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 st
In my opinion, the biggest problem is simply inflation10 years ago you could win 300 in a night and buy 2x as many goods as you currently canThe cost of everything has gone up, paychecks have been stagnate in a lot of places, home ownership is now taking place later in lifeIn many cases, the operators hands are tied, they have overhead, and they also need to make a profitFor ex
I don't think inflation is that big of a problem. Most low stakes players are living off their retirement. I do think inflation is keeping some of the higher limit players away.
Idk all the hate for lhe. It a perfect game made for Live. IT a fast pace game +30 hands an hour which means tip are consistent. I am sure no dealers hate dealing lhe except maybe if the player pool are super ******* that don't tip. Everyone get to win at least sometime consistently which get dopamine released and create habit. It popular with the Asian women crowd who like to
If you get into the right game limit is a lot more fun than NL. People seem more happy and a lot less intense. Also, you don't have all the weed stinking flip flip flop wearing tool bags in the game.
Venetian and Bellagio used to regularly have 4-8 games. They seemed to die out pretty quickly when the rake increased to $5 after being at $4 for a while.
The cost of running a table, regardless of limit or game, is the same. Overhead and variable costs go higher continuously. So, rake can not be held constant or the room goes out of business.
If the room can't cover their costs and profit(which is supposed to increase continuously) then the room stops offering the service.
In this context rakes need to be set at a minimum hourly rate and the limits are calculated off of the minimum take.
The problem is you have a bunch of old guys playing low limit holdem who are passing away. Limit is an older persons game. No Limit is a younger game and it gets replenished at a fast rate. I don't know why there isn't more TV coverage of limit games. That might bring new people in. The game is fast and the pots are huge. I don't understand why it's not still popular. Low Limit
The answer is simple. People aren't interested in that. They're interested in seeing huge pots and huge bluffs. Some guy calling down getting 18-1 on the river isn't very exciting.
The funny part about the difference between low stakes limit vs no limit is probably at least 50% of LLSNLH players are effectively playing limit 90% of the time, it’s only the handful of winners and the maniacs that even use overbets
Not bc of the rake at all. Commerce had their unbeatable 8 dollar rake 40 min/max game for probably 15 years and they'd have tons of tables running. The vast majority of 1/2 or 1/3 nl players lose yet that's by far the most popular game in the country. The high rake might make 10 or 20 percent of the players lose. The rest would lose anyway. They simply are interested in playi
lol so crazy. I would drive down to LA and play/bounce around in the 40$ CAP buy-in (buy 60 only if you felted) cause it was the only thing open waiting for 6/12.
The rake was 6$ and you 3-4 way pot was scooped by the rake but there were still 10 tables going. And actually the action in those games were trash it was always about the 6/12.
The answer is simple. People aren't interested in that. They're interested in seeing huge pots and huge bluffs. Some guy calling down getting 18-1 on the river isn't very exciting.
Most of the big tournaments were NLHE when they started televising, even though it wasn't played much as cash. Makes for good TV with big hands and relatively easy to understand what is going on.
NLHE is declining somewhat, partly due to solvers. Some limit games are increasing in popularity, such as mixed games and 5-card O8. PLO is also becoming bigger, with some PLO8 and 5-card PLO, bomb pots, etc. More complicated games are getting more popular.
The rake issue is just that these old guys play really low stakes because they don't want to lose much, so the rake is effectively larger. If they spread NLHE or PLO at $.50/1 blinds or whatever, there would be the same problem.
Limit holdem was the main game 25 years ago. Fish could play loose passive and not get wiped out fast. I don't see it coming back. If there were lots of fish ready to play badly at 8/16, 10/20, or 20/40 limit holdem, there would be lots of tables of it.
You have a bunch of old guys with nothing to do but play limit holdem all day. If they played 8/16 or 10/20, they would lose more to good or professional players. At 3/6 or 4/8, they just lose a little to the rake. They lose, but not as badly as if they played 10/20 or whatever or 1/2 NL or slots.
Rake had nothing to do with the death of LHE.
NLHE killed it.
Same way that LHE killed 7 card stud and 7 card stud killed 5 card draw.
Poker culture has moved on.
Yeah and similar thimgs may happen to nlhe. Almost all the high stakes games in vegas furing the Seties are plo or mixed games
True but fwiw they offered low limit games regularly when Bellagio and Venetian did. It still isn’t good for limit when there are fewer rooms offering it, especially when some of the most popular rooms no longer have it.
South Point has benefitted from nearby rooms (Green Valley Ranch, M Resort and Silverton) closing their rooms and it’s a very popular casino.
Orleans is a bit of an oddball because it has had more limit than NL games for years (unlike many Vegas rooms where NL dominates).
Low limit games have been more popular in locals rooms in general, and some probably use the games just to pass the time and chase promos the Strip rooms didn’t offer.
