If I understand the example hand, both players put more money into the 2nd hand than the first. In the second hand one of them won more money than in the first. One of them lost more. A higher rake was paid to the site. What was your point again?

I'm not sure if I support this or not but in any case...

This is just poorly worded. It doesn't raise the rake. All it does is increase the bet sizing so that pots are larger and therefore the rake is taken faster in a rake/hand measurement while your winrate increases in bb/hand. It's exactly the same as making all of your bets 7% larger.

Look again at the OPs example:

Hand 1:
Total rake = 1.65 + 0.57 + 0.3 = $2.52
Final pot size = $47.94
2.52/(2.52+47.94) = 5% rake
^ Note if you actually add up the bets in the HH they equal $50.46, $2.52 of which is raked away during the hand.

Hand 2:
Total rake = 54 * 0.05 = $2.70
Final pot size = 54 - 2.7 = $51.30
2.70/54.00 = 5% rake
^ In this case the site is simply waiting until the end of the hand to take their 5%.

You're just making the site generate rake 7% faster, not 7% more while widening the gap between your winrate and losing players' loss rates by playing larger pots.

Before the rest of the screaming commences, does the site take 100% more on $10 vs $5 pots or do they just take their 5% 100% faster? Again, no one is getting their rake increased here.

How is it bad if the average potsize goes up a bit??
Compare it to this : CAP NL is hard (or impossible) to beat because of rake.
If they would increase the Cap wouldnt that make the game easier to beat?

rake in bb/100 would go up but the game would be bigger so : total money wagered/$in rake taken , would go down ?

what JH1 said

Someone needs to analyze this, it is at least worth some kind of discussion. Who is our Rake guru at this point?

On the surface it seems like a good idea, but I'd need some serious numbers crunched. Sure the rake is higher in pots, but we win more. I'm ok with higher rake if I took more money, but I wonder what the proportional relationship is.

This all day long. There's no "rake increase" here.

I mean, say there was a $10 pot, on the river, and you have the nuts. You have three options.

Check behind. Win $10, and pay .50 in rake.

Bet $10. Win a $30 pot, pay $1.50 in rake.

Bet $100. Win a $210 pot, pay $3.00 in rake.


Clearly the first option is best, because it means you pay less rake, right?

All this question really is is: Do you want your pots raked street by street (smaller pots) or raked at the end? (bigger pots).

I prefer my pots raked at the end, because I like winning bigger pots.

I really dont even want to post in this thread as it will bump it and Id rather just see it die. Just wondering why on earth you would encourage the sites to rake more when the games in general are worse than ever?

There is no increase in the % of rake taken. Read JH1's post, and starvingwriter82's post:

In each of the first two cases, the rake paid is exactly 5%. Just because in case two 3 times as many rake is being paid, does NOT mean that the rake was taken at a higher rate (the third case is lower only because the rake hit the cap). So whether you earn an extra $10 in a pot, or win $10 in a later hand, the amount of rake paid is identical.

Even though this method may increase the rate at which a losing player loses their money, I don't think it will hurt the poker community. After reading the first post, my first thought was "I can win bigger pots? Awesome!" The thought of losing more never once entered my mind, and I would consider myself a semi-regular player (ya ya, I'm a fish, I know). I think a lot of recreational players would think the same way. Even if they lose their deposit slightly quicker, the perceived chance of winning larger will encourage more individuals whom lose their first deposit to make a second.

As pointed out earlier in this thread, if a rec player goes on a heater, they will win more. Because of the larger amount won during the heater, even if they lose it all back to the community, they will be more likely to think that they can win their deposit back, and therefore make a second deposit.

Since when has rec players making more deposits ever hurt the poker community?

If I remember correctly, both PokerStars and other sites used to take out the rake after the pot was won, like in OP's second example?

Then they changed it to the current method a couple years ago

Or am I mistaken?

It doesn't really change the amount of rake taken. The current method just skews the actual pot size by street. I'd rather see the rake taken when the pot is won. It is also good for winning players, because they are involved in bigger pots with better hands than losing players on average, so building up the pot faster and bigger favors them

From a winning players perspective having losing players lose faster is a good thing. Example lets say a losing player pays on avg. of .05cents a hand in rake with a 50 dollar bankroll. If he can survive 500 hands before he goes bust that just means he paid Pokerstars $25 dollars for playing and a player won $25 dollars. If he lasts only 100 hands then Stars makes only $5 dollars and players get $45 dollars. Which would you prefer???

If you are a winning player you want pots bigger on average.
If you are a losing player you'd want the smaller pots to last longer.

If you are pokerstars you want the pots to be smaller so you can take more rake from the losing player before he goes bust.

As a winning player I'd like nothing more than to have all the pots I play doubled.

Many other sites have taken action to prevent winning players from taking depositors money. Some have outright banned them, others have made limits on the amount a winning player can make each week. So far Pokerstars has not publicly announced any of this but all of the changes over the past few months are having the same effect.

