Quote:
Originally Posted by otatop
I wonder how much of their profit comes from micros, or the nanos (50NL and down). Obviously the pot sizes won't be nearly as big as higher stakes, but there have to be more games running and more flops taken.
An interesting question, but ultimately, profits for a poker room are measured in cash, but profits for a poker player are measured in bb/100. If players aren't putting in winning weeks or months because of the rake, they'll likely quit and give up. The rate at which the micros are raked feels a lot to me like picking a fruit before it's ripe or chopping down a tree when it's still a sapling.
I know more than a few guys that heard I played poker for a living, deposited $200, lost it, and didn't come back.
With less rake, that still happens,
but it happens to fewer players, and it happens more slowly. That means more players can move up, and more players turn poker into a serious hobby instead of a weekend one-off, and that's good for players and for the poker room.
Finally, there's still a lot of mystique around grinding, beating a limit, moving up a limit, grinding and beating that limit, moving up again, and so on. It feels natural. With the rake as it is, that just can't happen for many people.
When I first started taking shortstacking seriously, I played NL50. I beat the game modestly and moved up to NL100. I got hammered. I couldn't figure it out, playing against many of the same regs, but I took my lumps and moved back down.
I repeated that process three or four more times, until I was fed up. I thought, "I'm going to find guys who are winning, study them, and figure out how to beat this game." Then I hit a wall: I couldn't find any winners.
At the end of my rope, I got some coaching, and one of the best pieces of advice he gave me was, "save up money at your real job until you can start playing NL400." I did, and the results shocked me: because of the reduced effective rake, I was back to being a winning player almost instantly.
It felt totally wrong, and I was certainly the worst reg at any given table at the time, but I was still winning - something I couldn't manage two stakes below because of the rake.
When I remember that, I can't help but wonder how many guys out there aren't getting the chance to be "the worst reg at the table" in the mid stakes, because they can beat all the other players at the current stakes.... but can't beat the rake.