2 questions

1. With the tiers for money you can make back per hour, how many hours exactly do you need to play to get to each tier?

2. How often do you guys have a 2-100 spread limit game going? Is it all day every day basically or only certain times and/or certain days?

[QUOTE=ThatFish;41278535]1. With the tiers for money you can make back per hour, how many hours exactly do you need to play to get to each tier?/QUOTE]

160+ hours to get $10
100+ hours to get $7
70+ hours to get $5
40+ hours to get $3
10+ hours to get $2
<10 hours to get $1

It's our most popular game. Pretty much always at least 1...average about 5 of them.

[QUOTE=Tristan Wilberg;41282903] Thanks for the quick response!

Also, how long will you guys have this rakeback promotion going? Will it be on-going or is it just for this month

[QUOTE=ThatFish;41283626] No problem!

We will have the rake back promotion again in January...after that, not sure yet.

[QUOTE=Tristan Wilberg;41283833] very nice! I usually play at cantebury park but just recently heard about you guys and its about 20 minutes closer so i will definately have to come check it out next weekend!

Cool, see you then!

Close quarters at Running Aces.

They have squeezed the poker tables close together to make room for additional pit games. Given the girth of many regulars it makes for close quarters.

What was the total for the player with the most hours played in November for the rake back promo? I know there was a player with almost 70 hours within the first 4 days which is insanity.

Also, I heard of a prop bet where a player was going to play 2-4 exclusively for 160 hours but had to show a profit, did this happen?

I'm not really comfortable with getting into specifics, but the player who was getting crazy hours kept everyone updated...so I will verify that he did average 15.5 hours per day for the first 18 days (on pace for 465 hours!), but then we didn't see him for the rest of the month.

I didn't hear about the 2/4 prop bet, but I am now curious!

What are the buyins allowed at the 2-100 game? and do you guys use 1$ chips for it? Ill probably be there this saturday, just wanna know what to expect.

Regular 2-100 is, iirc, a $300 max buy in, and is generally played using $2 chips.

Yep, $50 min, $300 max. Yellow $2 chips in play.

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ty ty

[QUOTE=Tristan Wilberg;41283833] one of your dealers last night told me that you guys lost alot of money from this rakeback promotion so it will NOT be continueing in january, is this true?

It will be continuing in January. Silly dealer!

Let me start this by saying I am a big fan of Running Aces. They give way more in comps and listen to the players more than any other poker room I have ever been in and I am somewhat of a regular and a breakeven player in the 2/100 spread.
My opinion is that the cash game Rakeback experiment should end soon. The money RA gives out to players should go back to either a jackpot or better yet the progressive quads like a couple of months ago. The main reason for this is that the games have got much tougher with all the grinders and pros playing in the 2/100 games to get the 160 hours for the $10 per hour. If you have played enough in there recently you know that pros from MN and even outstate have shipped in just to get the $10 per hour and the games have gotten much tougher. I don't blame these people because they are just taking advantage of the rakeback but should't RA use these promotions to bring in casual gamblers and newer players? 160 hours a month is not really an attainable goal for most casual players and anyone that has a regular job unless you are making a ton of money doing it, which goes back to the top grinders and pros mostly benefiting form it.
Bottom Line: I think RA should run promos that bring in more new and casual players. The grinders and pros will still make money with these players and the new/casual/losing players will see that even if they blow a buy in or two they have a chance to win a jackpot or progressive to help them out.

i think they are only doing the promotion november, december, than january. So it will die down soon and other promotions will come up im sure

I'll give them an "E" for effort. They had to do something, the room was as quiet in October as I've ever seen it. The problem with a promotion that pushes long hours is that a certain percentage of regulars will either bust out nor lose so much that they need a long break. The combination of high rake and the natural variance of the game will lead to big losses for some players. Lose 5K to get a 1.6K rakeback.

I've never cared for splashpots or cracked aces; maybe quad progressives will make a comeback.

I'll be taking a lot of business trips to Brooklyn Park from Monday to Thursday the first half of this year - once the roads are a bit nicer I'd like to go check this place out.

I notice on their site they actually have $2/$4 and $3/$6 LHE - how's the traffic, the competition and the rake between, say, 6pm and 2am Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday night?

