Question: Why does everyone get so upset about 'The Juice' In tourney?

[Zetack]

Suppose you enter twenty $100 + 10 tournaments and you cash five times for:

120
120
210
320
1500

Your cost to enter the tournaments was 2200 dollars and you won 2270. Who-hoo, you're in the black.

Suppose instead that the tournaments were 100 + 20. Now you have the same prize pools and the same cashes and you win the same 2270, but it now cost you 2400 to enter. Boo-hoo, now you're in the red.

Ok, suppose the 1500 cash were actually now a 15k cash. I suppose your point is that, having made so much money, you don't care about the extra 200 dollars in entry fees. Fair enough, I suppose, but everybody else's point is that, huge cashes are few and far between, and over the long term, extra juice can really eat into your returns.

Think of it this way, suppose you only entered one tournament, and you didn't cash, would you rather be out 110 bucks or 120 bucks?

You can do the same type of calculation with juice taken out instead of added on, the effect is the same: i.e. suppose you entered a tourney with a hundred dollar entry fee with 10 percent taken out vrs 20% taken out. Although in this case the size of the entry doesn't vary, the size of prize pool goes does, with the same type of effect on your results. With less less money in the prize pool, either fewer places get paid out or less money goes to the players that do get paid out. The higher the juice, the bigger the effect on your results (assuming you do occaissionally cash, of course).

--Zetack

EDIT:

Think of it another way. Suppose instead this were a juiceless lottery. 100 players get together and put 100 dollars in the prize pool and they draw lots to see who wins it (perhaps there are multiple places, whatever) But all the money gets paid out. If you participated in this enough times you would expect to break exactly even.

However, suppose the organizer took 10% out to pay for his time and effort to run this lottery -- now you expect to lose money playing this lottery over time. The more the organizer takes out, the more you expect to lose, over time.

In poker, of course, its not a lottery, you, as a good player, expect to have an edge over the field so you expect to make money, not break even. If your edge is large enough, you can make money even if the organizer takes money out. But in poker your edge over the field is relatively small, so the more the organizer takes out the harder it is to have a positive expectation and the smaller your positive expectation is, i.e. the less money you expect to make. If the organizer takes out more than your corresponding edge over the field, you are like the guy in the lottery, over time you will expect to lose money.

[CincyLady]

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Thus, if you spend 100, cash for 100, didn't you just double your money? Why does it matter what the house takes, if you doubled your money (or made even more than double your money)?

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If you pay 100 and win 100, you've broken even.

But the real meat is that if you pay 100+10 vs paying 100+15. You pay 115 and get the same prize pool as the 110 MTT.

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I guess I worded that wrong, what I meant by Cash 100, is that you made 100 more than your buyin was.

I'm still kind of new to poker (less than 5 years now), so I'm just getting to the point in my playing, where I am looking at these kinds of things. Because before, I pretty much played just for the entertainment of it.

Of late, I'm taking things a lot more seriously, hence why I started this thread.

[CincyLady]

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If you've ever walked into a store or something and they had a drop in box to win a trip, car or cash, that's sweepstaking...

For the small price of a stamp, an envelope, and in most cases, a 3" x 5" piece of paper or card with your details on it (name, address, phone number), you can win some really big prizes.

It is in a nutshell, just another form of gambling.


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this comparison is a little insulting. did you think this through at all? how many people have gone broke from losing too many postage stamps?

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Actually, I did think it through, as it is the most common place way ppl have experienced what a sweepstakes is.

Yes, I'm sure just like in other forms of gambling (which sweepstaking in it's purest form really is), there is a small percentange who've taken it too far, and spend too much on stamps and such.

However, for the vast majority of us, its not a problem and it's fun (just like playing the slots are for some, playing poker is for others, and playing the lottery is for others is too).

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Go rent the movie "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" to see what a sweepstaker is.

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Actually, she was a contestor (which requires a skill of some kind, aka solving a puzzle, writing a jingle, and many times requires you purchase the company product who's running it, in order to enter the promotion), not a sweepstaker (which is based on purely luck, because it's drawing based, and where it's against federal law for the sponsor to require you to buy their product to enter), but the principal is the same when it comes to being able to get a lot of prizes, just for entering.

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How many tournaments have you played in the last year ? Or ever ?

How much less money would you have right now if they had been raked an extra $5 each time ?

Does the fact that when you cashed, you made many times your buyin change this in any way whatsoever ?

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I've played in a lot of tourneys, cashed in a lot too (biggest cash was 10 grand in a Reeses Charity event in Ohio).

For the most part however, I've only recently been taking playing for a profit seriously. Prior to that it was mostly entertainment for me, so I enjoyed what ever wins I got.

That's changing for me, so hence why I asked the question about what the big deal was for high juice events, if you still made a profit (a profit bigger than the wages one would get in one's day job (and I make good money too at my day job I might add)) playing in them.

[CincyLady]

Zack, yours is the best explanation yet. I had never thought of it in that mannor. Now it all makes sense, and I get it now why it's not good if some events charge too much juice, because it eats into your long term profits.

Thank you for explaining it that way. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Cry Me A River]

When you go to the store, would you rather buy a quart of milk for $1 or for $5? They are the exact same quart of milk.

When you go play in a tournament, would you rather pay the casino $20 to host it or $50?

Do you like giving money away?

[Bonified]

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I've played in a lot of tourneys, cashed in a lot too (biggest cash was 10 grand in a Reeses Charity event in Ohio).


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Cincy, you're a little sensitive sometimes. I wasn't in any way questioning your experience or record. I was just trying to get you to see how extra rake adds up over time. Zack did it better than me though, so no problems.

[Nicok7]

How did this post get many intelligent responses so far?

[RoundTower]

what if you were in sweepstakes to make money, but the price of postage stamps went up from $0.50 to $25? It's still pretty sweet when you win a car.

[Todd Terry]

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but the ratio of rake/cost has to be way, way higher for any Internet tournament than it is for any live tourney.

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I don't think that's true Todd. There are plenty of small live tournaments out there raking 18-20% when you add everything up. And that's not even including the CEO poker tour :-).

8-10% is standard online, with the sole exception that I can think of, $5+1 SNGs.

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I was a bit unclear in my post. I meant the ratio of rake/cost to the casino, not the ratio of rake/buy-in. The marginal cost of hosting a tournament to the online sites is virtually zero, the average fixed cost isn't much higher. As opposed to casinos, who always have the costs of dealers, floorpeople, cashiers, cards, etc. If some multiple of the cost to the provider of the tournament is how the rake should be determined, then the online sites are raking us over the coals.

[rwesty]

If you play 1,000 $200+20 tournaments and cash for $300,000. You will profit $80,000. If these tourneys had been $200+10 you would have profited $90,000.

You don't notice it right away because the amount you profit is only $10 different than what it would have been. But in the long run it makes a huge difference.