I agree that it would be nice for them to only offer 2/5 and up like they did in the past, but the reality is that they chose to have a poker room that's always busy instead.

Even right now, Friday night during the WSOP, they have 6 1/3 games running but only 3 2/5 games. I might be repeating myself, but I honestly believe if any of the larger rooms in Vegas had a 0.5/1 game, that would be the busiest game in the room.

There's a poker training software that I use. I was curious as to how much extra the increase in rake would cut into an hourly win rate. I ended up playing about 3000 hands, which would be about 100 hours of live play. I tend to play on the nitty side around 13/10/2.5 so I ended up seeing about 400 flops. Out of those 400 flops there were 60 hands that I won that reached $50 or more (at 1/3) so that would be an extra $60 in rake. Out of 3000 hands or 100 live hours that would be an extra 60 cents per hour. Even if you play a little looser it would probably only come to an extra $1 per hour that it would personally cost you.

My back of the envelope calculation is $2/hr if I'm barely up or even.

Thanks for providing some insight. I still think there may be more to it than that even though I may not be able to prove it. Most people don't top off in these games right? I wonder if the extra money coming off the table (from everyone), making stack sizes smaller, would have much of an impact on winrate? I guess it may not hurt a tight no limit player too much, but it does make it so much more boring to play properly.

The main reason I believed it would be higher than people realized is from my years of playing limit hold em. Comparing semi long term self reported win rates from 2+2's mostly LA grinders to myself, it seemed like the higher rake was really cutting into their earn despite the games being better than Vegas. Their rake is being taken off the top though (since even a raise and BB call at 20/40 is a $50 pot) so thats prob the main difference along with the looser, multi street action.

the main reason it would be higher is because you have to multiply those numbers by 9... and that figure would not be evenly distributed.

In California they take the full drop regardless of pot size. By law they are not allowed to take a percentage of the pot as that could incentivize the casino to encourage the players to gamble more money. The public must be protected.

I agree. People in the past few years preferred to play 2/4 limit hold'em instead of 4/8, 6/12, 8/12, 10/20, etc. even though the rake makes 2/4 tougher to beat than those other games. It reminds me of the people that love to play the penny slot machines.

I have also seen several comments over the years from people that thought 4/8 limit could be beaten for $16-$30 an hour or more. They wouldn't suddenly become pessimistic because the rake increased a dollar.

2-4 BB? Maybe 15 years ago. Even the worst of the worst LHE players are much better than they used to be. I play those steaks for pre-strip club beers.

Perfect example why pot rake is a joke. There is no logical reason someone as tight as this should be paying less in rake than guys who create action or guys the games are built around. Make everything time rake and make the nits pay their share.

Completely agree, and they could do it at $5/max rake. Most poker players are losing players who view the dollars they spend at poker not that dissimilarly from money spent gambling at other things. Leaving with a profit is nice but not expected.