To be honest, I do think some people would say that the people paid the tax, even if it is indirectly. If the people don't pay for the meal, then the tax doesn't get paid either.

You said that "We all go there and spend $100 (the player contributions to the pot). It doesn't matter who contributed what, all that matters is the eventual size of the pot."

I'd argue that it does matter, as people who pay more at the restaurant also contribute more to the tax/rake. Don't you think so?

You can argue it either way:

a) The rake is 2% and the players each paid 50% of the rake, or $1 each. I.e. 2% is taken from everything each player puts into the pot.

b) The rake is 2% and the winner paid it.

Counter argument:

A man walks into a room where there are ten men sitting at a table. He asks them all to take out their wallets and give him 10% of it towards a mutual friend's birthday present. They pay him the money and he leaves.

Who paid for the birthday present?

The problem with this argument is that it shows who suffers as a result of the rake, but it does not prove who paid the rake.

You answered your question. Who suffers as a result of the Rake? The winner or the loser?

If player A and Player B both agreed to pay the 3rd party $1 each to the 3rd party flipper, they are playing for $98. So each party is contributing $1. But who lost $50 and who won $48?

Same as Player A says I'll pay the $2 rake and Player B is freerolling for $50. If Player A wins, he gets $48 and paid the 100% of the rake. player B still only loses $50.

Or if Player A loses, he paid the $2 rake, but Player B still won $50. So the loser (Player A) paid 100% of the rake.

Either way Player A paid 100% of the rake.

Another thought experiment.

Say in a 10 handed 1/2 game. Everyone limps preflop, so $20. Rake is 10% so $2 to see a flop. One player has 99, one player has KJ, one player has 53o, one player has 55 and one player has 33.

The player with 53o has maybe 4% equity in the pot preflop? So let's say the flop comes 982 rainbow and 99 bets and everyone else folds. Do we assign the rake based on their preflop equity?

Or if KJ, 55 and 33 are non-believers and continue. Rake increases. Do we split what they pay in rake by equity in the pot at the time money went in?

Sure, I do understand what you're saying, but it still does not 100% make sense to me. Let me rephrase what I wrote above. It's actually easier to make the comparison if we compare two situations:

Firstly:

A man walks into a room where there are ten men sitting at a table. He asks them all to take out their wallets and give him $10, with the promise that $1 of it will go towards a mutual friend's birthday present. They pay him the money and he leaves. He keeps 90% of the money, and then spends 10% on the birthday present, as promised.

In that case, who paid for the birthday present?

Secondly:

A man walks into a room where there are ten men sitting at a table. He asks them all to take out their wallets and give him 10% of the contents to pay for a mutual friend's birthday present. They pay him the money and he leaves, and then spends the money on the birthday present, as promised.

In that case, who paid for the birthday present?

Why do you feel that the rake belongs to the winner temporarily, before it goes to the house? I think it could be argued that it doesn't, as in the second example above.

I would say that the rake is "10% up to x" and therefore 10% of what every player puts into the pot, until the cap is reached, is what the rake is - so it's not associated with preflop/postflop equity in any way. An example of how the approach of each player paying 10% of what they put in the pot as rake was detailed in my earlier comment:

"5 players (excluding the big blind and small blind) put in $10 each preflop in a $2/$5 game (total pot $57 on the flop).

On the flop, Player A bets $25, Player B calls, Players C, D and E fold.
On the turn, Player A bets $80 and Player B folds.
The total (raked) pot size is $107. The rake is 10%, capped at $10 - so in this case the rake is at the cap of $10. Player A wins $97 (for a profit of $62 on the hand), and the house takes $10 in rake.

Player B lost $35, Players C, D and E each lost $10, and the blinds lost $5 and $2 respectively.

Who paid the rake?

The rake is constituted of 10% of everything each player put into the pot until the cap was reached. Therefore:

Small blind paid $0.20 in rake.
Big blind paid $0.50 in rake.
Players C, D and E each paid $1 in rake.
Players A and B each paid $3.15 in rake (as they put in $31.50 each before the cap was reached)."

Not a fair comparison, because the man asking for the money hasn't contributed anything to the pot. So in your 1st example, he keeps $90 and pays $10 for the birthday present. Freeroll. If he was one of the ten men contributing $10, and it was unknown who would pay for the birthday present, and he lost the lottery, he would have contributed $10 like 9 other players with a lottery win of $100. But the winner had to buy a $10 birthday. So who paid for the gift? 🎁

Ok sure fair point. So instead:

Firstly:

A man walks into a room where there are ten men sitting at a table. He asks them all to take out their wallets and give him $10, with the promise that he will also contribute $10 and $1 of all contributions will go towards a mutual friend's birthday present. They pay him the money and he leaves. He keeps 90% of the money, and then spends 10% on the birthday present, as promised.

In that case, who paid for the birthday present?

