If you count people that inactive/just browse, etc. I'd agree. You can take a look at this poll I created shortly after I made that post, because I was genuinely curious.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/6...x-nlh-1812503/

Hi Mason,
As already pointed out you are changing my statement by adding caveats that I did not suggest.

But at the same time you seem to be admitting my original hypothesis was somewhat correct.

I know you mentioned in a previous post you thought at least 70% of the people seated in a poker room were winners.

That has NOT been my experience but I have never lived in Vegas so maybe the games are tougher there with many more regular grinders.

I will bend to your suggestion and still disagree somewhat.

You mentioned seated players in a poker room.

I would still say that IMHO/experience the vast majority of seated players in these games (1-2 to 1-3) cannot beat the rake and tips.
A big difference from the 30% non-winners you suggest.

D.

Let me approach this a little differently. One of the reasons that poker rooms are successful is that they develop a core of regular players, the majority of whom are winners, who help to start games and keep games going. In return, it’s important that poker room management do those things which help to assure that the games are good and the poker room is well run. (See my book Cardrooms: Everything Bad and How to Make Them Better for more discussion.)

If poker room managers think that only 5 percent (or less) actually win, why would they make any effort to do those things necessary to assure the games are good and the room is well run since almost all of their current regular customers will be gone in the near future. That’s why this 5 percent figure is bad and poorly represents what actually happens in a poker room, and most of all contributes to terribly run poker rooms of which there are currently far too many.

Mason

I think this is a very isolated view for the vegas/American scene most of the world has insane rake where I doubt more then 5-10% win casinos are scummy and dont care about poker and want that floor room for slots. This is more what happens in the rest of the common wealth/western world as casinos have very limited floor space per person

Do you play poker in places where the rake is so high you can’t win?

Mason

Yes when im in the waiting list for higher games that are beatable sometimes ill dick around in the 1/2 with unbeatable rake because im stuck in a casino. Partly because its a 3 hour drive away and ive only got to play live like 4 or 5 times in my life because im in canada and theres only like 10 casinos in the second biggest country in the world in size. im probably break even at it

You may want to look at my book Cardrooms: Everything Bad and How to Make Them Better. There is much discussion in there of the damage that high rake can cause to both the players and the poker room. (There was also a thread where I posted the complete book if you want to find it.)

Mason

well when they are government regulated and controlled by a monopoly you dont really get a say. card rooms are not even a thing

I’m somewhere between Robbi and Garrett.

Hi Mason


I think you are giving Poker room management way too much credit.

Virtually every room has a bad beat jackpot drop and it ends up being paid back to a minuscule percentage of the player pool.
If its a large sum it probably never makes its way back into the ecosystem.
(not including the unfavorable US gambling tax laws with large wins)

One thing you seem to have glossed over, that is super important at the 1-2 and 1-3 level.
Rake.
Ever been on a cruise ship? Virtually every cruise ship that has Texas holdem has an unbeatable rake.
(outside of special poker cruises)
Nobody is beating that game. Zero % over the long run. They don't care because people just want to play.
Some private games have almost unbeatable rake. (same thing)
Some California casinos have ridiculous buy-in structures that combined with the high rake (and flop-drop) make the game almost unplayable.
I could go on but I think we all get the point.

You seem to be claiming that nobody would play if they couldn't win' yet casinos offer exclusively unbeatable games, yet have no shortage of customers.

IMHO I think you are vastly overestimating how easy it is to overcome the rake and tips at these low levels.

D.

[QUOTE=Dreamer;57841179]Hi Mason


I don't think so. I'm highly critical of much of poker room management. Perhaps you should read some of what I've written over the years.

I think it was over 30 years ago when I first wrote this. You should read the chapter on "Promotions" in my Cardrooms book.

I haven't glossed over any of this.

I'm well aware of what the rake on cruise ships is and I'm also probably a lot more knowledgeable of how much poker cruises expect to make in rake per person.

Do you think I'm not aware of this?

