In theory poker rooms can do whatever they want but...

You can't increase the % of the pot being raked according to inflation. Otherwise the game becomes unbeatable relatively quickly. Inflation should influence the minimum stakes only, and a successful poker room will find the correct capped % of the pot to rake, adjusting only to maximize profit. Profit maximizing won't occur if rake is so high that no one wants to play. That sounds extremely obvious, but this is exactly what will occur if you increase the rake according to inflation.

I'm not trying to get into a never-ending discussion on this, but I was responding to someone else who brought up inflation, which is positively correlated with a poker room's cost of operations.

Why is rake being tied to inflation... the two things could not be further apart. They really can't do a fractional increase of say .25/.50$.... 1$ is the bare minimum increase a casino could realistically make with having new cheques produced. So it's a 25% increase in the drop for now.... next time the increase of 1$ will represent a smaller percentage increase, and so on.

Welcome to to 2017... 5$ rake.... bfd.

It's not like you can do anything about it.

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$4 in 2003 (the moneymaker year) is over $5 now.

I'd also expect to see more rooms move to 1/3 as the entry level and set the cap at $500.

That's all pretty common outside Vegas and hasn't killed the games yet

Sorry, I know this veers off the thread topic a bit, but soft at what stakes? I don't live in LV but I've played at Caesars more than a handful of times and it never wasn't a total nitfest.

I agree, if you are going to raise the rake to $5, you MUST get rid of 1-2NL and make it at least 1-3NL.

Raising the stakes from 1/2 to 1/3 also increases the drop, in that pots get a little bigger, and in the right way. The bigger pots in a $300 max 1/3 aren't much bigger than those in a $300 max 1/2, but the smaller pots are bigger. You hit the 10, 20, 30 and 40 dollar drop points much more frequently. In fact I'd say switching to 1/3 will increase the drop more than switching to $5 will because in most Vegas 1/2 games you're getting $50 pots less than half the time.

Negreanu was right again.

Do the 1-2 NL players want to play 1-3 with a bigger buy-in? I'm not sure they would.

Why? Because poker rooms have a moral obligation to offer games that are beatable in the long run?

$5 is not outrageously expensive compared to games in other parts of the US. Not even speaking about ROTW where you find lots of casinos that cap the rake at the equivalent of $20. The latter obviously drastically changes the player pool, but again, a card room is not responsible for providing low limit poker players with the opportunity to make a living.

unless they hate money, most likely want to have the potential to make the most money possible. Larger buy-in caps allow that to occur. If they want to nit it up, then it costs then a whole dollar extra every nine or ten hands.

Can't recall the last time I paid less than 10% up to $15. $5 is ridiculously low based on ROW standards.

Que flame.

They raised the 5/10 nl/2/5 plo from 6 /half to 7/half a year or two ago so this isn't surprising

this was inevitable. still the cheapest rake in the world

anyone know if any changes to the time collection games?

No idea, but time at Bellagio was just raised last year. So I doubt they raised that again.

By that logic, everyone should want to play $1k/$2k (or higher).

Some people just want to play poker without losing a large amount of their hard-earned $s.

Very strange that you can't see this.

I'm a break-even player, and I'd rather play lower than $1/$2 if it was on offer and rake wasn't an issue. I just want it to be high enough to care about. E.g. 50c/$1 would work for me.

But any lower than $1/$2 and the rake becomes too high a hurdle rate, even in the short term.

Some of them surely don't. Some BJ players want to play $5 a hand on a Saturday night too. Some 1/2 players would rather be playing 0.5/1. Some home game 5c/10c players stay out of the casino entirely because it's already too expensive.

The casino doesn't really care about serving every one who might want to play poker. They care about serving the ones that can make them money.

No they clearly don't. And it's possible that rooms continue to offer $1/$2 as the entry stakes. It is however likely in the casino's interest that middling players have a chance to walk out a winner sometimes. If the casino offers a game where an average player can never win they dry up the player pool pretty quickly.

ETA: I'm not saying that 1/2 300 cap with 10% to $5 isn't beatable. Clearly it is but it's less likely to be beatable by average players than 10% to $4 or a 1/3 500 cap with 10% to $5.

I do think that this part of the issue. The games need to start moving from say $1-$2 to $2-$4, from $2-$5 to maybe $5-$5, from $5-$10 to $10-$20. To keep up with inflation.

It they don't want to adjust to inflation ($1 doesn't buy what it used to even 5 years ago), then they will have to deal with the rake being a higher % of the pot.

Maybe it won't be long before Caesars raises its rake.

If so, may this mean way less 1/2 grinders in Vegas eventually?

10% is the max by Nevada Gaming Regulation 23.050.

Thank you for the information. Question - so this increase to $5 only comes into play when the pot is greater than $40? Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes. Before the change it was 10% of the total pot up to $4, now it is 10% up to $5.

I have no qualms with that premise. However, for the purposes of this discussion, it isn't even in the same realm as a dollar an orbit.

If a dollar an orbit is going to break them, then the poker room in ANY Las Vegas casino is NOT the place for them to be in the first place...

I would have opined the same about it being strange that you cannot see that a dollar is NOT a make-or-break deal for anyone who is actually playing cards and NOT gambling.