allaboutpoker

Casino poker costs money to play.  One way or another, players pay the house to run the game and provide dealers, security, drinks etc.  This blog will give you the basics on how to assess the costs of playing in your area.

Time charges -  Some games charge the players by the half hour to play in the game.  This charge may be taken in one of several different ways.  Sometimes everyone simply has to pay up their allotted charge, usually when a new dealer pushes into the table.  The amount of the charge depends on the size of the game and the house you’re playing in.  In some cases, a “time pot” may be used.  Rather than charging everyone the same amount, the time for the entire table is taken out of the first pot after the dealer sits down.  Most people reading this blog won’t play at tables that require time, because time games are usually larger games, and most of my readers will be beginners.  However, if the casino in your area charges time, just have your chips ready when it’s time to pay up, and be done with it.  Time charges and pots can be a very complex subject, beyond the scope of this blog.  However, I’ve already described the basics, which is all you should need to know for now.

Rake -  Rake is a percentage taken from each pot by the dealer and dropped into the house money box.  Small games typically have a 10% rake with a maximum anywhere from $3-$5.  Somewhat larger games ($10-$20, $15-$30 etc) might have a 5% rake instead of 10%.  As a rule, you want the maximum rake to be low, because this takes money off the table at a far slower rate.  A $5 max rake game is borderline unplayable, $4 is pretty high, but probably playable, and $3 is very reasonable.  If there’s a choice, and the only real difference between one casino and another is the cost of the rake, absolutely take the one with less rake! Rake is sometimes taken in increments of $1, but sometimes is taken using coins, usually half dollars.

Drops -  A drop is a fixed amount, not a percentage, taken from each pot.  Typically a drop will be $3 taken on the flop, and if there is no flop, no money is taken.  This is a “drop on the flop.” Any drop on the flop of more than $3 probably makes the game unplayable.  Occasionally a “dead drop” is taken on every hand, before any cards are dealt.  These games are already basically unplayable just because of the dead drop policy.  However, dead drops have become less common, and to be honest I don’t even know offhand of a casino that still uses this policy.

The main thing you have to consider is how much money comes off the table in a given length of time.  I can tell you from spreadsheets that I have personal done that a typical casino with a 10%, $4 max rake will probably take in between $60-$80 an hour per table.  Sometimes it will be more, rarely will it be less, but the average is probably about $72 an hour.  Now if this is a $2-$4 limit game, that’s almost a full 25 big bet buy-in per hour coming off the table, never to be seen again.  This takes its toll over time and is very significant.  Without the rake, a break-even player should be able to, well, break even!  However, with the rake, you must now be better than break-even just to stay afloat.  The rake is one very important reason why you need to build up your skills before spending a lot of time playing poker.

Time charge games charge everyone equally, but rake games charge players who win lots of pots more than those who win few pots.  Obviously if you don’t win the pot, the rake doesn’t come out of your money.  However, if you win the pot, that pot is smaller by the amount of rake taken by the house.

The object of poker is to win MONEY, not POTS, so you can actually pay less than your share in a raked game by concentrating on winning big pots, but not necessarily MORE pots.  We’ll get into how to go about this in a future blog.

One more thing, if most pots in two different sized games are reaching the maximum rake, you are better off playing in the larger game, because the amount taken is a smaller proportion of the total amount in play.  So if it’s all the same to you if you’re playing $2-$4 or $4-$8, play the $4-$8 game.

That’s the basics of time charges, rake and drop.  Make sure to consider this before you sit in a game!

PokerGuru

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