Dumbos,

Oh I know how bad some are/can be. You also have to take into account the 2-3 nits per table who are bad and losing but at a much smaller clip. For each one of those you need another especially bad player. In order to overcome this rake you have to play with as many of these players that you mentioned as you can. Out of curiously what is your game and rake structure?

Aren't we all just guessing? There's definitely a threshold where games become unbeatable. I think some people here are clouded by heaters paying immense rake and think it will last forever. It will not

Anyone who believes they can beat a game with this much rake better be one of the top 3 best players in their pool just to even have a chance. Even then, the rake will be near impossible to beat after a sufficient amount of hands.

I play in a 10% up to $5 plus $2 BBJ. 1/3 and 2/5 mainly. More 2/5 lately because of the rake and BR.

To some extent we are indeed all guessing but many opinions are based on some reasoning or some math. GGs game is raked higher than my local games but with the rake calculation estimates ITT they still wouldn't make my games unbeatable, just less profitable. We all agree that there is a line somewhere but I don't think you need to be "one of the best 3 players in the room" to beat a 10% rake capped at 8 + 1 BBJ at 1/3.

I haven’t been around for very long but I honestly don’t think the rake is such a big deal. There are so many bad players all you have to do is play tight and don’t get ahead of yourself and you will win. Nearly every time I have a losing session it’s because I made a mistake. There’s occasional bad beats but more often than not when I lose it’s because I made a clear mistake. I feel like Hold em is just a game against yourself..stay focused, don’t tilt, stay patient and you win. Rake don’t matter,

Wow, that's going WAY too far on the other side. Saying rake doesn't matter is ridiculous when literally hundreds of dollars per hour are coming out of play. The other side saying a game is borderline unbeatable long term due to an $8+1 also seems far fetched though.

Hawksfan, classic user on heater post.

But I'm not trying judge. I was posting the same way when I was winning huge over a trivial sample size. I didn't listen to anyone and though lol rake, it didn't matter to me either.

Yeah rake really does matter. I would probably have double what I have earned now if not for the house's share. That's a ton of money. Tens of thousands of dollars.

I had counted about 300 hours, I paid avg $25 per hour for rake + tips in the pot rake game. (there were some miss-counting for sure)

house rake - 10% up to $5 +$2 BBJ.

I don't tip preflop unless there is a 3bet.

I tip $1 if i won post flop for pots under $1k or there is no showdown.

I tip $2-$5 if the pot is over $1k with showdown.

I'm much like you. I do no tip for no flop pots unless there was a 3! in which case $1.

I tip $1 for all flop pots up to $200. I do a little more up to $500. I think the most I would ever tip would be $5. I save my generosity for promo money where I tip 5%.

I was trying to say rake is huge, but kinda flat or fix cost for your win rate. Time rake game is way better.

Yeah if skill and BR weren't issues I would play the 5/10 regularly where it's $20/hr.

While I feel my $8 + $1 + $1 game is still very beatable, I'll admit that I have no confidence whatsoever for how much. Both recent conversations regarding rake and hours played kinda have an interesting tie in with each other. For instance, if I assume that a lot of my opponents put in 1000+ hours per year at the table (and I believe a lot of them do), then that means a lot of these multi-day-per-week players have to be losing well into the 5 digits per year at their hobby to support winners like me. Throw in a crap load of OMC who are beating the rake to +/- breakeven, and you begin to wonder. Yeah, you'll get some people who lose $30/hr over the dozen times they get out per year and won't notice it / care, but those people make up like 1% of the poker population (imo); the other 99% are regs putting in some decent volume where a decent negative winrate is eventually going to cause a noticeable dent.

But of course I say that coming off a 2018 that was my best winrate-wise since 2013 in spite of the rake increases, so whatever, I guess.

Gitmaybeamirage,itmaybethinice,itmightbefine,Idunn oG

I think we're forgetting the guys that come and dump $2k into a $1/2 game in a weekend, or a day. There are definitely guys that I know that will easily lose $20-30k a year. That sustains a lot of other players once it circulates around the poker economy.

Wait what?! You're saying your typical table has 7 regs and 1 rec / fish? If there are more than 3 strong regs at my table I don't like it. And if there are 5 I'm outta there. 99% regs? Am I reading that wrong?

reg /= strong reg. Most regs lose, though they don't keep records and are convinced that they "are about break-even."

+1 I tried to touch on this but didn't specify if they were dumping large or small. In my market there are tons of new faces every session. I never really tried to figure a breakdown but I'd venture to guess 50% of faces look familiar. Maybe it depends on how we define reg. Tomorrow I'll have eyes on the field and make a better reg to rec estimation.

Agreed. This is probably a large population of the room as well. I would think though that the larger losers wouldn't be able to lie to themselves for that long even if they weren't keeping records. Which is why I assume they just play less frequently when they lose and come back sooner when they are on a heater.

My field has about 1 new face over 7 tables per session. It's still full of spewtastic regs. Better yet, I've only been here for a handful of sessions and I already have strong reads on most of them.

The weak reg response "Yeah, NL is swingy. I'm getting beat up lately, but I won three buy ins a few weeks ago (narrator: it was actually months), so it all evens out."

It depends how much $2k means to them. With sufficient income it just doesn't matter if they're punting money. They're *spending* money on poker to have *fun*. It's like the guys playing blackjack for $25/50 a hand.

Basically +1 on what G said regarding reg != strong reg. And reg doesn't mean !rec.

But yeah, pretty much everyone is a reg. There are no random players playing a one-off poker session / having a night out with the boys in casino and sitting down at the poker table instead of the blackjack table (you actually wouldn't get on the table in my room without phoning in well beforehand). But most of them will lose over time, and probably (hopefully?) be replaced by the next cycle of losing regs.

GimeG

I'd say 75bb/hour is pretty cheap for a 1/2 game.

have played a 1/2 that was 10% to $15 + 2, that was generally perceived as "nitty"... that I thought was pretty soft and in which I had wonderful results over a few hundred hours

No, there's no way to know for sure without playing in it. The only situation I'd comfortably say "yeah that rake is probably not beatable" is if it was 10% uncapped or 15% to a non-trivial amount.

even 10% uncapped, the game could just be really good. Doesn't hurt to play a session and find out.

This is surprising coming from a vet. Maybe I'm spoiled but always refused to play the cruise ship casinos with 10% capped at $25 with a mix of emotions consisting of feeling robbed / disrespected before I even sat down and not knowing if it was possible to beat that much rake. You seem to clearly think these fish fests could still be profitable over a significant sample. Do other vets / pros agree?

Could easily be profitable if peeps drunk and punting stacks

This is not true at all. In fact, its so not true that it boggles my mind that it was even written here.

Whats the avg pot size in a standard 1/2 game? You only need an avg pot size of around $40 to get 75BB/hr taken off the table and that's if we arent counting promo drop. An avg pot size of around $35 will get around 60BBs/hr raked.

These games are very crushable.