And I guess they have no true no-limit tables - I'm not familiar with spread limit but I'm guessing the rules are exactly the same as no-limit with the exception that you can't go "all in" unless you have less than (limit) chips in front of you, is that true?

Take a look at BravoPokerLive and you will get an idea of what games go on given nights. The 3/6 game is always played with a full kill, and 2 or 3 tables are going most weeknights. The 2/4 has fewer players but usually goes. The number of tables often varies with what promotion is going on, so unusual phenomenons occur such as the room thinly out at 6PM some days.

The rake is rather brutal on the low stakes games; it's $6 that's taken out of the pot quicker than normal. If the table is tight with a few limpers and everyone folds to a flop bet then the rake is 20 to 30%. On the other hand, if the table is full of limpers and cold callers that chase to the river then the rake is beatable.

Good Luck

thanks

I live exactly between RA and Canterbury and have been an on-again/off-again regular at both places over the years, and I can say I agree with porkchop--the rakeback looks good on paper but it actually narrows the playing field to people who are going to play constantly, which means a very specific group of people.

Casual players = customers. People focusing on earning rakeback =/= casual players.

I can't do 40+ hours/week to get max value out of the rakeback. Now, if I'm getting 20 hours of poker in a week (which I can easily do 2 days/nights a week) the margin of value between decent rakeback at RA vs. more casual players and a wider spread of games at Canterbury gets a lot closer, and this is coming from someone who is a total coupon nit at RA.

I found myself spending more time at RA when I could go and get $5/hr certain nights without moving in there.

I totally understand most of what you are saying here...but I'm not sure I understand the references of your ability to play 20ish hours/week and how you liked it better when you could not move in here and still make $5 an hour. You only need to average 17.5 hrs/wk for $5 an hour during rakeback rebate. Plus if you scheduled it right, you could play those hours during Aces Cracked and get maximum opportunity.

I feel that there is a bit too much focus on the top tier. 17.5 hours/wk for $5 an hour and 25 hours/wk for $7 an hour are both great and are much more attainable for most people. $10 an hour is supposed to be hard to get!

I agree that the rakeback does not have the draw for casual players. It will be done after this month, but you might see it, or something similar, in the future.

It's tough when it comes to promos. Jackpots (if they are big) and similar things appeal to the more casual player, but most regular players don't like the lottery feel and protest that since they are the largest contributors they should have a more direct benefit from the promos.

Rakeback rebate, among other things, educated some of the regular players of the indirect benefits that they get from things like the jackpot (things like softer tables).

Hopefully we will eventually find the right blend of direct and indirect benefits to make everyone happy!

Tristan:

I really appreciate your follow-up to my post and I don't want you to think I was complaining per se--more assessing the +/- of the rakeback promotion from my POV. I think that's worth discussing but I didn't want to come off as someone using this forum to complain or in any other way appear a dissatisfied customer. I think the other poster was more grouchy about it than I was.

I actually think we're pretty much on the same page more or less. I like talking about the good and the bad of things, discussing, and theorizing. Please don't mistake it for griping. To me, one of the more fascinating parts of this whole rakeback promotion is those hard-to-have-predicted indirect effects you refer to. It's sort of like how everybody back in the early 2000s thought that online poker was going to be way softer than live poker because it would be so easy to play it casually--and the exact opposite happened.

So yeah, on paper the rakeback thing looked amazing but as a serious but ultimately not-a-pro player (aka this isn't my job, it's a game I challenge myself to play successfully and I'm reasonably okay at), the rakeback doesn't benefit me as much, for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, in a broader sense, as you and I and other posters have noted, it's made for much harder tables.

Now, if you were going to do the rakeback bonus on the inexpensive day tournaments, I'd be all over it. (Ha!) Honestly, your tournament structure for the cheaper ones is so superior to the competition that a lot of time I've spent at RA lately has been getting some solid live tournament practice (which is a part of my game I've spent way less time on).

No problem at all!

I took your post as constructive feedback, and we like to hear all feedback whether in support of continuing what we are doing or support in a different or new approach. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the players!

RakeBack was a fun new experiment, and it taught all of us a few things... but ultimately it is not perfect as the primary ongoing monthly promo.

Thanks to all who have given feedback here; please don't let me being here keep anyone from expressing their opinion. I'm just here to answer questions and gather feedback.