The ‘rake’ can 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 perhaps a game run by an individual(s)). There are generally two different methods which are utilized by the house to collect the rake. The first is in the event the card room shall take a percentage of the pot up to a particular amount. For instance, they might take 5% up to $3 before they ‘push’ the winner their chips. Simply how much the house takes and what requirements has to be met before they ‘rake’ the pot will differ between online poker rooms and ‘live’ (not online).
The next method, as well as the one which will not be discussed in too much depth here, is exactly what is called a ‘time charge’. The home will collect the specific sum of cash every half hour or hour from all of the players playing. The time charge method is normally not utilized for the bottom limit games, and also in the mid to high limit games, it is not necessarily employed. From here on out ‘the rake’ is only going to refer to the rake that is collected from individual pots. This is the common method that most poker players are used to and will be the focus of the rest of the article.
Live poker rooms can have different requirements of when they rake the pot and at what percentage. For live poker rooms the percentage will likely be 10% and, depending on the poker room, may have no more than $3-$5. Some poker rooms also have a minimum rake that they take from each pot, in spite of the size. As an example, if there is a 1/2 NL game and 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 also the big blind checks, the house will collect up to $3 (according to their policies), despite the fact that they are heads up as well as the pot only has $4. The home will then take another dollar in the event the pot reaches $40 (10% of $40 is $4, nevertheless they have already taken $3) and, if there maximum is $5, they are going to then take another dollar at $50.
Since most players realize that contributing $2 as a way to win $1 is a tough proposition, most poker rooms shall permit the small blind and big blind to ‘chop’. This means they may both receive their blinds back should they both agree which it is acceptable. This must be done prior to the flop and no other players can be within the hand. Poker rooms that do collect rake regardless how many players there are if there’s a flop, usually have a ‘no flop, no drop’ policy. This means if there’s absolutely no flop, regardless how many raises or how big the pot, the house 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 could also vary from poker room to poker room within the same region.
Online poker rake differs in several ways. The very first is the fact that the percent of rake which is usually taken is 5% which is almost always capped at $3. Not just is there usually a maximum $3 collection, but there is nearly always no minimums. In certain games the pot will 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 amount they collect into ‘cents’. Therefore on a $20 pot there may be a rake of $0.50. For online games, there just isn’t a choice to chop if the small blind and big blind are within the hand prior to the flop.
The above descriptions of how live poker rooms and online poker rooms calculate and collect rake are the most frequent methods employed. As was mentioned, the rules will change, but a majority of poker rooms use the aforementioned rules and using them as guidelines will certainly assist the poker player (whether a novice or beginner) decide which version offers the highest return. There are plenty of other reasons that determine the profitability of a poker game and it could be foolish to base game selection solely on the rake collected.
It’s fairly obvious that the maximum rake that the house collects in live games is an important amount higher than online. Even when it was assumed that they only charged a maximum of $3 the minimums are much higher than online poker rooms. Seeing a flop with three people and $9 in the pot ($6 after the rake is taken), one example is creates a negative expected value that’s fairly tough to overcome. Additionally it is safe to deduce that one pays more per hand in rake in a live setting compared to online.
Even though more is raked per hand in a live poker game, the amount that is paid hourly is comparable. In a live game, should the average rake per hand is $3, but there is only 30 hands per hour, the home will collect $90/hr. When playing online there is an average of 70 hands an hour. Should the average rake collected per hand is $1.50, the hourly collection from the table is $105.
Using the above mentioned as guidelines (based off of 2/4 limit games) the table as a whole will pay read more per hand in live games, but more hourly in online games. This is because of the amount of hands that are possible every hour per table online instead of live.