Rake is so nutty on Bros. At $.50/1 PLO5, I'm paying 26bb/100 of rake. Those are 75% no VPIP tables and 25% are 30 or 40% VPIP. I usually play 5-6 handed, but will open sit a lot, so many hands are 2-3 handed and I think that's where I especially get killed b/c there's no rake break for shorthanded.

i mention the different set of skills because if you're studying 30bb, then you're not studying 100bb. that's time and energy not going into improving at 100bb, which as you admitted is where more of the EV is.

that said only you know what's right for you and your situation, and how you want your game to evolve.

Guys, there's some wrong info regarding our Staking business here. I'd like to post some explanatin made for our players several months ago:


"When it comes to the domain of app-based Clubs and unions, please remember that these are private Clubs associated in private Unions, and not companies which provide open poker games for all kinds of clients. This means that they do not have open access - as a rule of thumb, the better the club, the more difficult it is to gain access with a guarantee of payouts.

Agents who generate traffic for the Clubs are assessed and verified on the basis of their winnings/rake ratio. The better your winnings/rake ratio, the less appealing you are for the given Union or Club. So, sometimes we have to try various methods to “dilute” our traffic in a given Club, mixing our players with fishes from other sources, or split you among several Clubs within one Union.

More often than not, Clubs impose some fees on good winnings/rake players, displayed as Cashout Fees or Action. You might as well consider these as an access fee for good games, which goes towards worse players as a higher rakeback. It is in the interest of the Unions and Clubs to keep good players away from their games, as such players tend to drain the field and tap money from their surroundings, diverting earnings away from the owners.

Therefore, in theory we don’t have a strong negotiating hand as PokerNinjas, what with our high ratio and low income opportunities for the Clubs. However, thanks to our extensive network of business contacts and partnerships, we keep having access to some of the best games out there, and we can keep playing them thanks to the CF and Actions, even if every now and then we need to bypass the system with VPN. We have to make so.

If someone offers you the same perks as we do (not counting Actions and CF), it can mean two things: either they don’t guarantee payouts (the Unions sometimes seize funds of high-ratio Agents), or are on their way to losing access before long. We guarantee payouts in 100% and we do our best to provide you with continuous access to first-rate games. It’s worth noticing how we keep access to <best Union name> for many months without so many pauses as before. This is all thanks to <one of our owners> and his continued efforts to maintain spare ways of access (through other clubs) in case the current Club denies access at <best Union name>’s request."


We are working hard to guarantee the constant access to the clubs, we have hard vouches tied to every access we use and we do not offer access to these games to anyone outside the PokerNinjas stable. The price we pay is less rakeback and sometimes actions.

If we ever allowed some Affiliate Players to play in these games, our traffic would be banned within a week or so. We have to be careful with our own traffic.

The only way we make money is to have our Group profitable and have a share in our player's winnings. We do not earn a cent from the rakeback deals. Please check this graph from the last year, available on our template site http://poker-ninjas.intkom.eu/ (final site should be ready in September under the www.pokerninjas.org address).

Also, currently we are not recruiting till September, because the traffic during the vacation time went down and we do not want to dilute traffic with too many strong players. Would a rakeback-based business model do this? Probably not.

Regards,

B.

So 100% of what a union pays you goes back to student as RB and later shared as profits?

Why would a profitable stable choose to only put players in games that are raked between 14-25bb/100 if they only earned their profits and there are multiple options with 0 counter party risk (since you brought up guaranteed payouts) that charge 1/5 of the rake with limited game availability.

As someone who have run a stable based on only student profits, this seems like a ludacris idea because the threshold winrate is insanely high and the worst possible solution and I have spent a lot of time on apps myself, and even in more semi-private one that are raked at the level you are saying, winning affiliates still get paid a very high %.

Obviously there is a threshold to how many players you can add to a pool raked at avg 20bb/100 before players start losing your capital so there needs to be a cap on the amount of players, so whether you accept students or not at one point in time is irrelevant as it only means there is a saturated amount of students at this point.

None of this addresses the question if the stable itself has a stake in the unions.



