I've played high enough at Aria a few times to have time rake in hold 'em and PLO, and in both cases the games were about the same speed as the lower stakes. Not sure if they were faster, but definitely not slower.

High stakes plays faster regardless of the dealer. The players pace the game. That's why they generally pay time.

My experience has also been that generally the higher stake games play faster. Of course, at the Borgata the 5/10+ NLH games also play 9 handed while the 1/2 and the 2/5 games play 10 handed. Usually that is; I believe they're all playing 7 handed right now.

We used to play 11 handed, the drop on rake games was lower and timed games higher. That's what the players WANTED! I guess it depends on whether you're a winning player (and almost everyone thought they were a winning player at those stakes because they were winning at the low stakes while waiting for q seat).

11 handed? Damn what's your UTG range? AA, KK? lol

I never understood why casinos play 10 handed games anyway. If you have 9 ten handed games, you could have 10 nine handed games instead and get more rake.....

A little off topic for this thread, but there are points on both sides of the 'handed' discussion. The main point is that more people 'can' play, which keeps the lists shorter. If it's not a function of having a Dealer (or table) available, there's probably a trend that the busier the room the more likely they play 10-handed.

In my experience there's almost always someone away from the table, if not two .. so how many hands are actually being played 10-handed? And most OMC Regs types get really nervous/grouchy when the table slips to 6-7 handed. GL

11 handed was because we had a limited (always full) amount of tables, and OMCs and losing recs love playing full. Even in 9 handed games have you never seen anyone yelling there's a seat open when there's a list?

Solution = table change + bumhunt. You will beat the rake. I've never been the greatest no limit player but if you sit in a 7 handed game with 6 other rocks you are playing -$10 an hour poker. (Miller) The only way you can beat a bad 1/3 game is if you are an excellent bluffer, but even then your frequency will be so high that you are going to eventually get looked up more.

Idk if anyone has said this yet, but most of the rake gets paid out by the losing players, since they play a ton of hands. You don't actually pay rake unless you win the hand. Also, people play so bad live that rake doesn't make a substantial difference to a good player.

"Most the rake gets paid out by losing players since they play a ton of hands."

and

"You don't actually pay rake unless you in the hand."

Are directly contradictory statements.

The high rakes are beatable because live players are on average so bad, but to say it's not significant is just incorrect. If you're winning $20/hr at 1/2 with a 5$ cap rake and they bump it to $8, the average rake per player per hour goes from $16.67/hr to $26.67/hr....so you lose half of your win rate.

All those numbers are a little lower since not every hand hits max rake, but doesn't change the fact that seemingly insignificant changes to rake have a noticeable impact on win rate.

Show your math, please.

Not really. If you play live a lot you know that these fish go on massive swings. The thing that keeps them staying when they lose 5 buyins is the fact that they sometimes go up 5-6 buyins when they get hot. Most of the losing players are vpiping a lot at low stakes. They win more hands on average, but still end up losing over the term of the night.


Depending on the game, you could have a huge bump in your bb/100 because of how terrible the players are. Players that would get crushed online beat live cash games because of how terrible the player pool is. I mean if a guy is shoving blind every hand are you really going to complain about the rake in that scenario?

All that math amounts to is a base rate fallacy. Because someone's win rate beating live for 10bb/100 is probably much lower than that against any kind of competent player pool. So what seems like a bad deal actually turns out to be a good situation.

I'm not defending the house here, by the way. I'm just pointing out that the situation is not as bad for the winning players as it is for the losing players. The people that probably lose the most in this situation are the barely breakeven players that are losers or the slightly winning players that become breakeven. The crushers in the games are the ones that suffer the least in this situation.

I could definitely be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the biggest winning players end up paying more rake than the losers, definitely see how overall losers dragging a lot of small pots could skew that.

I agree with all your points about the small stakes populations skill level offsetting high rake, and my calculations are definitely not exact. My only point was that it's not correct to say small increases in rake don't substantially impact winning players, unless people's definition of substantial is very different from mine.

That depends on various factors, including how bad the losers are and how the rake is structured.

In a room that charges a flat rake on the flop, you don't want to be in a lot of small pots. In a room that has relatively low percentage but high cap, you don't want to be in too many big all-ins as a slight favorite. If you have 5% rake capped at $25 and get it in for $250 BvB QQ vs. AKs you net a whopping $5 on average. In a room that charges 10% up to $10 you net $14 in the same spot.