Two Plus Two Newer Archives - Sit and Gos- Is the rake fair?

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Sit and Gos- Is the rake fair?

As a high limit Pokerstars sng player, I marvel at the seemingly relatively small rake that high stakes cash game players have to pay on average in proportion to the stakes involved.

For example, if I play a $1050+50 sng, the rake is 4.76% for each player. If I look at a 100/200 6-max LHE game, the average pots are about $950 with about 110 hands/hour. The hands that see flops pay $3 rake. With 110 hands/hour, not every pot sees a flop, but if 4/5 of them do (this # may be higher), then Pokerstars receives $264/hr from these tables. Compare that to an avg. 45 minute Turbo sng on Pokerstars where they collect $450.

Of course my math could be wrong, but it just seems incorrect for the rake to be this high for big limit sngs at a non brick-and-mortar establishment.

If Pokerstars wants to get more action in turbo sngs, simply lower the rake by approximately 50% or give equivalent incentive bonuses for playing in large volume that go well beyond FPP. Here is why:

1) In the bigger limit ($114-$1100) sngs, there are a LOT of players who are hovering around the -2% - +2% ROI level given the great strength of most players in them. Why would these players ever want to play sit and gos, which are supposed to be lower variance than cash games? Instead they go to cash games, where they likely have a bigger edge.

2) By reducing rake, Pokerstars would improve traffic in big limit sngs by at least 2x the amount, since all of the breakeven/slightly winning players would now be marginally profitable in these and decide to stick around.

Players playing sngs on other sites would hear that Pokerstars' rake is lower than every other site and that would increase traffic as well. Getting a player to come to your site from a competing site without hurting your overall return is almost never a bad thing.

At the current rate, high limit Pokerstars sit and gos are going to become extinct. Right now they're too competitive and those who are losing or breaking even/wining marginally are going to be pushed out of the playing pool. This leads to a terrible situation where only the very best sng players will be left, and unable to overcome the 4.7%-8.5% rake depending on buyin. At this point, high limit sngs will be destroyed and that's no good for Pokerstars.

If Pokerstars lowers the rake, they will get more action on these sngs, as well as increase the pool of players significantly.

So, why am I not complaining about the rake in multi-table tournaments? First of all, MTTs are longer in time, have more players, and generally provide for significantly larger ROIs for winning players. Of course it is not Pokerstars' responsibility to make sure their players don't go broke, but it's a much better business model to insure that they go broke over a longer period of time and get more value for their dollar.

FWIW, at the Rio this year the rake on the $1000 WSOP single table satellites was something like $14. For a live casino to have a rake of 1/3 less than that of an online joint is ridiculous, IMO. There's a reason there were more $1k satellites running this summer at the Rio than Pokerstars, even though they had 1/10 the player pool.

Please listen up, Lee Jones and others. This idea is not as player-motivated as you might think. This proposition and ones that expound upon it have the potential of making both poker players and your site a lot of money in the long run.