Sure sounds like a selective stable.

@Rahm93

First things, the rake I pay is 14.34bb/100 over ~80k hands. I believe this is roughly a 60% increase in rake paid vs a site like ignition, and roughly a 30% increase in rake paid vs a site like GGpoker. Even with access to rakeback, I believe that the rake is significantly higher on apps. However, I think @fossilkid93 may be selecting too many short handed or heads up tables, and as a result is paying a gross amount of rake.

As a group I believe we don't have good results heads up, this is likely due to the large amount of rake paid. So only heads up to start games, and try to not play for too long.

Therefore, this statement is exaggeratory. I never said I was paying anywhere near 25bb/100.

Good point imo, although the pool of staked players don't pay quite this amount of rake afaik.

For the same reason you just mentioned, by definition this stable is allowed to be selective. Because at some point there will be a saturated amount of students, the stable is incentivized to fill up with players that will win the maximum. I have received a surprising number of DMs from this thread, requesting to be put through the selection process. I believe there is no shortage of poker players looking for a stake.

Yes I agree, which is why the rake numbers increasing in your posts up to 25bb/100 is a little off. I don't have any speculations on how much rake goes back to the stable.

The napkin math is ok, but I don't think it's reasonable to generalize from all of those assumptions and say they are making 8.4bb/100 if I break even. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't idk.

For me, as long as there is incentive to coach me well and I am improving, I am happy. I don't intend on staying with this stable forever, eventually I will go out on my own. With that being said, as I mentioned earlier, I have been improving at a rate that far outpaces what I would have improved with had I not joined the stable.

My goal is to improve and learn so that when I go out on my own I can grind up to high stakes and crush the games. And make some money while I do that

Their incentive as a business is to operate profitably.

These are not conflicting, given my goals and their business model.

There may be tons of similarities with how you described it, and there may be few similarities, I really don't know. But even on the more extreme ends, I still believe myself to be benefiting from this deal.

I am looking long term. Yes I could leave and pay less rake, and take 100% of my profits. But if I want to be playing 10/20 or higher in a couple years, why not try to get there as soon as possible?

Fair enough, my critisism was never aimed towards the students. I have no idea what the coaching looks like and it might be the best strategy for low stakes players to progress even with the steep price to pay.

I know how the business model works and believe it is important for people signing up to give a large chunk of their earnings over a long period of time to understand it as well as stables are not transparent.

No matter the games, 14bb/100 is a huge mountain to overcome so if any other people find themselves in a similar situation and struggling to make a profit or move forward, they may not only have themselves to blame.

Played this hand yesterday



Standard hand, but happy that I played it correctly according to PLO trainer (donk 50% not 40%, then 66% turn not 100%). Glad that I'm starting to understand ranges and the game enough that donking here is natural, and xf river to 40% is very natural as well.

Had a disaster session heads up.

Idk why I was playing, was paying 30bb rake. Opponent was a big fish but obviously doesn't matter at that point. Basically battled him for ~3 hours, and was down $300 roughly. Ran bad in some big pots. Some other guy joined, doubled up off of him and left right away.

So I stack the fish, then he sits out for 30 minutes to get more money on account.

Then he comes back, and has an absurd run going from 300 to 600 to 1200. Then I get tilted and start 4betting hands that aren't a 4bet like AQ97ss, and continued to run bad.

Ended up down 2.4k, or 4 buy ins.

I was tilted because I was thinking about how much rake I'm paying (have paid 24k in rake over 85k hands). And then losing to some fish just reminded me sometimes the rake is too high and I went on disaster tilt.

Paid $500 in rake heads up over 400 hands. Absolutely ridiculous. I only have myself to blame, I know that the heads up rake is absurd, and never play heads up because of it.

Idk bad days happen, so I'm not too upset. But playing badly in a game I shouldn't even be playing is tilting.

Rake is an big issue for me to. I am loosing player, without rake break even. Dunno how to beat the big rake on the tables. I am sure your winrate is lower than the rake payed.
Obviously you have to pay like 50% for CFP coaching.

