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#1
12-15-2006, 08:08 PM
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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. 
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#5
12-15-2006, 08:26 PM
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Re: Sit and Gos- Is the rake fair?
I agree with all of this. Go Lee!
Just one thing I'm not sure about is the breakeven players eventually being pushed out at the high buyin SNGs. Aren't a lot of these dudes the same gamblers who have been playing these things forever? Nevertheless I do agree with the argument that if you keep the games viable for a few pros, they will tend to keep the games going and increase traffic. The key is just to somehow convince PS that if they halve their rake, they could double their business or more. Unfortunately this probably isn't something where they could experiment with a lower rake, then go back if it failed to drum up the necessary traffic. For one thing that would piss people off, and it would take a while to see any results. They'd have to be comitted for the long haul.
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#7
12-15-2006, 08:38 PM
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Re: Sit and Gos- Is the rake fair?
As one of those -2% - +2% high limit SNG players that DC was talking about, I agree with his post 100%. I love SNGs and will continue playing them on both Party and Stars for now, but once I get a block of free time I think I need to learn ring strategy since the playing pool on Stars just makes it too hard to overcome the rake for a significant profit, especially compared to cash games. Great post, and right on.
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#9
12-15-2006, 08:57 PM
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Re: Sit and Gos- Is the rake fair?
i think ive paid around 80K in rake after already subtracting rakeback and bonuses. thats pretty sick considering ive only made 95K. its sad that my edge is about the same as the rake.
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