Why does rake impact the poker strategy so much?
Posted by emsterdad
Posted by
emsterdad
posted in
Low Stakes
Why does rake impact the poker strategy so much?
"How Should Rake Influence Your Decisions?
Simply put, higher rake lowers your EV (Expected Value).
How does this affect your decisions? In a nutshell, higher rake forces you to play a tighter style of poker.
This means that all those marginal postflop calls become folds. Moreover, this has an effect on the preflop ranges since those marginal open-raises, calls, and 3-bets depended on those marginal value bets, bluffs and calls to be profitable.
Consequently, you have to play tighter preflop and postflop."
Where I play, 10nl is 7.5% rake with a max of 1 euro. 20nl is a 5% rake.
I really dont understand this rake stuff, to give some from session I ran:
Last session I lost 1.70 euro and paid 1.87 in rake.
The session before that I won 15.53 euro and paid 4.48 in rake.
Since I started playing poker again I played 16k hands, I lost 20,27 euro but I seemed to have paid 148,76 in rake. Seems like I could have might as well deposited a bit more and play at 20nl where the rake is 5% compared to 7.5% and a max of 2 euro rake per pot.
Some crazy ones are the ones where I won for example:
4,75 but paid in rake 8,96
2 euro but paid 7 euro
How is that possible? To have paid more rakeback (double and triple) then I won?
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probably has to do with the smaller pot to stack ratio postflop but not entirely sure
everyone knows you have to play tighter but when asked why i dont really know lol because the solver said so
lol :) Nice question then :)
Last session I lost 1.70 euro and paid 1.87 in rake.
The session before that I won 15.53 euro and paid 4.48 in rake.
Since I started playing poker again I played 16k hands, I lost 20,27 euro but I seemed to have paid 148,76 in rake. Seems like I could have might as well deposited a bit more and play at 20nl where the rake is 5% compared to 7.5% and a max of 2 euro rake per pot.
Some crazy ones are the ones where I won for example:
4,75 but paid in rake 8,96
2 euro but paid 7 euro
How is that possible? To have paid more rakeback (double and triple) then I won?
i dont play on a site with rakeback and havent done so in forever so i forgot all the math behind it
as for the 20nl move up you should definitely consider it because the standard rake online cash games is 5% so anything above that is going over and eating your winrate - the 2nl-10nl games are high rake sinks and if you have the irl bankroll to deposit and move up to normal rake go for it
the 10-20nl jump will not be significant at all, it will play the same difficulty
That is not possible. :-) What tracker / stat are you using? I use PT4 and there you have a ton of different stats like "rake taken", "rake contributed", "rake attributed".
#1 is the entire rake from all players (for that hand / session), regardless of who won.
#2 is the rake that I contributed, regardless if I won / lost the hand.
#3 is the rake that was taken from all hands that I won
Obviously #3 is the one you are looking for. Your stat probably falls into #1 (more likely) or #2.
A good way to check it, is to filter for ONE hand (ideally a big hand postflop) that you won. Then go to the replayer and see what the final potsize was and what you actually were paid off. Then compare that with the rake-stat in the report.
Hope that helps.
BigFiszh That makes sense. Thank you.
THe other question stays: Why is a tight range better when rake is high?
The wider your range, the lower is the potential EV of the hand. Up to the point where the EV is eaten up by the rake.
Simple example (numbers are not correct, it's just for the sake of simplicity): let's assume we are on the BTN and have a hand that we open (2.5bb) and see a flop with. The final (average!!) potsize postflop shall be 12 bb and the rake is either 10% or 2%. Let's compare two different combos (as mentioned with ficticous EVs):
AKs -> Postflop EV = +5.5 bb
87s -> Postflop EV = +3.0 bb
Postflop EV means the total EV that we got postflop, ignoring rake (assuming 0% rake). As we invest 2.5 bb preflop, our total profit (rake still 0%) is:
AKs -> EV (net) = +3.0 bb
87s -> EV (net) = +0.5 bb
So far everything looks good, both combos are profitable and argue a preflop raise.