Yes, wr is lower than the rake paid by a gross margin I've been going through my stats idk. Beating pool for 14+25 just seems so insurmountable. Open to it being possible, but I don't see it tbh. Yes this pool has bad players, but it's not like the stable has a monopoly on regs. Plenty of tables are 5-6 regs and not worth playing.

Dunno what you expect. The Average pro is a winning player thats 1% of the playing pool max and there are a ton of regs loosing with rakeback the rest is just break even with rake bake and their low expenses living a low life. Even the top pros made their money and dont make millions anymore. I am shocked to see you having such good results and moving up and down all the time. Allmost all just lose. You have to be good naturally so coaching etc. is just a small extra.

26bb is insane, then again had no idea reg tables were 14bb/100 either, sheeesh.

Do you not track your results? I’m curious bc I have u tagged as reg. Might explain why sometimes the table has a bunch of regs paying 14bb/100 each 😕

I do, use ahc w drivehud 2. Just never did the math bc it didn’t matter to me bc I get good rb and i always win ��

Seriously though, pretty sure the major unions like Diamond used to rake less if I’m not mistaken. 26bb is crazier lmao. Gl for this month knox.

Thanks! And yeah, 26bb makes it a daunting prospect to battle medium size fish heads up.

Broke even in August roughly, low volume and poor execution.

For September I have some goals to focus on with my biggest poker weakness, which atm is soft skills

-Proper and consistent sleep schedule (Has to be 7am wakeup because tournament starts often at 7am for mtg, another game that I play.)

-Pick up standing desk to work from (posture has been worse and I don't like sitting)

-Once sleep schedule is under control, back to gym in morning (lost basically all gains ...)

-Once sleep schedule is under control, make sure to eat breakfast in morning

-Scheduled breaks during session, maximum focus (no social media, anything that might distract me)

-No social media while eating, no social media 1h after wakeup

A lot of goals, but I think as long as I remember to implement them, I should do well.

Excited to battle cash, and some of the WCOOP schedule!

Update:

As of today, cooperation is paused between me and Poker Ninja's . Essentially too much time allocated for school, just very difficult to balance both.

"it’s really hard to play and study poker on high level and learn and pass your exams at the same time. It is just not worth it – for you and for us."

-head coach

He also said there is a place waiting for me if I finish school and want to commit to the stable for at least a year

My thoughts are kind of excited, kind of scared!

I'm happy to attempt things on my own again, have learned a lot of new tricks and see the game completely differently now than I did before joining the stable.

Overall experience with pokerninjas has been positive!

So, what is the plan now?

Well now that I don't have a fallback financially, my primary goal is no longer to maximize hourly. It's to minimize risk of ruin. Before, I could take shots in some $530 tournament and some $1k live cash game because if I lost too much, it didn't matter I could grind money for the month with the stable. Now, I need to be much more conservative and protect my bankroll, which is abt 15k once I get everything sorted.

Plan of action is to shop around online for some sites to play. Potentially I will start at .5/1 on GGpoker (the rake at .5/1 is actually quite competitive, however I would not play higher stakes there). Potentially also playing 1/2 on a site like Partypoker. I will continue to take shots at large field tournaments online, with a maximum BI of $200.

My primary concern is tilt. If I go tilt, I go busto. Will look into resources on managing tilt, and put some safety measures into place for myself.

In addition, I probably will pick up some PLO web trainer, Vision, whatever. Just something to study using.

I believe I can play poker at a high level, even while I am attending school. Time to see if I really can!

Did a bit of research, decided I'm going to tentatively settle on partypoker for now.

Bit of a tangent, but the GGpoker shortbuy rules seem awful for the game to me. Because high rake, playing people with 7bb stack idk it doesn't feel good.

Partypoker has nice rakeback, poor traffic, and soft pools as far as I can tell at first.

To start, I'm going to be battling it out in the PLO25z pool. Much lower than I would like to play, but I want to get everything set up, get my soft skills in order, get back to gym etc. Before exposing myself to potential stress.

Focus for this month is high winrate in pool, and executing effectively!

