Hey guys, I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what my long term winrate might be in a unique rake/fee structure at a local poker club.

Background: In 2010-2012, I used to play $2/3 NL at Casino Arizona and logged around 220 hours of play with a winrate of $22/hr after rake and tips. In 2013 I moved to Austin, TX for a new job and didn't play much live poker until a legal, local club opened.

The $1/2 games at the local club are fairly loose and stacks can get 500-1000bb deep after a few hours. There is often a $5 straddle going around, sometimes up to $10. I would say the game plays more like a loose $2/3 game or a typical $3/5 game. Buy in is up to $300 when the game begins, and you can also top-up or rebuy up to the largest stack at the table.

Rake/Fee structure:

$10 to enter the club for 1 day, or $30 access for a month, $300 for a year, $1000 lifetime membership.

Hourly seat rental fee: $2 check in fee, plus $10/hr

Tips: No tipping is allowed or accepted

Rake: No rake is taken from any pots

Assuming my winrate is about 10bbs/hr, is this even worth playing? How does this compare to the hourly rake one might pay in a casino including tips?

Probably worth a shot to see. If stacks get to 500-1000bbs, and it plays like a 3/5 game AND you are a better player, then it should be worth it.

Time charge plus bigger stacks means the game is geared towards looser play, so if you can adjust and play that well, gl.

Based on your description I would say yes. This structure would definitely be beatable if it was a good 2/5 game. I wouldn't want to play in a nitty 1/2 game with this structure though.

Let me know how it is, I'm about 2 hours away and have thought about checking it out if/when I'm in Austin.

If it plays like 3/5 the hourly fee including entry to club is about 2.5 BB. I don't know how that compares to ordinary rake games but it sounds pretty good.

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Yes, should definitely be beatable. Sounds like you're effectively playing 2/5 given stack size and straddle. Let's assume you play a 5 hour session and pay the daily fee (in reality looks like monthly will make more sense if you play once or twice a week). That's $10 to enter, $2 check in fee, plus $50 of hour rental. So about $12/hour. That compares very close to time rake in a 2/5 game, which is usually $7/30 minutes and is generally better than a rake.

This is a pretty good structure. I'd get $30 monthly access fee. A lot can change in your own life in a year, or the club may no longer be there, etc. $10/h is not a very high rake. For comparison 5|T at the Hard Rock Hollywood charges $14/h and still takes a jackpot drop. Pot rake in the 2|5 and lower is 5+2, which I think usually amounts to more than $14/h. No tipping is a slight benefit which adds up, too.

It also sounds like the game is pretty good if it's normal to get 1000BB stacks on the table, and there are frequent straddles.

I think you can make a lot of money in this game. I wouldn't be surprised if $50/h or more is possible.

Thanks guys, I did some quick excel math. It's interesting to me that the monthly option doesn't really lower the hourly cost very much, even if I went 8 times and played 5 hours per session, the cost is still $11/hr.

My typical session length is only ~3.5 hours historically.

at a standard 5+1 10% vegas rake structure, at 30 hands an hour, they are taking $180 off the table per hour. Even estimating down for the pots less than $50, it's still probably $130-$150 per hour coming off the table. at $10/hr, they are only taking $100 off the table per hour assuming a 10 handed table. Seems like a great structure, and that's before you take into account the no tipping thing.

yep, even at the worst case (paying the daily fee + only 2-3 hours/day) rake is similar to what you'd pay in an ordinary US casino (counting jackpot drops and tips)

But bruh

You made a dang excel spreadsheet working out a couple of dollars an hour in tips but

Talk about missing the forest for the trees. That's the sort of game worth moving for.

My guess is that if you utilized the $1000 life time membership and played it for the next 50 years, this would definitely help. Course I'm not sure I would take that line because (a) club might disappear within a year and (b) other costs might go up to much where it isn't a good deal.

I just simply took those numbers and applied it to my last year results, which was 64 sessions for 540 hours, which would equal $300 (year fee) + (64 sessions * $2) + (540 hours * $10/hr) = $5828. If I could guesstimate the rake I actually paid last year (although using this years max rake), let's say 2 hands an hour @ $7/hand ($7 maximum + BBJ + tip, course I'm not going to max our rake each hand), that would be $7560, so significantly more.

Could also go another estimate route, trying to come up with an hourly rake, and say you if you played 64 sessions, that would be $300/64/540 + $2*64/540 + $10 = $10.25/hr paid in rake. I'm fairly certain I'm paying more than that in rake in my $7 max + BBJ + (optional) tip.

Overall, seems like a pretty good deal to me, but someone could prove me wrong.

GcluelessNLnoobG

This is a great way of looking at it, and really shows that this rake structure alone is very good.

GjellyG

This rake is amazing. Is this post, like, a humble brag?

Yeah, sign me up. Great structure, with no tipping and rake. Only negative is that it discourages the casual player who has to pay $12 before sitting down.

Im 95% sure that game is NOT legal in Texas. Not that I care. Just pointing it out. Play it as much as you can until someone complains and it gets shut down.

Sick brag.

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Super deep 1/2nl is the greatest poker game, imo.

It's all the degen of PLO, but without the additional variance.

Thanks guys, I definitely wasn't posting to brag. Having a few casinos nearby for better game selection has its benefits.

For example I played last night but the wait was an hour to get into a game, so I played $2/5 for a few hours which was tighter than most of the $1/2 tables.


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Yeah I agree, but it's been open for over 2 years and they are opening another location in north Austin this summer. There's a long thread in NVG about it.


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It's so funny when someone asks if the game is beatable and doesn't even mention the quality of the play in that game. Ummm the most important factor?

It is implied in these sort of questions that there is a "Can anyone beat this game" clause embedded in the question. It is assumed that the top 9 cash game NLHE players in the world aren't sitting at the same 1/2 table with you.

Then it's beatable lol. I guess my point is that we should be more concerned with improving our game than a question like this. If you are the best, or even 2nd or 3rd best player at the table, it's beyond beatable.

Agree with all this, game should be beatable

A bad rake can make any game unbeatable. Until those above broke down the math on the rake, it wasn't exactly clear on initial reading whether the rake was a good one or a bad one (in this case, rake clearly looks like a good one).

Quality of opponents / our ranking relative to those opponents is completely irrelevant in a game that has an unbeatable rake, therefore rake should always be the first consideration.

GcluelessrakenoobG

When calculating session P/L do you guys add the time rake/member fees to your buyin or do you just track it separately? Example, I buy in for $1000 and spend $50 in time/fees. At the end of the day I have $1200 in chips. I’m effectively +$150 for the session. I’ve been using Analytics 4 to track and I just add the time and fees to my buyin.

How much did you take out of your pocket and how much did you put back in at the end of the day?

If you bought in for $1000 and paid the $50 in fees out of your stack and left with $1200 then you won $200. If you paid the $50 in fees out of your pocket, then you won $150.