Why rake matters in poker

Poker players often take the rake they pay for granted -the amount the house collects from the pot for providing the game. The truth is the rake can be the deciding factor between being a winning player and a losing player. In this article I’ll take a look at how the rake can impact you as a player at the low and medium stakes poker tables.

First, let’s take a look at a standard rake structure in a casino -keep in mind that live poker games are often a lot looser than online poker games, so the rake is typically maxed out virtually every hand.

Suppose you are playing $4/$8 Limit Holdem or $1/$2 No Limit Holdem (typically the rake in NLHE games is taken as a timed charge at casinos which I’ll discuss below) and you are getting in 25 hands an hour. That means that at a 10-handed table each hand will cost you $.40 -so after 25 hands you will have contributed $10 to the rake, or $40 after 100 hands. At this table you will be paying in the neighborhood of 5BB per 100 hands!

Bear in mind that this doesn’t include any jackpot drop, which is generally $1 per hand, and tips you give to the dealer. So, over the course of 100 hands the casino could be taking $5 out of each pot ($50 of which coming directly from you), and if you win your fair share of pots a further $10 from your stack in tips. The rake in a small stakes game causes you to lose 7.5BB/100!

On the other hand, if you play $10/$20 Holdem the same numbers apply (about $60 per 100 hands is coming out of your stack), but because you are playing higher stakes you are only losing 3BB/100. This is why as a player you have to move out of the lower limits as quickly as possible. Trying to overcome a 7.5BB/100 disadvantage is a tough undertaking in the long-run -in fact many players think it’s an impossible disadvantage to overcome regardless of your advantage in the game.

Now, in a No Limit game at the casino the time charge is usually $5 for every half-hour.  This is seemingly a better deal for the players, but the reality of the situation is that the slower pace of live NLHE games means you will likely only play about 25 hands per hour. Furthermore, because of the nature of No Limit Holdem, many of the pots would have gone unraked, or only minimally raked, since many pots will be won pre-flop or on the flop.

Basically, you will end up paying $10 per hour/25-hands (or $40 per 100 hands) plus $10 in tips and possibly another $10 from jackpot drops. So at the NLHE tables you will be paying the same $60, but this will be over fewer hands, and as I said above many of the pots would not have reached max-rake without the time charge.