Bob's comments about avoiding rake got me thinking. Party O8b and Pokerstars Stud8b have been very tough lately because most post are contested short handed and are losing max rake. This ends in players losing money while winning pots. Yes, you are supposed to go for the scoops, but that doesn't happen often (I only scooped 3 out 360 pots in S8b).

I started looking at the rake, and this what I found.

in 360 hands (all I have for S8b .5/1 on my new machine) $72 was raked from the pot - this is on Pokerstars. That averages out to $20 per 100 hands.

A full buy-in gets taken off the table in rake every 100 hands. divided by the typical 7 active players, this is 2b/100 per player.

Then I decided to look at NL.

2897 hands $552.40 in rake

this averages out to about $19.50 per 100 hands. and about $2.11 per player for a whooping 4.25PTbb/100 or 8.5big blinds/100 per player.

yep...

and as I said it kills the poker..

Rake at 5% stops LAG being an effective strategy.. you end up a complete rock.. and with a small stack to boot...

The bonuses (10x) are ONLY about 70-80%% rake back I think-- this is why Party keeps banging them out..

There are very able players out there - they just stand little real chance of realising it........

If it wasn't for rake I'd be very rich.. as it is Party is very rich...

You can't win- at the much higher limits rake is capped.. but of course you tend to get better players there...

I think the worst is about NL 0.25/0.5 level..

This is why the world poker exchange thing loks promising.

I think Gus Hansen realised this problem when he launched his low rake site. The problem is that at mid limits you just can't play "good" poker.

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See me playing $10/$20NL like it was play money

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...405&q=xxdemexx

Doberman: "but Sarge, isn't poker gambling and just luck?"
Sgt. Bilko:" not the way I play it"

Yes.. Rake absolutely kills online poker in the long run. Mos't people don't realize 5% rake is A LOT. 5% on a 1/2 limit table with a average $10 pot and 60 hands/hr means $30 an hour, that's 5BB/100 per player!

If you are a player breaking even (like me) you realy have to find good bonusses to make poker worthwhile. Currently 60% rakeback seems to cut it for me, especially since I'm tight (not even that tight though).

which is why online, i play sng's, and live, i play NL ring.
in sngs, the rake is easaily beatable, and they are extremely profitable.
in live play, (i play 2/4 nl and 1/2 nl with $6 a 1/2 hour table stakes)
this seems like alot at first, but its actually cheaper in the long run than playing online. people also play worse live. nobody is playing like a rock bonus whoring. few people actually are winning players.

Where do you play your sng's?

Bob I think that you really underestimate the value of Party's 10X bonii especially when playing micro NL. Lets say average rake at NL25 table is 15 cents, at a full table you are paying only 1.5 cents a hand, thats almost 700% rakeback. Playing say 1/2 limit where party really starts to rape people, average rake is probably like 65 cents at a full table that is still about 150% rakeback.

Rake is a big deal, and if you play higher limits 5/10 and above there isn't much choice on where you can play, either Stars or Party both of which have VIP offers and such but they still keep the lions share of the rake as profits. There are sites out there where you can essentially get 70%+ of your rake back through bonuses and RB (most Cryptos, Absolute, WPEX, most Tribeca skins) but often you are struggling to find good games or any games.

Beavis, I am not sure but I know with O8b on PT they actually report that you pay the full rake on a split pot, not 1/2 the rake as it should be. So you split a 20$ pot, it will say that both you and the other player both paid 1$ in rake when you really didn't.

Which Is worse? 10% Vig or 5% rake?

I know I have numbers on Cash games for limit, And I know I can get some answers from our NL players that use PT (I'm also going to hit up some our big stakes guys for number f rom up above), but I would like to get some numbers from our SNG players. Lemme figure out what I need to look at (got about 3 poker projects running through my head already) before I get anything, unless soembody else wants to give it a go.

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Yes this is a big issue in PTH, I'm not sure about PTO or PTS, but check the PT forums, I know there will be threads on this. With split pots, the rake doesn't get split.

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to be honest, i dont know. i dont use PT (i know, i know, i know, i should use it)
so i dont have any actual "#'s" besides my ITM for like 400 sngs or something that i was keeping track of via an Excel spreadsheet.

however, if i had to guess, i would say the 10% vig is more beatable (correct me if im wrong but thats short for vigorish, tournament entry fee? just checking)

why? well, look at a good sng players ROI. whats a good roi? i dunno ive seen 10-30%, and comparitively, i think this is beating the games more than in limit, where its common to only have a 3% edge (or about 1 big bet per hour)

however that could be completely irrelivant.. lol

according to my friend i just asked on aim (who is a reputable source) "sngs are more profitable online, g2g tho"
signs off. lol

For SNG's, excel is all you need, You really only need to enter 3 or 4 pieces of data to be able to get anything you need out of it.

For results tracking that is.... For player profiling and hand analysis, well you know. And with the new automationg that PT has for Stars tournies, it's actually easier that Excel.

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