regarding PLO being the game of the future for the past 10 years, and speaking mainly from USA view,

1/2 NL Holdem is probably 75% of market share.

Average buying for that is $200. Thus 75% of poker players are comfortable at that buyin level

$200 buyin is too low for even a $1/2 PLO game

If rooms starting spreading .50 / $1 PLO (where a $200 would work) I suspect it would start to take more and more share from NL Holdem as it is pretty addictive game. After playing PLO for a while going back to the two card game seems boring.

Unfortunately hands per hour for PLO is pretty much cut in half vs NLH, so rooms have no motivation at all to promote a game that would reduce their revenue. So all though I think many 1/2 NLH players would start to prefer PLO, they'll never be given the chance.

Another reason casinos are not going to offer a lot of low stakes PLO is this: it's too easy to go broke.

Broke players don't pay rake because they are out of money.

(This is the reason Commerce and others cap the buy-in, so it's harder to use up all your gambling money on one hand.)

^^^ great point

If rooms had absolute choice in what games are spread. We'd all be playing 1/2 Limit Holdem.

If people really want the game they will spread it
Poker rooms would prefer to just spread low stakes limit games but people don't want it so they spread NL

ya there's a fine balance in PLO between gambol/action nature versus sustainability of the structure. too jacked up and too much of the player pool just gets annihilated by variance and don't come back.

that said i still think uncapped is a the best format if there's enough deep pocketed people in the player pool.

i disagree.

ask your local poker room manager to spread .50 / $1 PLO next time you are there and let me know how that goes

If you show up with nine people to play 1/1 plo 90% of rooms will happily open the game provided logistics/gaming regs don't get in the way.

Obv they wont spread a game where they don't have the chips and/or are too small. Also dealer availability can be an issue with PLO

If you make it 1/1 because nobody has chips smaller $1, are willing to pay the same rake as the 1/2 PLO game and they have both open tables and dealers trained to deal PLO, I’d think a lot of smaller rooms would accommodate you.

they'll spread 1/2 if enough people want to play
not sure if they would use half dollars for a game, i know they don't have 50 cent chips

No, the rooms would prefer fixed limit holdem. It plays much faster, leading to more rake coming in, and players are less likely to go broke.

Thats the problem. 1/2 PLO plays too big for VAST majority of cash game players (USA view. I cant speak for other parts of world)

I would suspect a 1/2PLO would rake about same as 1/2NLH. HPH would go way down, but avg rake per pot would go way up. So like you said, If there were demand rooms might spread . but see 8o8 comment above about wiping out players too quickly.

Smaller room that is struggling to keep their 1/2 NLH games going would mess up their ecosystem by spreading 1/1 PLO. A point made by 8o8 above.

I'm not sure this is true. Maybe some folks that work in rooms can chime in. Keep in mind since Hands per hour is ~cut in half for PLO vs NLH, a 1/1 PLO game would I think only rake about half of what a 1/2NLH would rake.

1/2 NLH tables are only marginally profitable. I'd suspect a room would lose money dealing 1/1 PLO.

yes. Fixed Limit is what I meant when I typed 1/2 Limit Holdem

hands per hour are not cut in half in plo.
you get about 2/3rds the amount of hands on average in plo.

they can solve the rake problem of getting less hands by charging time.

all games should be time games anyway.

good point . I agree that timed rake would solve issue.

So... a 1/1 PLO Game could be spread with a time rake of say $15 / hour so that it's same revenue for house compared to 1/2NLH.

Would $100/$300 min/max buyin work for a 1/1 PLO Game?



P.S. how do you know HPH PLO vs NLH? Avg NLH is ~35 HPH. 25 HPH for PLO seems high. I always thought it was around 18 (but might be thinking about split pot games)

The house does not want PLO if they can have holdem instead.

The house does not want NL holdem if they can have fixed limit holdem instead.

The house does not want a time game if they can have a raked game instead.

The End.

obviously. but if they only spread what was optimum for them we wouldn't have rooms full of nl.

the house does not want to have a poker room or even table games and rather have everyone play slots instead, so what house wants is basically irrelevant

the fact of the matter is - if the house wants to make money, they will spread the games that people want to play

gl opening and keeping 10 $2/$4 limit tables full

I believe everyone ITT is basically saying the same thing.

they have been saying this for 10+ years that poker is dying or drying up.

The fact of the mater is people like to play poker - there will always be poker games it's just the type of popular game might change.

In my area a huge boom of 5 card PLO is happening and tons of $$$ is being thrown in the games. If you want to flourish in poker - you have to travel to areas of the world that are wealthy. People with expendable income like to gamble. It's fun and gets people to interact. If anything is killing the game of poker it's these head phone wearing robot bum hunters that don't talk at the table and socially awkward.

