This is unfortunate. Hopefully they raise max buyin too. $800-1000 would be nice. A BBJ plus rake takes too much off table. I may reconsider this opinion if they switch to three BBJs of stud, limit, and NL & PL. Far too often the 4/8 limit wins the hundreds of thousands created by the 1/2nl.

As an example, there are currently 13 1/2nl tables playing. An average of 30 hands an hour per table means $390 per hour is leaving the game for the BBJ. Ridiculous the BBJ is effectively stacking a max buyin amount every hour.

(Yes I realize there are not 13 games running 24/7, but put it in perspective there is currently ONE 4/8 table running.)

i would think that the influx of 1/2 players and players in general probably more than makes up for the rake for a winning player. then again i'm not there grinding every day but i'm hopeful that it's a good thing.

It certainly does.

All your gonna hear from these nit regs is "zomg 8k a year, this is poker not the lottery, I hate it".

What they don't realize is this helps them a ton because it brings clueless jackpot fish in the games (the only type of player dumb enough to pay these clowns off).

The 2/5 game took a hit when the BBJ came into play. No one can deny that. This should reset things. I had a talk with a floor about how the game would get added into the BBJ mix. An idea they were considering is to have 2/5 contribute to the bext BBJ and have no chance of hitting it until the current one hits. Have fun contributing to that rake.

i am not sure about that i think in order of win frequency its 1-2 by a large margin 2-4 then 4-8

ps 2-4 won the last one

Wowwww, awesome. Should bring more 1/2ers trying to take a shot into the game. Good.

Will also stop the 1/2 games from getting flooded with 2/5 and 5/10 players when the BBJ gets high.

Anyone have any experience with the David Burke's Tuesday Prime Rib Special? Probably gonna give it a shot. Despite having had bad experiences at Foxwood's restaurants doing specials like this in the past (Cedar's prime rib special was a joke).

The burgers on the bar menu of High Rollers are pretty good.

Boy, do I disagree. I really do hope you're right, but I sincerely doubt it.
(Guess this makes me a nit reg and a clown.... )

In gross terms, FW is currently raking roughly $3-3.5M/year for HE BBJ (you can estimate this from how much the JP goes up each day). FW is taking out 5% for "Admin.", and returning (eventually) the other 95% to the players, minus about 25-30% in taxes (depending on your state, income bracket, etc.). So FW + IRS are netting out roughly $1M /year from the poker players here, and the whole thing is roughly 30% -EV for the player pool as a whole. By itself, this is certainly not a good thing.
I'm estimating that the 2/5 BBJ rake will be roughly 25% of the current 1/2 + LHE BBJ rake, or an additional $2-3,000/day on average, adding roughly 25% to the numbers above. Annual net loss to player pool increases by roughly $200-300,000.
FW, of course, will make the extra 5% Admin on the additional BBJ rake from 2/5. I'm guessing this will be about $40-60,000 additional income/year from the 2/5 players to the casino itself.
Adding the BBJ to 2/5 can only be good if it really does bring in lots of weaker players to 2/5 (or if you hit it)... It will certainly do this to some extent, but (IMO) not nearly enough to offset $3-4/hour/player (more if you're a winning player) in extra rake.

Winning players don't necessarily win
more pots than losing players. As it pertains to live poker IDE actually argue its the opposite. Losing/weaker players win more pots because they have a tendency to play more hands and in turn, pay more rake.

Yes, Foxwoods makes more money and in a vacuum it is -EV to the player pool.

It becomes +EV when your presented with more game selection of softer games which will happen. If Foxwoods doesn't have 10 2/5 games the first week don't assume I'm wrong. It will be a slow transition into a healthier 2/5 player pool once people figure it out and decide they can take shots. Don't forget Foxwoods 2/5 is capped at 500 so it's really not all that much bigger then 1/2. Think about all the "tourists" who would moveto 2/5 after winning a bunch in 1/2 and decide not to because there scared the JP is going to hit at their table.

