[jjshabado]

I don't really follow the OP. I kind of stopped caring when he started talking about the blinds.

BUT, I was thinking the other day that good players in NL may be 'paying' more of the rake than we think (or at least than I thought). In 1/2NL (the only NL game I'm familiar with) there are many many bad players that sit at the table until they bust.

If we tracked the rake each player 'paid' then whenever a player was stacked, the winning player assumes an amount of the rake paid for that person up until the difference in stack sizes is reached. Since if we were playing rake free the losing player would have had that money in his stack when he busted.

Obviously this isn't as applicable in limit since bad players bust much less often. They often leave with some portion of their stack.

In an extreme case where only people that have busted can leave the table and no new blood sits down the winning player paid all of the rake. In which case the player prefers whatever kept the most money on the table (rake vs. time, depending on number of players, number of hands dealt, and so on).

Obviously there are tons of complications but my gut feeling is that time isn't that much worse then rake at low limit NL for good players.