The fun players just tighten up or go play table games.

only the donks and degens prefer to play time, or the people too stupid to know any better. the nit grinder whose making his living at the game (which u should be if u are aware of the existence of this forum) prefers a rake, since on average, a tight aggressive player wins far fewer hands per hour than a guy who plays extremely loose passive til the river every single hand. so in a timed game, he pays the same rake as everyone else. and in a raked game he pays about 3% of the rake while everyone else at the table pays 15% of the rake each.

often in a time game, u will 1 pot every 2 hours and are out $20-30 in rake for every pot u win at a rate of 1 pot every 2 hours. u only need to win 1 every 2 hours to make a profit if u dont spazz out in the meantime.

If nit grinders are the biggest winners in the games you play, you might want to find different games instead of a different rake structure.

A long long time ago, in a very different poker universe, being a nit massgrinder was a very successful approach in online poker because of exponentially growing rake back. In live poker, being a nit is good for people without any postflop skill but certainly not “what you should be”.

I'm sure the DNeg 'fans' here are already aware, but DBrunson and he are Twittering back and forth about how casinos are providing for 'private' games lately (probably at Aria) and how Pros are sometimes being shut out of these games at the request of the 'host'. Thus hurting the 'we put in so many hours' Pro regs from making their daily $$.

I am split on this ... I think it's 'fine' for a room to lock in a starting lineup, even blocking the list for a period of time so that a game that wouldn't otherwise run can have a table. But after X minutes or the table gets short, then that game should be open to anyone who wants on the list. Fine line for sure, but plenty of rooms are doing just fine with these scenarios. GL

Two issues that will limit poker's growth and profitability in the coming years:

1. Low stakes games are being eaten away by rake and inflation, and casinos are very hesistant to raise the stakes of the lowest games because people are used to them. LA has had poker for decades but there are still plenty of 2/4-4/8 Limit and $40/$60/$100 buyin no limit games raked at $6-7 per hand. $5+2 is slowly becoming the new standard rake, especially in the NE (outside Atlantic City), but $1/2 $300 buyin is still the standard low stakes no limit game. Look at the discussion in the Turning Stone thread about how many regs want to keep the game at $1-2 $200 even with a $7 rake rather than going to a $300 buyin, much less 1/3 500. Even if pros are playing at higher stakes, most players get their start at low stakes, and if casual or semi pro (winning players with well paying regular jobs) aren't winning as much at low stakes, they are less likely to try to move up to the stakes that can support pros.

2. Poker has expanded to a lot of new parts of the US in the last 15 years as new casinos have opened, opening up new markets with a lot of disposable income, but those areas will only be prime areas for a couple years. Maryland's big casinos opened in 2014-2015. New card clubs in Texas are opening up that market. That leaves only a few big cities in the Southeast (Atlanta and Charlotte come to mind) without a nearby casino/poker room. There just won't be lucrative new markets to open up at some point.

Good points above, but you also need to look at your player base as well. In casinos where larger games run 'regularly' it's OK to keep the table stakes lower so that the smaller Players can get into a game 'on the cheap'. But at casinos/rooms where higher stakes only run at peak times the room needs to adjust for everyone. The Midwest has casinos where 1/2 is 50-400 .. we also have them where it's 40-200 in the busier markets where 2-3 2/5 tables are likely to pop up daily. Yes there is an intimidation factor when an $80 Player sits down to a $400 stack, but they are still only risking their stack.

The rooms are going to 5/2 rake and counting on maintained or increased volume from the the promos to operate the room. Which is smart business .. until all the 'me too' rooms are doing the same and traffic settles down.

Again, market knowledge ... I was amazed when I stopped at The Rivers (Pittsburgh) on a Saturday night and found eleven 1/3 tables going with no higher stakes games running, only a list of 5 for 5/10. After playing I understood why ... why would any 'Pro' or good reg want to start a higher stake game with all the action that was found at these 'low' stakes tables that had at least two stacks of over $1k at them?

It's hard to tell if poker is shrinking when (as stated above) it is just getting spread out. Players don't have to travel as much to get into a game. But is that good for poker? I don't think so as much ... Players are just pushing chips back and forth locally (as the rake is being taken) when they may have traveled to play bigger against unknown opponents.

There is no question that tournaments are booming. You can still (have to?) play a nitty style and take advantage of mistakes and Players who may not understand how to play in certain spots, thus more mistakes. One of the players I follow is Blake Bohn, he plays from $1100-$5k multi-day tournaments on multiple tours (MSPT, WPT, WSOP) and yet I've never seen or heard of him playing in a cash game. And I've actually seen a decrease in 'on site' cash game play during these events.

Not sure I have a point here, just comments ...

I think it's safe to say that poker is not receding by any means, it's just where and how to put your efforts to get what you want out of the game .. and each market may have it's own version of how to get there. Adjust your game accordingly. GL

The stakes stay that low because the vast majority of “fun” players want to have them that low. They care about coming home down max $200 or $400, not about a couple more dollars in rake paid. If they could play for $0.5/$1 blinds with the same rake, a lot of players would prefer that.

There are two simple reasons for that. One, especially younger players prefer to spend their money on other things than gambling. Two, people on the internet play for $0.01/0.02 so nobody feels like poker needs to be played for large amounts of money anymore. That feeling translates to live poker.