Just a quick post regarding fixed limit rake, for the record:
source
Rake at 1/2 FL SH on full tilt and stars is 3.23BB/100 and 3.12BB/100 respectively.
At 2/4 on full tilt and stars it's 2.53BB/100 and 2.39BB/100 respectively.
From my experience PTR's rake analysis is very accurate, it's taken from millions of datamined hands, and has been accurate for me playing across several sites.
Now the numbers above for party are skewed by bad beat jackpot tables, but if you look at the PTR pages of long time regs, who tend to avoid the BBJ tables, the rake is still very high on party:
Take this guy for example, he's an active reg I know, who doesn't play BBJ tables without a fish there, and despite playing very nitty for 6max (25/16 stats), he is still paying $38186/2680.15= $14.2477/100 hands = 3.56BB/100 at 2/4 6max.
This recreational player plays 60 vpip, and pays $26.26/100 hands
That's just not competitive with the other 2 leading sites, makes the games almost unbeatable before rakeback, makes huge downswings likely, and makes fish go broke faster. The problem applies to other limits too, and must stem from poor structure.
This is the party rake structure:
source
And Pokerstars':
source
The rake caps get higher quicker, e.g. 5 and 6 handed pots on party have the same $3 rake cap that only 6 handed pots would have on Pokerstars. That seems to be the main problem. If this were changed I'm pretty sure it would lead to more games running, and actually increase Party's profits. At the moment games only really run at 2/4 and 3/6 when a fish sits, all the regs are well aware that the rake eradicates any thin edge they may have over weaker regs. By comparison, there are a lot of tables at .25/.50 and .5/1 running often, where rake is more acceptable at about 3BB/100.
Last edited by jspill; 05-21-2011 at 06:26 AM.