Again, I've been writing about this stuff for many years. You seem to be completely unaware of that. Also, in Ca cardrooms where they employ props that impacts the amount of rake they actually collect. (And yes, I'm also aware that many Ca cardrooms have fired most of their props.)

I don't make this claim at all. Don't state that I say things which I've never said.

What I do say is that many cardrooms would do better in the long run with a more equitable rake.

This statement isn't true. The casino is the winning player in these games. And the casino preforms the function of starting games and keeping games going. But in the poker room there needs to be a core of regular players that do this task, and the most successful poker rooms do certain things that actually helps the regular players in this area. (Again, see my Cardrooms book. Also, In my Poker Essays books there is much discussion on this topic.)

I'm sure I know more about this subject than virtually anyone.

And here's the link to the thread where the complete Cardrooms book was posted:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...everything+bad

Mason

Hi Mason, thank you for agreeing with most of my points.

A lot of the points I'm making are not directed specifically at you but the general audience reading who may be unaware of these things.

Your claim above is of 70% winners but you didn't seem to dispute the fact that a lot of the games I mentioned are probably unbeatable let alone have 70% winners.

casinos offer exclusively unbeatable games, yet have no shortage of customers.

I just don't agree, the casino/dealer is also the biggest winner at virtually any poker table. Its still a house edge /-EV situation that must be overcome for a seated player to win.
X amount of $ is removed from the table every orbit via rake, tips and promo money.

I pointed out poker games (that you seem to agree were unbeatable) yet still had lots of customers willing to play. I don't think the vast vast majority of players have any concept of the rake.
They just want to play, gamble and have fun.

I will be a gentleman and let you have the final word as I think there are some points we clearly don't/won't agree on.

D.

I think there's an important point here that you may have completely missed. First, the 70 percent figure of seated winners is based on my observation over many years of what you'll observe in a major poker room. And I've been playing since the early 1980s and don't believe this 70 percent figure has changed much even though in that time I've watched the rake go up a lot.

Now, suppose you increase the rake in that poker room. In most cases, I think you'll still have approximately 70 percent winners. But in the long-run, you won't have as many games so that the total number of winners you'll find seated in that poker room, on average, will be less than it was before.

This is a very important point and one of the things that it means is that when a poker room moves their rake up (above the ideal rake amount), while it may collect more rake in the short-run, it should collect less rake in the long run as it will have less games even though the percentage of seated players who are winners may be a similar percentage.

There have been some short time exceptions. One example is early in the poker book when so many new players came into poker. Another example is anyplace where casino gambling and poker is new. But in general, as the rake goes up, the number of games goes down.

And isn't this exactly the same thing that happens to the short-time players in a poker room. They have no chance to win in the long run. I don't know of any everyday roulette players.

Because of the rake, poker is not a zero sum game. But there are still winners. The reason for this is that the skill level that winning players can obtain is large.

On the other hand, a game like craps is a zero sum game if you view the casino as one of the players. There is also skill in craps, but the obtainable skill level is not enough to overcome the house edge (and the skill is knowing which bets are less bad). See my book the Fundamentals of Craps for more discussion.

I think everyone knows this. Again, poker is not a zero sum game.

Okay. But, in my opinion, in a major poker room they are in the minority of the seated players. Again, this goes back to the winning player playing many more hours than most losing players.

And I'm going to be straightforward. Most poker rooms are poorly run because the management has a poor understanding of what really goes on in a poker room, and the same is true for many players.

This discussion with you should be worthwhile for not only you but for others who happen to read it. But it is only one example of the many things that both poker room management and many regular players both get wrong relative to what actually goes on in a poker room. Also, this sort of thing leads to many poor decisions by poker room management, and sometimes these decisions are done to please the vocal, but misinformed, regular players. And these decisions hurt everyone associated with the poker room from the chip runners to the high stakes players.

Again, you can read about a lot of this stuff in my Cardrooms book.