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
Ys there any way to bring 10-20 Stude back?
Yeah, at the beginning of the boom, at was more limit holdem, and the old guys played limit stud, which was sort of dying.
It actually hasn't changed as much at high stakes. Mixed games have been big at high stakes consistently for at at least 35 years. They also played some NLHE at high stakes when low-mid stakes was mostly limit holdem, stud, or O8.
Boycott WSOP Circuit! With tournament rake over 20% even in $300+ events is proof of fact! All WSOP circuit should be boycotted! I don’t know how anyone thinks they can beat 20+% tournament rake, the pro and semi pro’s are losing the most money. Why don’t pros form a union and boycott the high rake? I’ve met too many players who gladly pay 25% WSOP rakes and they violently defend it when I present my opinion!!! Are poker players really desperate gambling addicts or simply dumb???
Boycott WSOP Circuit! With tournament rake over 20% even in $300+ events is proof of fact! All WSOP circuit should be boycotted! I don't know how anyone thinks they can beat 20+% tournament rake, the pro and semi pro's are losing the most money. Why don't pros form a union and boycott the high rake I've met too many players who gladly pay 25% WSOP rakes and they violently defen
Guess what. Probably 90+ percent of people lose in 1/2 nl also. 60 dollar rake for a tournament is almost nothing. You can't expect a casino to both offer dirt stakes tournaments and have super low rake percentage wise. It doesn't work as a business model. Yes why don't the lmao 300 dollar tournament pros form a union. Go ahead 90 percent of people in these events are playing for fun. Nobody will miss the 10 percent who live in their mom's basement and take a shower twice a week pretending to be poker pros.
Why should casinos support a more sustainable poker ecosystem the supposed professional poker player flippantly asks in the poker forum
The cost of running a table, regardless of limit or game, is the same. Overhead and variable costs go higher continuously. So, rake can not be held constant or the room goes out of business.If the room can't cover their costs and profit(which is supposed to increase continuously) then the room stops offering the service.In this context rakes need to be set at a minimum hourly
a $5 rake table drops $2k+ a night and the dealer gets paid minimum wage no benefits
rooms do not go out of business because of the margins on a poker table
they go out of business because for some reason people who hold a gambling license can't resist the urge to get involved in crime and then the government raids them
or because the owner has massive vices/lifestyle leaks and goes bankrupt independent of the casino operations
if you have a gaming license it's the closest thing you can get to having a license to print money without having a literal bank charter
don't gambling licenses cost more then it takes to run a card room tho? At least thats how it works in canada. live poker is completely dead. well its more because they limit floor space in the licenses so poker gets cut out first. The dealers salary is not even like 5% of expenses
For perspective, I recently picked up my copy of Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker, published in 2007, and he writes about (among many other things) the impact of rake, and says that the typical drop was, at the time, $6.
In my local cardroom (The Oaks Club in Emeryville, California, with a fixed drop), the drop is currently $6 plus $1 for jackpot and other promotions. This is comparable to other venues. Over the past weekend I was at Silver Legacy in Reno, where the rake is 5% with a $5 cap, plus a $2 jackpot drop.
While rake is going up dramatically on online sites, it has been surprisingly static over the past two decades in live venues in the US.
Over this time period, limit hold'em has largely collapsed. There are still small-stakes games many places -- the Oaks has 6-12, Silver Legacy has 3-6 with a kill -- and a few venues offering mid- and high-stakes games (Bay 101 in San Jose offers 20-40 as well as smaller stakes, as does Bellagio; also some cardrooms in the Los Angeles area).
You can't build up a pyramid of games if you don't have entry-level players coming into the games. Maybe a well-run cardroom "should" offer many tables of small-stakes LHE a few of mid-stakes games and one high-stakes table, but they are not going to spread them if they do not get players.
I do not think that it is the rake. I think it is that for most people walking into a casino for the first time, they think "poker" is no-limit hold'em.
Limit Hold'em is not the only casualty. When I got started in poker, every casino on the Strip that had at least one poker table offered 1-3 spread-limit 7-card stud. Now, though, the smallest game in the room is generally 1-3 NLHE, and the stud games have completely vanished. except in the venues that offer it at limits of 20-40 or higher,.
I have heard a lot about how private games have devoured the market for mid-stakes no-limit games. Is it possible that they have done the same for limit games as well? I have heard nothing about this, but it at least seems plausible.
Typical rake in 2007 was not $6. On my first trip to Vegas, around that same time, it was $4/ hand at most places, and in some rooms the pot had to be pretty big to hit the max.
It's been years since I read that book, but I remember him talking about playing in private games in Alaska.
Unlicensed poker rooms almost always charge higher rake than casinos, and almost everything in Alaska costs considerably more than it does in the contiguous US.
