Hi everyone,

Please give me your feedback.

As the title suggest, I would like to offer live rake free poker. A bit about me, I am a poker player and have been since I was 18 years old. I basically was a live cash grinder. As I got older, the thought of having my own club appealed to me. However, you need a gaming licence and that is not an easy task, takes deep pockets which you then must take back from the poker community.

We now seem to have private games running, not exactly legitimate most of the time, along with the standard casinos. It always annoyed me that there is a huge market for people who simply want to play poker and do not want to be in a casino environment, where they might get roped into gambling in casino games. Private games also operate but you have the risks of games being robbed etc.

I just got home a few days ago after travelling somewhere to play poker. I played in a big cash game (by most of our standards), blinds were 10/25/50 with a 100 straddle. I do not want to sound like I am talking bad about that game because it was very nice of them to let me play and I will always be appreciative. I ran pretty good and won a bit. However, I would like many people in the poker community, especially the ‘casual’ player, to be aware about the dynamics of the game. The rake was capped at £25 and pretty much every hand was capped. It was a loose game. If we are playing 30 hands per hour, that is roughly £750 coming off the table and going to the house per hour. After 10 hours that is around £7,500 in rake. We can see the insane amounts of money the house makes, especially online where there are huge amounts of tables running (albeit a lower rake).

When I first started playing poker the games were so much softer, it was like printing money. Nowadays, pretty much everyone is either a decent player or a good player. We have many people studying GTO and looking for an edge, while trying to be the best they can. Whether anyone likes it or not, to try and overcome the rake is going to be a very hard task. You can run good, play well etc, but I do feel that will cloud many peoples vision and many people will not understand how tough a task this will be long-term.

This got me thinking, there is a huge demand for poker, you are not allowed to run games while taking a rake or charge for the game, well how about I simply run a game which is rake free? I would like to open a members club. Every member of the club, including myself, would contribute an equal charge for the month, for the expenses of the club (rent, rates, wages for dealers and waitresses etc). For example, if the expenses were 20k a month and we had 500 people come through the door, it would be £40 a month for each member. In return, they get rake free cash games and tournaments with no charge, which I would plan to be running as many days a week as possible. To me this sounds like an amazing opportunity for every single person who plays poker. I will market this by maybe doing YouTube videos and show how much money goes to the rake in poker. People who play rake free would literally be making so much more money, while those who are lesser skilled would either be making money themselves or will not be losing anywhere near as much as they usually do. The club would also be safe since I am thinking of the players transferring on something like Luxon Pay, so no cash would be on the property.

I would also get my accountant to create audited accounts which would be 100% transparent to all the members. If the law ever asked me any questions too, it would be transparent, the club would run at zero profit, there would not be any charge for poker in any way, shape or form. There would be many poker players who would be earning a very good living.

The reason I came up with this idea is that it caters for the demand for poker, I also feel I could do well in rake free cash games, and it seems ethically the right thing to do since many people, especially those new to the game, do not understand the implications of the rake. The money would be staying in the poker community, that is, to us the players. I do not believe that I would be in breach of any law, since the law here is that you can not rake poker or charge to take part in poker.

I am also wondering why others haven’t thought of this, or if they have, is there anything out there like it right now? Maybe many people wanting their own game simply have their eyes on the money that they would make through the rake.

This seems a huge win win for the poker community.

I would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,
James

Alexa, describe how Gutshot worked 20 years ago

Gutshot did not work like that and they raked pots.

Hi

Yeah it sounds great and I’d like to play there and sure many others would - sounds similar to how some of these Texas poker rooms operate.

I guess it would have to get everyone’s trust and whether you would be able to keep up everything involved in running the club without really having too much profit from it as it does sound like a big effort to get something like this working.

Good luck with it, hope it works out.

Hi,

Thanks. I was just discussing this with a poker friend. His initial reaction was that the challenges would be making sure that if loads of people turned up at the same time, we had an adequate sized property to cater for everyone. On the flip side, if not many people turned up that would not be good. I have to go through all the numbers to present this to the players, but we can be sure that the cost would be a tiny fraction of what we currently pay in rake.

My instinct tells me that many people would be interested, especially when they understand how much money they pay in rake.

As for profit, it has to, and would be, a zero profit club. Membership fees would have to cover the monthly expenses, nothing more. We all would pay this. I would get monthly accounts done, could email the accounts to every memeber. There is a bit of work involved but I am hoping it changes the industry for the better. Every bit of money would be in the poker community with us, the players. I would probably look at getting a big group of us together to get this off the ground, this would not be my club, this would be our club. I think there is a great opportunity for us if we unite on this. How ironic that casinos who want to close down poker clubs, or force people to get a gaming license, could in fact present an opportunity for all of us to benefit through rake free/charge free poker.

yeah sounds good - could even maybe trial the club out by doing a handful of hires of a place for a few evenings to play to see how it goes.

Also like that it would be the players ‘our’ club would make people feel more invested and more involved.

Surprised like people don’t already eg on PokerStars (or maybe you could add this to the club), surprised people don’t have a home game club of however many players on Pokerstars playing in their games on there and being their own bank and not paying any rake.

* actually I think Pokerstars do rake their home games but what I meant is like a group of players banking their own game on an online software which I’m sure there is available out there for free these days

See all the people that get a share of that rake; the casinos, the government, often in non-legal private games the local police. All will have an incentive to destroy you.

That is what is meant to separate democratic countries from those which aren't. We would also be much more of a collective, they would have to try and stop everyone in a legal manner. As for police who apparently get a share of money from illegal games, good luck to them putting their career and themselves at risk trying to stop something legal.

Which reminds me of the quote:

"If you fight you might lose, but if you don't fight you will always lose.”

I appreciate where you are coming from, and if you try this I offer you the best of wishes. As a player, I would certainly be interested. I just advise you to be very careful when determining the dues that you would collect. My guess is that you will underestimate the actual costs of running the club, because there will always be unforeseen expenses (I mean in everything, not just a poker club). You might want to set it up where people pay an amount much more than you think is necessary, and at the end of the year any excess amounts will be distributed to all who were with you the entire year.

At the start, it won't be easy to come up with a good number, because you 1) won't know what your expenses will be; and 2) you won't know how many people are going to join; and 3) you won't know how many people will quit after a few months of paying.

Just bear in mind that there is a decent possibility that the dues won't cover the expenses, and if so, someone is on the hook for the loss. That is likely to be you. I don't think it will be easy going back to the players and saying "Hey guys, I need another 100 from each of you" - and even harder to collect it.

Was talking more in terms of paying minimal attention to gambling laws than the specifics of how you would intend to operate

Apologies, my bad.

why not just host a home poker game?

Seems like a cool idea but wonder how reg infested it would be and how you would get recs in the game, if this was to happen find a place with windows I hate playing in places with no natural light during the day it's horrible