High Rakes are Killing Limit Hold 'em

There are at least 15 more exciting poker variants for a broke player.

Cannot agree.

Games are where fish is, pokerroom dont have to worry about creating new generation of regs.

Imo, there was too many weak regs that were earning only on fishes, so pokerroms decided to punish them and take more care about fishes, because they are most important in this ecosystem.

If you are in like top of 20% regs in the field, you will beat the stakes even with current rake structure.

Missing the point. Someone is going to feed on the fish. Once the fish are gone wo new fish the game is gone. Wo tbe small games the mid stakes don’t get refreshed. Eventually the high stakes die

If you don’t have regular players to start games and keep games going, you won’t have a place for the recreation players to sit down.

I disagree somewhat. At this point, someone who is totally clueless has almost no chance at NL. Most of the bad players understand the game at least a bit. The mediocre players would be crushers during the boom. The crushers are just beating the living crap out of someone who just wants to play bingo.

PLO is kinda better but they can go broke fast.

So it's not as exciting, but for your degen who likes to play poker and socialize more than play table games, limit is still pretty good. Been playing some limit games lately and seeing these old school poker degens who just like to play and have no interest at all in working on their games and don't mind being long term losers as long as they get to play for a long time and have some winning sessions.

It's made me wonder what poker would be like if limit had remained the norm.

I think there are several factors leading to the demise of LHE that are more important than increased rake, which hasn’t really risen any faster than the inflation rate.

But LHE’s decline is a really sad development and very troubling for the long-term health of the game. As a previous poster said, it’s not really an “exciting” game.

But there is a wide pool of potential poker players who would enjoy the mental and social aspects of the game, but also don’t really -want- an “exciting” game. They want to gamble to relax, and don’t appreciate the stress and risk of NLHE.

And casinos realize this in every aspect of their gaming business besides poker. In every other game offered in the casino, players are not expected to risk their entire table stake on one hand or one spin. They are a generally risking a consistent amount over and over again that is comfortable for them, and this is what makes gambling a stress-reliever rather than a stress-inducer. When all the games spread in a poker room are NLHE or PLO, this option for a relaxing and social game just aren’t there.

Someone who is clueless has no chance at limit hold 'em. We see this, whether the game is limit or no-limit when someone wanders in from the pit and wants to try a little poker.

These are what I call the recreational players. On average, most of them will win 1 out of 3 four hour sessions.

PLO is a very different game and I won't address it in this thread.

And why isn't limit as exciting. In general, for similar stakes (in terms of what the experts can win at), you'll see a lot more chips on the table in a limit game and the pots are often a lot larger.

I agree with this. But this applies to all forms of poker. For a game to be successful, the recreational players need enough winning sessions that they'll want to keep coming back.

There may be a lot of reasons as to why limit hold 'em isn't as popular as it once was. But that's not the purpose of this thread which is to point out that it'll be tough for a poker room to develop new regular limit hold 'em players unless they lower the rake in their small stakes games.

The same is true for seven-card stud which in many ways is a better game than hold 'em.

This is probably a valid point.

I don't think this is a good argument. The reason is that in poker, you're not playing against the house. So the casino/poker room makes approximately the same amount of money no matter the game. But in the pit, even big casinos can have losing nights (when some big players get lucky) and this is something they don't like to do.

I think LHE is absolutely exciting. And the rake affects the health of the game more than you think.

If I raise preflop in a 4/8 game with 7+1 rake, if I only get called by the big blind that means we are playing just to get our money back on the flop.

That makes one of the most profitable spots in the game (button steal) lose a lot of its appeal.

Sure you might say that it’s a terrible game anyway if that happens, but part of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Semantics on some of this. "Clueless." I guess someone who is just off the charts bad is in trouble in either game. But tells, bet sizing, bluffing, etc. allow a skilled player to annihilate a poor rec in NL. Maybe it's not so bad at 1/2 though.

"exciting" means different things and can be judged differently. But even at 2/5 you might have AA vs a draw and 10 seconds later one player is going to be pulling in thousands. Enough for a pretty nice vacation or stuff like that. That's why TV likes it. A splashy limit game is extremely fun though, for the reasons you gave. It's been a while, but I used to love limit omaha hi. 8 ways to the flop, capped. Mountains of chips.