Mason

are you aware that inflation makes the 1/3 entry less worth it for casinos to run? are you aware they raised rake 20%-40%in the last few years alone in canada to justify keeping low stakes poker and even then they are slowly getting rid of it for slots roon, and this has probably made winners in those small stake games from like 10% to 0. My local casino went from a 14 table poker room to 4 tables sitting in the middle of the pit

I get the old man yelling in the clouds vibe. The world is bigger then California and vegas. Inflation alone makes 1/2 games unsustainable

are you aware that where I live the rake is the same at the $1-$3 as it is at higher stakes?

are you aware that the rake has gone up a lot virtually everywhere the last few years?

Adding more slot machines without increasing the number of slot players is one of the poor decisions that casino management often makes. See DUCY? by David Sklansky for more discussion. And continuing raising the rake will slowly get rid of poker.

Same error as I discussed in my post above. The percentage of seated winning players should change little. But with less games the number of winning players should change.


I've seen this happen to many poker rooms, and sometimes they close completely.

And I get someone who's confused on this subject getting many things wrong, and this includes poker room management. You also need to understand that my conclusions are usually based on statistical theory which is something that often confuses many people.

As the rake gets higher, expect to see less of these games.

MM

"are you aware that where I live the rake is the same at the $1-$3 as it is at higher stakes?" This is just proving my point that all your knowledge is based on a small area of the world then you just repeat things I have already mentioned or are obvious to everyone

Being better than the average 2+2'er is a very low bar.

The idea that the majority of regular players are winners is a complete fallacy though. From my experience, the majority of regular players are degenerate gamblers who are addicted to poker. You've played a lot in Vegas where regulars feed off of tourists, but other markets have far less tourists and thus regulars often feed off bad regulars.

Even in Vegas I think it's hard to break down how many grinders actually win at poker. Most of the players grinding 1/2 and 1/3 will not be successful in becoming a poker pro. However, that's not to say they didn't win. Perhaps they simply don't make enough to cover expenses, or their winrate is so minuscule that they can't handle the variance, or perhaps their backer has taken much of their winnings.

Regardless of whether they are winning or losing, hopefully we can agree that the vast majority are absolutely terrible.

Not sure, I think maybe worse but I am probably somewhere in the middle.

I am smart enough to know that I don't know much and understand I have a limited understanding of poker since it is such a deep game but I also think that is a pretty low bar. Having said that, I think a lot of people think they know more then they actually do. A game that has a component of luck has a little bit of survivorship bias.

1.) Yes if limited to certain sub-forums such as LLNL and Online NLH
2.) Probably 5-50NL

How could 90% be winners in high stakes games? In a high stakes game its more likely to have the majority of players right around small winners to small losers where variance takes over. The big winners are just as likely as big losers - few and far in between. Mathematically how could 90% win after rake? Doesn't seem possible. There's no way 70% are winning in your standard 1/2/2/5 games either.

Because they are usually organised around 1 whale?

And to add to this, sometimes when you see these games all the players will be long-term winning players. But they're hoping, and often expect, a live player to sit down. So, while most of these players at that moment may be playing with a slightly negative EV, they are still long-term winners.

Mason

And this is part of the problem that contributes to poor poker room management decisions. So, let me state it clearly.

I agree that through the course of the year, the majority of people who walk into a major poker room and sit down to play poker are losing players. But most of these people only play a small number of hours a year.

But sitting at the tables, especially as the stakes gets higher, the large majority of the players currently sitting are actually winning players. And that's because regular players, of which the large majority are winners, put in, on average, many more hours per year playing poker than the typical losing player does.

And here's a simple way to see this (which I first wrote about in the 1980s and you can find more discussion in my Gambling Theory book.) Suppose you go to the craps table and bet $1 per roll for 10,000 rolls. Now on the next roll you bet $1,000,000. How many times have you rolled the dice?

Mason

I believe I'm better but I my losses bear heavy on my shoulders.

Before black friday - much much better
Now - no idea