Any and all rakes are a cost of playing poker. Think of rake as a businessman would think of overhead and advertising costs. The site is advertising for you, providing you with a venue for your poker "business", providing a safe and secure place for your money, taking care of all your financial transactions, and if online gaming is not legal in your country they provide you with a legal loophole for gaming. Although they do make a killing off of rake, they do provide you with all of those services without any significant hassle on your part. There's cost, but there's value.
If the rake is large relative to the size of the bets, it's arguable that even a good poker player can not be profitable; the margins we play to are small, and a rake can eat it up.
Rakes online are smaller than B&M rakes -- the cost of running online tables is far smaller. This makes lower-stakes poker more profitable, but many people are still surprised at how much the rake eats them up.
It's not unusual for a good 2/4 player to play out thousands and thousands of hands, and win $2000 over time. If they kept careful notes (or used PokerTracker), they might see that they probably paid about $2000 in rakes. Without the rakes, they would have won about $4000. It's mind-boggling, sometimes.
You see, to win that $2000, they probably had many, many thousands of dollars in winnings (perhaps $120,000), and also many, many thousands of dollars in losses(perhaps $118,000). The TOTAL of the winnings minus the losses is a mere $2000. . . but the rake wasn't paid on the $2000. It was paid on the $120,000 (actually paid on about $124,000; the $120,000 is after paying rakes).
These numbers are realistic estimates -- Grinder has posted his real-life results below. Assuming a good player earns 2BB/100, you can see that a 2/4 player expects to pay as much in rake as they actually earn themselves -- so half of their real win goes to the casino. Before you complain, remember: the rake at a Brick and Mortar site is much higher.
Rake Numbers
Feel free to add your rake figures below.
From Grinder
These are my numbers, each limit has at least 10,000 hands played except for 2/4 and 3/6 in the Cryptos. Everyone will have different amounds depending on your own personal style. I play about 18% VPIP.
|
Rake BB/100 - Party |
||||
|
Limit |
per Hand |
per Hour |
per 100 hands |
BB/100 |
|
$1/2 |
.044 |
$2.86 |
$4.40 |
2.20 |
|
$2/4 |
.081 |
$5.26 |
$8.09 |
2.02 |
|
$3/6 |
.10 |
$6.50 |
$10.00 |
1.67 |
|
Rake BB/100 - Crypto |
||||
|
Limit |
per Hand |
per Hour |
per 100 hands |
BB/100 |
|
1/2 |
.044 |
$2.06 |
$4.40 |
2.20 |
|
2/4 |
.106 |
$5.00 |
$10.42 |
2.60 |
|
3/6 |
.141 |
$6.65 |
$13.86 |
2.31 |
You will notice an anomoly in Crypto - perhaps it's because I have only about 1000 hands played in the 2/4 and 3/6 games - more hands are needed to see what's up with this.
From Macbeth
These are added rake stats from my slightly tigher play att PP
|
Rake BB/100 - Party |
|
|
Limit |
BB/100 |
|
$1/2-6 |
3.2 |
|
$1/2 |
2.1 |
|
$2/4 |
1.5 |
/ Macbeth
From jukofyork
While working on an experiment on grouping and scoring Party Poker $0.5/$1 6max players I found the average rake in BB/100 for each of the 15 differnt groups I defined:
|
Player Type |
Auto-Rate Rule used to classify player into group |
Rake paid in BB/100 |
|
Loose |
VPIP>50% |
3.1 |
|
Neutral |
VPIP=30%..50% |
4.4 |
|
Tight |
VPIP<30% |
7.0 |
|
LPP |
VPIP>50% - PFR%<8% - AGG<1.0 |
2.8 |
|
LPA |
VPIP>50% - PFR%<8% - AGG>1.0 |
2.8 |
|
LAP |
VPIP>50% - PFR%>8% - AGG<1.0 |
3.4 |
|
LAA |
VPIP>50% - PFR%>8% - AGG>1.0 |
3.2 |
|
NPP |
VPIP=30%..50% - PFR%<7% - AGG<1.6 |
4.2 |
|
NPA |
VPIP=30%..50% - PFR%<7% - AGG>1.6 |
3.9 |
|
NAP |
VPIP=30%..50% - PFR%>7% - AGG<1.6 |
4.7 |
|
NAA |
VPIP=30%..50% - PFR%>7% - AGG>1.6 |
4.5 |
|
TPP |
VPIP<30% - PFR%<10% - AGG<2.5 |
6.4 |
|
TPA |
VPIP<30% - PFR%<10% - AGG>2.5 |
6.5 |
|
TAP |
VPIP<30% - PFR%>10% - AGG<2.5 |
7.7 |
|
TAA |
VPIP<30% - PFR%>10% - AGG>2.5 |
8.0 |
The full details of my experiment and how I came to create these groups can be found here.
Juk 
How important is rakeback / reloads to your game
It seems like many pokersites have restructured the rake so that small stakes players get even more punished than they were a year ago. Also the effect on the short handed games is even more detrimental, with rake per 100 hands could be up as much as 50% more on the same level. As a player moves up through the limits, the rake becomes less of a problem. However we can assume that it is first around 5/10 where a significant drop of occurs since the max rake of $3 is taken out of an average pot of $60.
Which sites you referring to? -- MogobuTheFool
What is the effect of profitability with rakeback assuming equal resistance at the different poker sites? Lets assume we have two players; Player A makes 1 BB / 100 hands and Player B makes 2.5 BB / 100. Taking the first table as a reference for rake we have:
Important caveat: Not all sites allow rakeback. . . And the most generous rakeback offers come from sites with very little action, so resistance is not the same. -- MogobuTheFool
|
Player A win +1 BB / 100 |
|||||
|
Limit |
rake BB/100 |
30%-rb |
50%-rb |
win increase 30% |
win increase 50% |
|
$1/2 |
2.2 |
0.66 |
1.3 |
+66% |
+130% |
|
$2/4 |
2.0 |
0.6 |
1.2 |
+60% |
+120% |
|
$3/6 |
1.7 |
0.51 |
0.95 |
+51% |
+95% |
|
Player B win +2.5 BB / 100 |
|||||
|
Limit |
rake BB/100 |
30%-rb |
50%-rb |
win incr 30% rb |
win incr 50% rb |
|
$1/2 |
2.2 |
0.66 |
1.1 |
+26% |
+44% |
|
$2/4 |
2.0 |
0.6 |
1.0 |
+24% |
+40% |
|
$3/6 |
1.7 |
0.51 |
0.85 |
+20% |
+34% |
You're making a major error here. For sites that DO offer rakeback, don't most offer it against RakeEarned, not RakePaid? -- MogobuTheFool
The simple conclusion is that to most players rakeback will significantly improve returns.
For whom will rakeback NOT improve returns? -- MogobuTheFool
/ Macbeth
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