The only thing you left blank was, what if limit had stayed the norm. What would poker be like now? I wonder what your thoughts are.

It also seems like the stakes should go up. There were a zillion 4/8 games 20+ years ago. That should be at least 6/12 today or maybe 8/16. Of course, that would help with the rake. Why would someone willing to play 3/6 or 4/6 in 2004 be unwilling to play 6/12 today or 8/16 today?

I think part of it is losing players just want to mess around and since they can never win long term, raising the stakes to make the rake beatable is still -ev for them. But then when the rake is raised to brutal levels at very low stakes, almost nobody can play for profit (even small) and losing players get fewer winning and break even sessions. So the game is less appealing for everyone.

The lack of action is also an issue in hold em and that relates to the rake too. It was easier to beat the rake back when you often had capped, multiway pots. Maybe something like having 3 blinds would help.

I've always thought Omaha hi limit should catch on in places like California. If Boulder Station can constantly have multiple tables, it seems Commerce could. It's an action game. That helps beat the rake. It can be played for profit, yet the bad players can go on heaters.

Do you mean a $7 flat rake or a 10% rake up to $7?

If it’s the former, then certainly this is an absurd rake for a 4/8 LHE game.

If it’s the latter, you are only paying $1 in rake on the flop in the situation you describe. And this has been true of pretty much every rake structure for decades.

And even a 10% rake to $7 at 4/8 is lower than a 10% rake to $4 at 2/4 LHE, which was the rake structure when I first started playing in casinos almost 20 years, and that game was extremely popular in almost every room 20 years ago.

I’m not saying a $7 rake is good. But I really don’t think this is what killed LHE.

This is true from the perspective of the casino.

But from the perspective of the player, I still think my argument holds. At a $10 blackjack table, players could choose to bet $500 a hand whenever they want. But most still only bet $10 most of the time, or maybe $20 when they are winning.

You’ll always have a few big gamblers who like to risk a lot in a short time, but the vast majority of players prefer to lose their money slowly. And I think you’ve made this exact same argument against NLHE many times in the past.

Games run around bad players not mis regs. If a player pool has enough bad players you'll have plenty of regs.

Limit hold em is mostly a dead game and it's not bc of the rake.

Personally I just play plo these days and haven't play a hold em hand since covid started. But If I was going to play a form of hold em I'd actually play limit since at least people play fast. But obviously the vast majority of poker players prefer nl.

Not sure how anyone is really arguing his point. The rake at low stakes limit is practically unbeatable , this is not up for debate. I guess what we are really debating is whether a casino wants to lower rake for a game/occupied floor space that probably isnt netting them all that much to begin with. But there definitely could be a niche for this type of thing. I could see a casino catering to just low limit mixed games or something along those lines.

You’re a terrible PLO8 player.

If you're in a baby stakes limit game where pots are heads up you can cut the rake in half and it's still a terrible game where nobody is winning any money and nobody is having any fun.

It being almost unbeatable doesn't mean that's the real reason games dry up. The vast majority of players lose. And it's always been a higher percentage of losing players at lower stakes games.

Low limit games such as 4/8 don’t run around bad players.

You're proving my point. They barely run at all these days.

Get a bunch of bad players to play it and you'd have a lot more games. Right now all you really have is a bunch of 80 year olds screaming for the floor to fill a seat the second someone leaves.
Instead of those 10 people get 10 awful players and you'd have a lot more than just the one game running.

Lmao an old man is showing up to play 4/8, not in hopes of organizing around a bad player.

They all play bad, pass money around, and get eaten by rake

You actually think a bunch of sharks are waiting around to sit a few fish and try and get some of their $100?

Like I said you're proving my point. I agree with the bolded. And that's why there are barely any of these games left, not the rake. A bunch of old men passing time nitting it up in limit doesn't lead to much of a player pool.

No, I didn’t. These guys didn’t improve and still have the desire to play

The difference is the rake.

No the difference is they don't have enough bad players who actually want to gamble in their player pool.

If more bad players liked limit hold em there would be a lot more limit hold em games. It's that simple.