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.
no young people wants to play limit holdem. its all people over 50
Easy concept to explain. When liqudity dry up you need less fee/rake to have an edge. Think of day trader vs pro sport bettor. Or crypto trader vs pro props bettor. Day trader, crypto trader, and weaker nl players survive due to the massive amount of liqudity aka stupid money to fund. Here one example I been getting into prediction markets, the softest one to beat you need decent liqudity otherwise just a medium size bet will have massive change in odds and cant bet more. Ever watch day trader or crypto trader they just randomly looking at chart for "trend" and making millions because the anount of liquidity is massive.
P.s what I am trying to get at is when games arent as popular the rake/fee should be lower to create action. And if a game you play or whatever you do have massive amount of liqudity be thankful it not all skill there nothing wrong with admit luck play a role.
flamingo used to have 1-1 limit that ran 1-2 tables a week on weekend it was usually 2 tables.
as I said earlier 3-6 limit holdem was more common than now. South point has ONLY gotten more and more popular the last 2 years and back in 2019(where hey only had 405 poker tables a night if it was bumping) they would run 2-3 tables each of 3-6 or 4-8. nowadays they still run it but its about 1-2 tables consistently short of what it used to be. and yes, south point now runes 8-11 tables consistently which is far more than they used to
simply its not popular due to peopl erather gravitate to NL. it ****ing sucks you cannot find ANY ****ign stud games in vegas even during wsop the only one that fires up is 50-100 stud or stud8. 10-20 doesnt even run. same with liit ust people rather play NL
This is the point. Having games with low rake is certainly better than having empty tables. Plus, if it helps to create regular players that can feed into other games, it's even better. But this won't happen over night.
this is mostly wrong depending on the casino. Poker is not profitable for most casinos so empty tables lets them remove their table. Most casinos outside vegas raise the rake till its profitable and if no one joins they don't really care because then they get more slot machines. The rake in my country is probably 4x the rake in vegas or more
Easy concept to explain. When liqudity dry up you need less fee/rake to have an edge. Think of day trader vs pro sport bettor. Or crypto trader vs pro props bettor. Day trader, crypto trader, and weaker nl players survive due to the massive amount of liqudity aka stupid money to fund. Here one example I been getting into prediction markets, the softest one to beat you need decent liqudity otherwise just a medium size bet will have massive change in odds and cant bet more. Ever watch day trader o
if a game isn't that popular the poker room likely has little incentive to offer it especially on busy days.
sure maybe it can make sense if a group of players say we want to play this unpopular game on monday nights and the casino might cut them a break on rake to guarantee them an extra table that would otherwise be empty but overall it doesn't make much sense for rooms to try and push games people don't have interest in.
Well Daniel Negreanu said increasing the rake was good for the game.
Nobody cared.
So it must be good, make the rake higher
What’s the low limit rake? $20/hour on average? That’s nothing really, lots of people can afford to play hundreds of hours a month at that cost.
Best game I’ve ever played charged me $100/hour and I gladly paid it. You guys are all nits.
Agree with posters ITT that the premise is obviously true, but it's kind of like saying "higher wages and high food prices are killing fast food." Rake will never go down. As the costs of operating a card room increase, rake needs to increase apace. And that means that people need to be willing to play higher stakes for games to be beatable, and they should do so.
And it's not really that people cannot afford to. An inflation-adjusted 4/8 game from 2000 is roughly an 8/16 game today. I'm sure th
The bolding is mine.
Part of the problem here is that poker room managers have to deal with casino executives who know little about poker, and these are the people who don't want to reduce the rake in any games.
Correct that a 4/8 game game game from 2000 adjusted for inflation would be 8/16 now. The people who are playing 4/8 now are the people who were playing 2/4 and 3/6 in 2000. With few exceptions 2/4 and 3/6 are gone. 1/2 NL still being in a thing is stranger but I get it. I have noticed more and more rooms trying to migrate to 1/3.
The hard part about getting rid of the lower limit games is that people will complain who play those lower games. In a competitive market, if your competition still
This is a good point about the $4-$8 players who used to play lower. I remember $2-$4.