^^ well said, Sect7G

It's frustrating that so many people have jumped to conclusions without actually inspecting what this change would do. This obviously is not an intuitive or simple thing or people would have been begging for this for years.

As Sect7g stated the sites have started a little war against winning players. Every change they're enacting is being done to punish and deter winning players. This is one of the few changes that would actually reward winning players. I also think it would be good for losing players since they would be more likely to be able to run up bigger stacks / take shots / etc in the short run, though in the long run their loss rate would increase.

This is finally a change that would benefit winning players that would actually have a very realistic chance of getting implemented since the sites also benefit from it. You cannot dismiss ideas because the site earns more money from them because the truth is we, as winning players, aren't going to get anything without the site getting their cut. They see winning players as a problem, not something to be rewarded.

Well it is quite simple. You generally get the opportunity to wager more money at the same (or better) marginal advantage.

Some of the answers are hilarious.

No if you use the arguments for this you may as well just play at a higher stake if you want to play bigger pots. At a higher stake the overall rake will also be lower as the cap would be reached more often.

I really dont understand why people would want to play bigger pots in marginal spots at small stakes and tne pay rake 7% faster than they would usually. Play higher win bigger pots and pay less overall rake end of discussion.

if a 1ct-2ct player decided to move up to .50-1 and was offered to keep the rake schedule of his former limit should he take that?

The game gets bigger , the rake rules stay the same = Good

This rule change would only be a problem for players that are already underrolled for the lowest limit.

Yes you can do that too, or not. I don't see how that changes anything regarding the OP.

Well the sweet thing is you could just not take advantage of the small extra leverage if you want to by betting what the pot would have been with a per-street rake deduction rather than what the pot actually is.

O wait, you can choose whatever the hell legal bet size you like in NL games anyway. If you want to make your bets smaller to pay less rake then good luck

This thread is hysterical.

Even after it's shown that changing the point when rake is taken out does not increase the rake, people fly off the handle.

Look.... whenever you put money in the pot, you are going to pay rake on it.

To win at poker, you have to put money in the pot. Winning a $500 pot raked at 5% is better than winning a $5 pot raked at 5%. If you don't believe that, the only logical conclusion is that you shouldn't play at all.

People ITT are not using their brains. :-/

Makes me wish the OP could claim the thread title was some kind of sick double reverse level, so I could nominate it for post of the year.

It increases the AMOUNT of rake paid in a single hand surely? No it doesnt increase the percentage paid i agree. Perhaps im missing something.

Yes which is a good thing if you are a winning player.

I am completely against anything that makes droolers lose their money faster than ever. If they don't get any entertainment value out of it they won't be depositing again. How hard is this to understand?

Surely if your a winning player then playing a higher stake is more beneficial. That way you pay LESS overall rake (unless your playing micros in the first place) as the CAP is reached far more often.

[QUOTE=TrickyTree;31320483]Surely if your a winning player then playing a higher stake is more beneficial. That way you pay LESS overall rake (unless your playing micros in the first place) as the CAP is reached far more often

Moving up stakes means better players on avg.

The best way to describe this idea is imagine every pot you played would be a little bigger win or lose. Stars would make money and winning players would make money. So the question is why isn't Stars for this idea?

The explanation we got was about players need transparency about rake charges, but as someone responded the transparency is arguably no better under the current format.

[QUOTE=Sect7G;31320589]

Well i can only guess that Stars dont like the idea of losing players / recreational players losing faster than they already do. Which in many ways i agree with.

[QUOTE=TrickyTree;31320672] Of course they don't!!! And therefore you will play more pots against a recreational player to get his money. More pots = more rake paid by both of you so the amount you actually win is much less.

Imagine a HU game where a recreational and Phil Ivery played with 100 bankrolls each at .50-1.00. There is a chance a strong chance that Phil Ivery would walk away with 95 dollars and Pokerstars 5 dollars.

edit: in response to TrickyTree

Take the same game but have the max pot size being 5 dollars and there is a strong chance that Phil Ivey walks away with 30 dollars and Pokerstars with 70 dollars.

Having fish last longer is not what winning players want. That's what Pokerstars want. It's their job with our rake money to recruit depositing players. And don't get me wrong winning players want the same to... and we've paid our share through the rake we pay.

Despite my recent feelings about Pokerstars I have been in the past one of their biggest supporters. I have encouraged friends and people I've met to give them a shot. So in that regard we should do what we can as players to support the site. But for Stars to take more away from winning players is just wrong imo.

Full disclaimer: I don't even really have a bone in this debate. I do much better playing sats and tourneys but it disturbs me that pokerstars is not willing to share the burden during these economic hard times.

Edit: In responst to TrickyTree

All the winning players would win way more and the whales would lose more. There's no difference between a fish losing 9bb/100 or 10bb/100.

Also, All that matters is profit and not rake paid. I prefer to win a $20 pot and rake 90 cents than to win a $16 pot and rake 72 cents.

Taking the rake at the end of the pot would allow me to build up a pot faster and increase my edge even further. It'd so easier to extract more value if this method were implemented.