Now, we are looking at the rake. Start with 2% (= 0,24 bb):
AKs -> EV (net after 2% rake) = +2.76 bb
87s -> EV (net after 2% rake) = +0.26 bb
Still a small profit for both hands. What happens with 10% rake?
AKs -> EV (net after 10% rake) = +1.80 bb
87s -> EV (net after 10% rake) = -0.7 bb
All of a sudden, 87s turns into a negative outcome! Obviously the overall EV of that combo depended on the frequency we actually saw a flop with, but overall it demonstrates how easy we cross the treshold for marginal hands.
Same applies for BB-defense obviously!! Many hands that seem to be easy calls - EQ-wise!! - turn into folds, because we simply do not realize our EQ due to the high rake.
That's a real fallacy - and the reason to tighten up. Unfortunately I have no good idea on how to define the "adjusted" ranges based on the rake%. :-/
BigFiszh It's very eye opening and interesting to me. I appreciate it a lot. It makes me look at all these regulars at the lower stakes playing around 26-29 vpip, probably some of them studying actually really hard, wanting it really badly.. but no clear understanding about how rake makes some hands just simply -EV
I notice in my own game that now I have tighten up considerably (being a more 25+ type of player, now I really try to get around the 18 vpip) I also start to win more + have less variance.
I was always told, "don't focus on becoming a certain VPIP/PFR" but it might actually be needed to get out of the micros.
It does become interesting after 20nl. Because the rake does change to 5% and stays at 5% up to high stakes. But the max-per-pot taking stays around the 2 euro. So at 50nl, if they take 2 euro max, I still get a very decent 48 euro. And since the rake doesn't change anymore and it stays 5%... is then 50nl the moment where I can loosen up? Or am I missing/overlooking something else?
You're absolutely right!! The cap of the rake essentially turns a 5% rake into a 0.x% rake effectively. That's why the rake has less and less impact on the higher stakes.
And remember - one of the "crucial" things to understand is that the rake is not "split" - but it's completely taken off YOUR winnings. For example, if the rake is 10%, it's not 5% per player - it's 10% from the pot!!
Effectively each player has "contributed" 5%, but at the end of the day, it will be taken from your winnings. Means - a pot of 10bb, that was fed by you with 5bb is still raked with 10% total. That means, instead of gaining 5bb (net - pot minus your own invest) you only gain 4bb. Which essentially is 20% of your (potential) profit! ;-)
That makes the micros so "brutal" to get away from.
You are actually playing 2 games. One calls poker and the other calls beating the rake. Those 25+ vpip might actually do as well as the tight players, but are losing because the rake is beating them.
I am really working on become something like a 18/15 regular because:
1. Rake
2. I actually don't need any marginal winning spots for now. I dont need thin value. Fish pay off their entire stack with mid pair.
A simple way to visualize it is this:
You have to call a psb OTR.
Without rake you would need to win 100/300 = 33% of the times to have a +EV call.
With 5% rake you need to win 100/285 = 35% of the times.
You need to win more often because the final pot will be smaller, thus you play a tighter range.
Okay, but how tight? :)
with 7.5% rake, very tight. Get out of that limit / room asap
I think one of the coaches talked about 18/16. Seems right. However hard to accomplish to get exactly 18/16 every sessions. Sometimes it’s 22/20, 15/13, 17/14
I also wonder if a 3 betting range also needs to be tight because yes people fold often pre flop but the rake must hit hard when you do get too the flop????
there was a huge leaked database from acr a while back to catch bots and the biggest 10bb+ crushers were all playing less than or = to 20/16 vpip pfr, aggro postflop but nut peddling with 60%+ won at showdown percentages
Wow! At what stakes was this? And also something known about 3 bet?
it was 50nl
this was years back when acr was getting flak for their bot problems since the same people showed up on the leaderboards of the rake race every month and played the same vpip pfr
some one did a big datamine on the entire zone poker pool to see who the bots are, which also revealed a lot of stats on players
i dont remember what 3bets were, but you can probably find the database somewbere on 2plus2 forums
it does confirm a lot. 20/16 is a pretty tight range. You also fold 102s there on the BTN and all stuff like that.
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