Doyle Connery asked 3 weeks ago
The ‘rake’ may be defined as the fee the poker room charges players (from here on out ‘poker room’ or ‘house’ is referring to a casino, online poker room, local card club/poker room, or possibly a game run by someone(s)). You’ll find generally two different methods that are used by the home to collect the rake. The very first is when the card room will take a share of the pot up to a specific amount. For instance, they can take 5% up to $3 before they ‘push’ the winner their chips. The amount the home takes and what requirements must be met before they ‘rake’ the pot will differ between online poker rooms and ‘live’ (not online).
The other method, and also the one which won’t be discussed in too much depth here, is what is known as a ‘time charge’. The house will collect a certain sum of cash every half hour or hour from all of the players playing. The time charge method will likely be not used for the bottom limit games, and even within the mid to high limit games, it’s not absolutely employed. From here on out ‘the rake’ is only going to make reference to the rake that is collected from individual pots. This is the common method that most poker players are used to and also will be the focus of the rest of the article.
Live poker rooms can have different requirements of once they rake the pot and at what percentage. For live poker rooms the percentage can be 10% and, based on the poker room, may have a maximum of $3-$5. Some poker rooms also have the minimum rake that they take from each pot, regardless of the size. One example is if there’s a 1/2 NL game as well as the blinds are $1 and $2, they might take up to $3 from the pot on the flop. This means that if everybody folds to the small blind, he/she calls the big blind, and the big blind checks, the home will collect up to $3 (depending on their policies), even though they may be heads up and the pot only has $4. The house will then take another dollar after the pot reaches $40 (10% of $40 is $4, but they have already taken $3) and, if there maximum is $5, they are going to then take another dollar at $50.
Because most players understand that contributing $2 in order to win $1 is a tough proposition, most poker rooms shall allow the small blind and big blind to ‘chop’. Consequently they may both receive their blinds back if they both agree which it is acceptable. This must be done ahead of the flop and no other players can be in the hand. Poker rooms that do collect rake regardless of how many players there are actually if there is a flop, usually have a ‘no flop, no drop’ policy. Consequently if there isn’t any flop, irrespective of how many raises or how big the pot, the home will not collect any money from the flop. It needs to be remembered that not all live poker rooms collect rake if there’s a flop. This really is sometimes regional, but also can vary from poker room to poker room in the same region.
Online poker rake differs in a number of ways. The first is that the percent of rake that is usually taken is 5% which is almost always capped at $3. Not simply is there commonly a maximum $3 collection, but there will be always no minimums. In certain games the pot shall need to be as large as $30 ahead of the house collects their percentage. In games where the home collects 5%, due to simplicity, they can divide the total amount they collect into ‘cents’. This means on a $20 pot there can be a rake of $0.50. For online games, there is not an alternative to chop if the small blind and big blind are within the hand prior to the flop.
The above mentioned descriptions of how live poker rooms and online poker rooms calculate and collect rake are the most frequent methods employed. As was mentioned, the guidelines shall change, but a majority of poker rooms use the above mentioned rules and using them as guidelines can help the poker player (whether a novice or beginner) decide which version offers the highest return. There are lots of other factors that determine the profitability of a poker game and it would be foolish to base game selection solely on the rake collected.
Despite the fact that more is raked per hand in a live poker game, the amount that is paid every hour is comparable. In a live game, should the average rake per hand is $3, but there is only 30 hands an hour, the home will collect $90/hr. When playing online there is definitely an average of 70 hands per hour. If the average rake collected per hand is $1.50, the hourly collection from the table is $105.
Using the above as guidelines (based off of 2/4 limit games) the table as a whole will pay more per hand in live games, but more hourly in online games. This is as a result of the amount of hands that are possible per hour per table online rather than live.
