it’s different (or even if you’re just someone that wants a very profitable hobby). A lot of whether you can beat it depends on how bad people play but it’s probably going to be difficult to beat for more than a few dollars an hour if you can beat it. But say it’s not beatable based on the rake and player base but you’re a good player so you lose like a buck an hour and play 15 hours a week. Still pretty cheap recreation and you get to enjoy the action, get out and have some good wins here and there, Not the worst thing in the world.

Separately I too love stud even though it’s a dying game and have played at the woods in the past. My recommendation if you want to move up is occasionally take a 500 shot when you have been doing well in 5-10 and the 20 game looks good. You may run well and have more money for shots in the future (also while there will be some better players there are still terrible ones at higher levels), However if playing that big would stress you or losing in it would aggravate you (even if taking a shot with profit) then keep doing what you’re doing and having fun at/enjoying. My motto these days is to just play whatever I find to be fun with people I find fun to hang out with as much as possible.

Also as an aside to this, there is a group of players trying to organize a $10-20 Stud game next door at Mohegan Sun on Mondays. Maybe pop in over there and ask around who is organizing it and get on the list.

Thank You