Quote:
Originally Posted by PKRReborn
The Grovsner Victoria casino in London is 10% Rake at the £1-£1 game, with a max of £5. That's pretty high. Their £1-£2 game is 5% rake with a max of £10. Out of interest which do you guys think would be better to play on if you had £200?
Yeah, pretty standard for London. The Fox used to rake the £1/1 game at 10% capped at £7.
Regarding your question of which is better, 10% max £5 or 5% maxed at £10, do the math:
The 1/1 game will be fully raked at 10% for every single pot up to £50. And given that most 1/1 games in London will have half the table populated by degenerate short-stacks sitting there with £25 trying to double up, you're not in enough big pots to take advantage of the lower cap.
Let's look at an example: You raise to £6, two callers, blinds fold, the pot is £20 on the flop. You c-bet to £15, one caller; on the turn pot is £50, goes check/check on river and you're good. So the final pot was £50. Of that, £21 was your own money, so you really only 'won' £29. Over 17% of your winnings disappeared with the £5 rake; worse if they take another £1 for any rake race/BBJ etc, in which case now it's a 20% tax. Unless the 1/1 game is juicy and the entire table is really deep, it's pretty much unbeatable.
For the same £5 rake, the 1/2 game raked at 5% pot would have to be £100. Let's double our scenario from above: Raise to £12, two callers, blinds fold, pot is £39. You c-bet £30 on the turn, one caller, pot is £99, check/check river and you're good. Of the £99, you put in £42, so you won £57, so now less than 9% of your winnings goes to rake (10% for the extra £1 for BBJ etc). And to hit the £10 cap in 1/2, you'd have to be in a £200 pot. If you were heads-up, you contributed £100, so you'd 'win' 100. Again, about 10%, which is still about the same as the effective hit if you were in a 1/1 game with a £100 pot.
The 1/2 hit on your win rate is effectively half the hit at the 1/1 game. Basically you should never play 1/1 if a 1/2 is going.
The cap is meaningless; ignore it - the lower cap is to trick the clueless into paying more rake at 1/1. The only reason the cap would come in to play is if both games played huge. Obviously if the 1/1 had the entire table playing 300bb deep and most pots were over £100, then yes - you want the lower cap. But that's not how the games play. The 1/1 games tend to play very short, not many people deep, and not enough big pots to take advantage of the lower cap. Instead, you're paying the full 10% rake almost every pot.
Play £1/2. At least here in London the games don't play -that- differently.
Should also add: The Fox was a pleasant place to play but I don't think I've ever seen a worse-run operation in any field. No surprise that they went
out of business today.