[Al Mirpuri]

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I am mostly an online player, or have been anyway. I have a micro stakes home game for friends, but it's for stakes that I don't care about. Recently I got invited to a .50/1 game, which, while probably super low for many, is a comfortable limit for me. The players are nice, it's a blast to play in, it's soft enough for me to beat, and playing in it has been the highlight of my week. Unfortunately, they are now going to introduce a rake (10% up to $3 max).

So here are my questions:

a) How bad is this rake? Is it high, or typical? They claim that most of the raked games around are 10% with a higher maximum for the same limit.

b) What level of risk do I assume playing in a raked game at micro stakes? In GA, even non-raked games are illegal so this is clearly over the line; however, at these stakes in a college town where there is plenty of worse stuff going down is there any reason for concern? I'm not the type to get out of line legally so this makes me a little uncomfortable, however I enjoy playing poker a lot and feel like a game of this type is probably waaay off the radar as far as getting me in trouble. If it matters, it seems there are also people who smoke pot in the game, though they do it out back, not actually in the game. Like I said, college town so not unusual.

c) Should the organization of the game be an issue for me? These guys don't seem very organized- they have different values for the colors each week, for example. This didn't really bother me so much before and I'm sure they are just figuring out stuff since it's a new game, but part of me find such irregularities a little uncomfortable if they are going to start charging to play. However, they DO seem to be providing a soft game that that I can beat, so I don't know that I should complain. I just don't know that I have full confidence in them should a dispute arise that they would be able to correctly and gracefully resolve it.

Anyway, I really enjoy playing live and have enjoyed this game, but I'm not sure it's for me. I'll be leaving the area in a couple months anyway (after which I hope to start my own, non-raked game), but I feel the experience of playing live is beneficial to a player like me who has only ever played online. Plus, it's just a lot of fun. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I guess I just want to know if this is the kind of game that could get me in trouble, or if this is just a standard/ fairly safe home game.

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Dump these losers...