Secondly:

A man walks into a room where there are ten men sitting at a table. He asks them all to take out their wallets and give him 10% of the contents to pay for a mutual friend's birthday present, with the promise that he will do the same. They pay him the money and he leaves, and then spends the money on the birthday present, as promised.

In that case, who paid for the birthday present?

Why do you feel that the rake belongs to the winner temporarily, before it goes to the house? I think it could be argued that it doesn't, as in the second example above.

Don't disagree with this line of thinking. So in a 100% raked game, each players percentage to the rake would be based off how much they contributed to the pot. You got me.

Who does lowering rake benefit ceteris paribus?

The winner of the pot, as the pot is bigger, because - and here's the crux - the other players pay less in rake.

As a poker player you are supposed to be thinking in terms of winrates.

Absolutely. However the question of the thread is 'who pays the rake'?

The only person who’s bankroll is affected by the rake is the winner of the pot.

The question would still need further context to make observations and assertions.

But if we are thinking about playing good poker, we should consider that rake affects all players equally.

I think that only overall winning players pay the rake. Think of it this way - what if instead of a cash game where anyone could leave whenever they wanted, you play a years-long freezeout. At the end of the game, the best player will be the only one left with money, but it will be a lot less than it would have been if there were no rake. The losing players would be broke regardless of rake.

The rake is like the house's edge. Who pays it? Everyone who plays.

Mathematically, the winner of any given pot pays the rake.

Conceptually, the less profitable players in the game end up paying more of the rake than the more profitable players do.

If everyone in the game won an equal number of pots, and each pot was the same size, everyone would pay the same total amount of rake, and there wouldn't be any need to debate.

But in reality, that's not what happens. The winners in the game drag more pots than the losers do, and the bigger winners drag bigger pots, paying less rake, proportionally. If the rake is capped, the losers end up paying a larger percentage of whatever they win in rake than the winners pay.

Let's say an example of a winning player buys into a 1/3 game for $500, wins 3 big pots, each with a $5 rake, and cashes out for $1,000. He paid $15 rake on $515 pre-rake profit, or about 3% of his total pre-rake winnings.

Let's also say an example of a less-winning player buys into that same game for $500, tops off until he's in the game for $1,000, wins 10 medium pots, each with a $5 rake, loses 5 pots, but ends up cashing out for $1200. He paid $50 rake on a $250 pre-rake profit, or 20% of his pre-rake winnings.

Both players showed a profit on the session. Both paid rake on the pots they won. Both might look like "winning" players. But the player paying 3% rake on his profits is paying less rake than the guy paying 20% rake.

Now consider the player who loses as many pots as he wins, for roughly equal amounts. He's paying rake even if he'd just be breaking even without it. If he pays $50 in rake and cashes out for $50 less than he bought in for, he paid 100% rake on his pre-rake profit. He's like the guy who sits there dumping money at Blackjack, a little at a time. Eventually, he will go broke.

The player who loses more than he wins is also paying rake. If the break-even-if-it-wasn't-for-the-rake player described above is paying 100% rake, the losing player is paying over 100%.

Suppose we accept the argument that everyone who contributed to the pot has paid a portion of the rake.

Does this also mean that everyone who contributed to the pot paid a portion of the dealer toke?

The rake is taken from the pot not a player. Since the pot is reduced by the amount of rake, the winner of the pot ends up having sacrificed the rake.

Great question. And when the cocktail server gets tipped out of the players stack when she delivers a drink, who paid for that?

If you double up and then get stacked, did you lose 200BB's or 100BB's?

The winner always pays.

If 9 people sit down with 100$ each and one guy wins every hand dealt until he has all the money then he'll have less than 900$ and that difference was the rake.

The only mathematically interesting question is who pays more when you have a % + cap structure over a large sample size?

Here a guy winning one massive pot occaisonally will be paying less rake than a guy winning multiple small to medium pots all else being equal.

The problem with your "everyone paid 4$ to the winner and 1$ to the rake" is the unseen pathways fallacy. Also talking past the sale fallacy.

Problem with the first metaphor (besides the math doesnt make sense) is there's no element of chance and no winner. And as we know, if everyone wins/loses equally then yes we all pay rake equally.

Problem with the second is, again, there's no winner. Now you have a false equivalency fallacy. If you're implying one guys 10% contribution was larger because he had more in his wallet then that would be because he represents the winner and we're back to 'winner pays rake'.

No individual "pays" the rake.

Rake is a tax on the pot potentially impacting any player who enters a pot.

In each pot, rake will only directly impact the winner of that pot.

In the long run, rake will lower every player's long-term bottom line. That is true whether one is a winning player or losing player. One would have won more or lost less if there were no rake.

In the hypothetical but unrealistic scenario that a player loses every chip every session played, rake will have no impact on that player.

Rake proportionally impacts winners of large pots less so than winners of small pots because of the max.