If you take borgata for example, in my experiences down there their number of 2/5 games is sometimes equal to the number of 1/2 games. This wouldn't be the case if their 2/5 didn't have a BBJ dollar.

You need to not think of this in a vacuum and think of the long term positive effects that far outweigh the short term -EV dollar.

Oh yeah, and you could actually hit it too.

Why are the 1/2 regs so frigging miserable? I played for 2 hours Friday night. Saw 3 fights between regs and fish. Exchanged words with a few regs that cried after losing a pot. If I was a recreational player looking to just have fun I would never feel good dropping a few buyins to these people. Made me feel good pulling a few buyins and leaving.

No, this is perhaps so in limit, but in NL it's the opposite. Winning NL players pay much more rake than losers. It's not so much the number of pots won, but that winning players in NL tend to stack losing players. Those stacks are smaller by the rake which the losing players have already paid on the pots they've already won.
Think of it this way: if you sit down at the table with $500, and a losing player does the same, and two hours later he loses all his money to you and you both walk away, who actually paid the rake?
As far as BBJ is concerned, you are of course entitled to your opinion, and I do hope you're correct (but I doubt it)...

last night the 1-2 table i was at was great lots of banter
table rounds of straddles
just a great game
i play mostly limit but my sample size is that 1-2 is as you describe it but what a great table last night
defines poker as a social game good times

if you want to get really crazy on the tax analysis
add to the calculation that most of us are playing with after tax dollars
the net revenue we recieve is taxed raked taxed again
financial rape

yeah there is a great degree of variance in terms of the players personalities at any game really, if your fellow players are getting on your nerves you have the option of switching tables, or putting in some headphones or just ignoring them if the game is good.

Is that how you calculated 3$/4$ an hour?

I get what your saying, since losing players lose and winning players win that only winners pay rake.

My argument is that the overall the health of the games and quality of players brought into the game > the -.30 percent (that you calculated)... Which makes the BBJ +ev for 2/5 guys.

If we're getting back .7 on every BBJ we pay (long term) then you don't think our hourly will increase by a dollar or 2 to offset what we lose in EV?

Can't say for sure. I just asked in the Borgata thread and their manager said 2/5 was always part of the BBJ. So we don't know what it would be like there if 1/2 were part of it but not 2/5, there's no historical data to look at.

We have two casinos that get relatively the same amount of action. Infact almost every time I check bravo Foxwoods has MORE games than borgata. That might be due to stud an stuff that's irrelevant to this though.

Look at our 2/5 and their 2/5, same structure, casino gets similar action, and theirs is well ahead. I think the BBJ influences it this way.

Think like a fishy guy seeing Foxwoods for the first time not like a 2p2 poster.

Which part is not true.

I know that at Foxwoods they go back to last action no matter the street. The Fat guy calls it everytime it happens and forces us to call the floor. Even if he has the nuts. He wants to see what the bettor was betting.

The second part about it going from small blind around to button most places if there is no action on the final street. That's the way I was taught when I dealt and can refer you to the book "Official Rules of Poker" by Kelli Mix. Part of Robert's Rules of Poker Section 3.6: The showdown. #8 (page 52)

"If everyone checks (or is all in) on the final betting round, the player who acted first is the first to show the hand"

In Holdem if the river goes check check the order of who shows is relative to the button, not previous streets.

2/5 being included in the BBJ will probably hurt the winrates of people like me who generally only play on weekends and are fairly table-selecty, but it should significantly boost the winrates of grinders who are consistently there on weekdays.

Besides, $5 rake isn't really that bad for live 2/5, it never really made sense for 2/5 rake to be a dollar less than 1/2 anyway. Maybe a year or two ago when the 2/5 games were a lot healthier I'd be more up in arms about this, but short of the economy drastically improving this is probably the best way to inject some life into the games which have definitely been getting nittier as of late.

Not at Foxwoods, at least not at plo

I have about 3 hrs in the PLO game.

I have obviously been referring to Holdem