rake increase

Back in January there was an increase in rake at the local casino. It's now max $5, up from $4. Rake comes out at every $10 increment so now pots are rake free at the $50 mark instead of $40.

I got thinking about how this would affect the $1/$2 game. I estimate around 25 hands an hour are dealt. Of these say half of pots are $50 or more. So it's around another $12 an hour the house is taking off the table. ouch.

In terms of win rate. A tight player might win around 2 hands an hour on average. Of these maybe 1 would be $50+. So it might seem to cost $1 an hour in winrate.

However there is another effect and you lose money even on the hands you fold. There are a number of recreational players who buy in for say $60 or so. They are in a number of pots, up and down. If they bust they may reload once. If they build a large stack they may cash out. Once in a while a player will be able to stack one of these recreational players. Suppose you stack rec for his last $41 in some hand. That's nice to make $41. However by then rec may have won 2-3 bigger hands that would have been $5 raked. So his stack should have been around $44 when he busted. The house has taken money off the table that you otherwise would have won.

I'll estimate this effect costs regulars around $0.50 an hour. So together the rake increase would reduce expectation in $1/$2 by around $1.50 an hour. yikes.

--

I got thinking of an alternate calculation. The house is taking an extra $12 an hour off the table. At a 10 player game suppose the house gave each player $1.20 at the beginning of an hour. What happens after an hour? In an average hour winning players make money and losing players lose money. So a winning player may make say 15 cents off the $1.20 and losing players would turn the $1.20 into perhaps $1.00. So the profitable player would expect to have around $1.20 + $0.15 = $1.35. Which is another way to calculate the effect of the rake increase on winrate. This is fairly close to the amount calculated above.

It demonstrates that break even and winning players are more affected. Which makes sense. Recreational players tend to just play until they bust. So the effect on them is generally that they bust a bit sooner and regulars earn less profit on them busting out.

Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players

I read another poker book recently. It was Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players. True to its title it was advanced. I found it actually a bit lighter than Sklansky's Theory of Poker. I was a bit surprised when I read it. I didn't realize it was a limit hold'em book. TOP is about all forms of poker and for whatever reason I thought HEPFAP also was.

I always knew LHE was tricky and after this book I have a new appreciation for how hard it can be. I'm not sure how much I'll use the material. At my local card room there's seldom a limit game. There's $1/$2 and $2/$5 no limit and increasing PLO - note to self. I've been thinking I should better align my live and online play.

I've got some more poker reading to do this year. In addition HEPFAP made me realize the importance of rereading. Going over stuff I've read before. Going over my own game plan and strategies so I have them down pat at live game speed.

live and online bankroll

I've been thinking about bankroll a bit lately. I was thinking of joining another site. I still like PokerStars but was thinking of branching out. Alas PlayNow isn't yet open outside BC so I'll have to wait a bit to see if that will evolve for the better.

In any case it got me thinking there's no good reason to have all of my online bankroll at Stars. Especially after what happened back in April.

So I joined the 7%. I made a withdraw from PokerStars. It was a modest withdraw. It was mainly to confirm the mechanics of how these work and to confirm that I can get to my funds. The transaction was processed extremely promptly by PokerStars and everything went through in Canada no problem. So well done Stars. It gives me a lot of confidence going forward.

So that was encouraging. When the money arrived I put it into my bank account that has my live bankroll. I will keep live and online br separate. I did transfer an amount equal to the wd from the live side to the online side. I plan to remove most of my Stars bankroll in the coming months, just leaving enough for the levels I play with enough to withstand a typical downswing. I still plan to play on Stars, in fact probably more with the "matching" contributions from the live bankroll side.

The nice thing about getting online bankroll into my own bank account is I can use the same backing money on multiple sites. For example suppose I want to play $10 MTT on PokerStars and PartyPoker. If I use a 1% guideline that would suggest having $1000 on both sites. However the common backing bankroll can be used on both sites. For example with $1000 in my online bankroll in my own bank account. I could have just $100 on Stars and Party and be properly rolled to play $10 MTT on both sites.

Getting Started in Hold'em

I recently read another poker book. It was Getting Started in Hold'em by Ed Miller. It was pretty good.

At 200 pages with no equations it was an easier read than most 2+2 books. Which is what you would expect from a book targeting starting players. The content was good. Miller covers the key points while providing a good jumping off point to the more advanced 2+2 texts. Like many 2+2 titles the theme was more around live play which is fine with me. The section on limit hold'em was good. Also the collection of short essays in the miscellaneous topics at the end was a good read for pretty much any level of player.

So why would I read a starters book today after playing for a few years with at least break even success. Well there was a specific section in this book that I wanted to read. That was the part about short stack no limit. Miller describes this strategy well. So now I know a bit more about it. I thought it would be useful to know, it does fit into my plans around live play.

I've got a number of poker books lined up that I want to read. I'll be starting a new 2+2 title shortly.

Rounders

I saw Rounders on Netflix this week. It was really good. I quite enjoyed a movie about poker life. The poker scenes were very accurate and well shot.

There was a lot of great poker advice in that movie such as

• never lend to a degen
• never vouch for someone else's debts
• play within your bankroll
• do not borrow from gangsters
• don't let others play on your bankroll or credit
• pay attention to your opponents you can pick up tells

There was definitely a cautionary tale element to it. I think everyone who plays poker to some extent dreams of playing high stakes, taking a shot, being in the world series main event.

I enjoyed the use of the Socratic dialog technique in the film. The villain Worm expresses contempt for the quiet conservative tight players, ridiculing them as "grinders", "leatherass". Hero Mike is himself a grinder, content to grind 1 BB / hour long term profit - that is until he takes a shot and loses his entire bankroll on the first hand early in the film.

I love that saying "three stacks of high society".  Who knows maybe some day I will be able to use stack of high society as a unit in a real way.

sup bro

Since around September I've been playing more live, around once a week on average. I don't play online much. Still a bit busy with projects for online. Also since black Friday the $25 NL games just aren't as good as before on PokerStars. Interestingly LHE is looking a bit better but I don't have the time to play online.

So last Saturday I was at the local card room playing $1/$2 NL. The guy to my left was in town from BC with two friends on vacation. He had lived in Halifax in the past. A chatty likeable fellow. He knew how to play but had been drinking and relaxing and dropped a couple of buyins and was pretty unconcerned about it.

I was a bit card dead and he took a notice in the lack of hands I'd been playing. Then he announced something like while folding I was thinking of elaborate strategies and such. He pestered me if I'd read Sklansky and that. I said something like "I don't read no poker books or nuthin". Then he asked if I was on 2+2 and I couldn't help but smirk. So I gave him a sup bro and it was funny at least between us. I said I have fewer than 1000 posts and I'm more a lurker than a poster.

Sometimes I wish I was better at conversation. I'm just not very good at it. I should have told him my screen name and to shoot me a pm when he gets back to BC. He also commented on my plain green shirt for some reason and I should have told the story about the green over black combo being lucky. I'm not unfriendly there and answer if spoken to but I just don't talk much.