I honestly don’t think we should care very much whether the literal lowest-stakes game in a poker room is “beatable”. Serious poker players shouldn’t be playing the lowest stakes game in the room. That should really be reserved for (a) people who just want to enjoy the social aspects of the game; and (b) people who are just learning the game before deciding whether to take it more seriously.
As I've tried to point oout in this thread, in my opinion, this is wrong. The small games should allow a few players to become regular players who will then try to move up and feed the larger games. The high rakes today in limit poker stop this.
IMO, the biggest problem poker faces right now is we have no good mechanism for bringing new players into the game. People right now who want to try out poker in a casino or cardroom are in most cases faces with playing 1/3 NL or nothing. This is too high a stakes game for most new players! And this is made much worse by the fact that even these games have a bunch of wannabe pros in them.
No. The problem with these games is that the recreational players can't win often enough.
Every card room should be spreading and promoting low-stakes limit games. And we shouldn’t be whining about the rake in these games, because these games are not for us.
If I agreed with this, I wouldn't have started this thread.
You guys must not be playing in southern cal? The rake, the rake, the rake? So many misguided assumptions, like who is playing 4/8 and their reasons. The idea that there is money leaving the table from the rake, which is true. However, there is a CONSTANT flow of new money coming into the game! You play at the stakes you can afford. I think someone said that 4/8 players are the 2/4 & 3/6 players from 2000? Did these peoples income magically double over the past 25 yrs?
I think someone said that 4/8 players are the 2/4 & 3/6 players from 2000? Did these peoples income magically double over the past 25 yrs?
- If you think economics is magic then yes.
- $1 from 2000 has the spending power of $1.83 today.
- Most people advance their career and don't stay at the same level of their job throughout their career, I would hope any working person has way more than doubled their income in the last 25 years in terms of absolute dollars.
could argue the same for most poker games. but rake is not the death of one game type, its very nuanced in the fact a whole lot of factors play into it.
Regulations, new generation, better technology ect all play a part to some degree, to make a blanket statement like this is very obtuse imo
- If you think economics is magic then yes.
- $1 from 2000 has the spending power of $1.83 today.
- Most people advance their career and don't stay at the same level of their job throughout their career, I would hope any working person has way more than doubled their income in the last 25 years in terms of absolute dollars.
LMAO!!!!!!! so if you were making say $40K in 2000, you should be making $80k now?
- $1 from 2000 has the spending power of $1.83 today
HUH?????? that cant be right!
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.
The vast majority of professions get cost of living raises to account for inflation. If you aren’t getting this, you’re getting paid less every year. $100 worth of goods in the year 2000 costs $170 today. If you make $40K today it’s the same as making ~$24K in 2000.
Not to mention most people receive merit based promotions and raises over the course of 25 years.
I’m not denying that some people salaries don’t keep pace with inflation, they obviously haven’t on average particularly for the last 20 years. But to say it’s ridiculous or a joke to assume you double your income in 25 years, especially for people making as little as $40K is laughably stupid
A simple google search shows that $1 from 2000 is worth 1.80-1.90 in today's money.
Below is the average income by age in the US from 2024.
So let's use 20-24 age group, in today's dollars, they make ~38k, If we convert that to its equivalent in 2000, that would be ~20k/yr for a 20-24 year old in 2000.
Those people are 45-50 now and would be making 64k on average now. So in terms of absolute dollars, they tripled their income in 25 years.
If you take someone who was 25-34 in 2000, they were making about 28k in 2000 year dollars and are making on average ~64k as well, again more than a doubling in salary.
25 yrs is a generation. A quarter of a century. Different world. Inflation 100% during that time, easy math, as buying power hasn't declined. But at least the very rich have been getting some more.
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.
Actually per census bureau nominal median household income went from $43K to $80K. And per FRED in real terms median income is up very slightly over the same time
TLDR. The 1.8 factor increase seems quite real for typical household.
Incomes have more than doubled since 2000, from 20k to 42k.
Inflation adjusted (real) personal incomes have increased by about 20%, from 35k to 42k.