You’ll be fine dude, I got off stake earlier this year as well. Also, your early 20’s + college life is priceless, poker will always be there. GL, prob should grind some on apps as well if you want to boost BR asap.

Thanks! And yeah, I don't want to miss my 20s .

Have played roughly ~1k hands on party 25z so far, pool is pretty bad, fish generally are more aggressive than on apps, so just calibrating a little bit rn . Will likely start at 1/2 roughly halfway through this month. Just want to run through the 25z pool a little bit, and the .5/1 pool (.25/.50 doesn't seem to run much) while I get used to playing on my own money again.

Going through the PLO mastermind 10 week transformation program rn, want to get my soft skills totally set up. Sleep schedule is mostly fixed, waking up at 7am. But have felt very tired last couple days, going to give myself 8.5h of sleep instead of 7.5-8. Gym and breakfast are next on the list to fix!

Will likely mean that I ignore live games for the foreseeable future. Which is ok in my opinion there isn't much point to playing live games until you are playing 10/20 or higher... Because online really isn't that hard if you study and execute well imo... But at those higher stakes online gets really hard live still pretty easy etc.

Good of you to focus on this. Soft skills/mental game are the most important things for proper execution and tilt-free play. I have been totally consistent with my pre-session routine lately (the things you mention - sleep exercise eating) and it’s paid off.

Slowly implementing the lifestyle skills / soft skill / whatever. First day back at the gym was today, going Mon - Wed - Fri

Gonna move to .25/.50 now, the 25z pool has been very good to me . Will play some 25z for now and mix stakes, but soon will be playing only reg tables.

Honestly with the supposed state of online poker these days, I am very surprised to see some fundamental preflop mistakes happening vs regs at 25z. 4bet AAT4ss 300bb deep OOP is not a good play.

Focus for the rest of the month is as dumbo said, sleep exercise and eating . Also, I am working on how to optimize focus and healthy execution at the tables. Right now I have the windows night light feature on to reduce strain on my eyes. Also shopping around for a standing desk. 1.5h sessions seem to be ideal for me, can play longer if there is a whale or smt idk.

Plan to be taking shots at 5/10 by the end of next month. Just have to play well at 200z and 500 reg tables . And have my life skills improved!

Good call on sticking with school. for 99.9% of people it's the right move, and that's definitely not a bad thing.

It's not easy, but if you practice really good time management and cut out the things that aren't serving you or your goal, like social media, you can find the time in a day to become the crusher. even while going to school.

Yeah, I'm working on cutting out things that aren't serving my goal for sure! The biggest time saver so far has been cutting out alcohol and weed (never smoked just some edibles but I get too lazy and fkd up high), and making sure I am in bed by 10:30 asleep by ~11. Have been saying no to a lot of group drinking hang out type activities, and it saves time and keeps me functioning the next day! Not to say I am shirking social interaction, just specifically the late night drinking I'm cutting out. Mainly spending social time with GF and close friends.

Bit of an update, just gradually increasing the stakes rn. Playing .5/1 reg tables atm, still feeling extremely comfortable. Going to start playing some 200z most likely, and settle in there for a little bit before moving to 2.5/5.

Going to still focus on the 10 week transformation, and just try to implement the stuff they recommend.

As far as technical study goes, I'm a little bit lost as to how to proceed. Trainer or Vision would be nice for a little bit of postflop and preflop, but I am not making very many large preflop mistakes anymore. My strategy these days is to apply heuristics to identify hands that are probably okay to do some action with, and then calibrate based on pool/player. Instead of what I did a couple months ago, which was try to identify break even points for different hand classes, and then try to practice and memorize what the play is in each spot. Basically I'm not concerned with playing "correctly", just want to not punt or be horribly unbalanced. And then let my exploits generate profit.

IDK how these mega crushers in PLO are studying and improving. I want to do what they do, if it's just grinding vision or PLO trainer then fk it I'll do that. But I doubt it. Feels like people run stuff in monker so I should prolly learn how to use it properly :/. But I'm also afraid of running low quality sims somehow and ending up with misleading outputs.

Will post a 10k hand graph soon!