Brisbane, Australia - can't be beat, right?

[zgall1]

The poker room for 5-10 has a 5% rake to $10. Does this make the game unbeatable?

[Grease]

I can't imagine having to pay a big bet out of almost every pot and still beat the game.

At least it's not 10% up to $10.

Hopefully people realize how bad this is and the room changes it, but I doubt that will be the case.

[teddyFBI]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't imagine having to pay a big bet out of almost every pot and still beat the game.

At least it's not 10% up to $10.

Hopefully people realize how bad this is and the room changes it, but I doubt that will be the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

I made this post in my blog (see my profile) a few months back about a similar rake structure at Star City, Sydney:


First off, a section entitled: The Game That Cannot Be Beat. I went to Sydney's resident casino, Star City, yesterday -- a mistake that I guarantee will not be repeated. The rake structure there, although I'd heard rumors about it, is indeed one of the most savage beasts imagineable, such that I don't think the limit games there are even beatable. Just how bad is it? Well, I sat down at a 5/10 table while I waited for something bigger, and the rake was, get this: 10% of the pot, capped at $8 (!!!), in addition to a time charge of $5 / half hour. At most American casinos I've been to, there is either a rake OR a time charge, but both!??? That's just unheard of...not to mention an $8 cap!!! Compare that to a typical online $5/$10 rake, which would be in the neighborhood of 10%, up to a $4 cap. Online you're paying approximately 35 cents to 45 cents per hand dealt (rough calculations). At Star City you pay (by my calc's) between 90 cents and $1.10, or thereabouts. Yes, nearly TRIPLE the rake that you would pay online. So just how good a poker player do you have to be to overcome this additional 60 cents / hand you pay in rake? Well, consider that over the course of 100 hands, you'll be paying the house an additional 60 freakin' bucks. That's 6 BB in a $5/$10 game. So unless you were beating the online game for 6BB/100 or more (which is unheard of, by the way), you'll be in the red at Star City. It's nearly incomprehensible how they get anyone to play there consistently, but I guess when you're the only game in town...I guess all of a sudden the Party Monster extra jackpot drop doesn't look so bad.

Anyway, I was there with an Australian 2+2 acquaintance, and we finally got seats at the $200NL table (which had a similarly preposterous rake structure, by the way: a $1 ante from every player every $@#$%#$ hand), and hmmm....I'm not quite sure how to best sum up what I saw there, but I think the most accurate way of putting it is that I was introduced to what can only be considered an entirely novel card game, based loosely on what we in the West refer to as NL Texas Hold'Em. I could say "the players were bad", but that wouldn't even begin to describe the plays that I saw. At the $5/$10 LHE table, there was ALWAYS at least 6 players, usually 8 or 9 to every flop. One hand had 9 to the flop, and the two hands remaining at showdown were 84 offsuit, which was crushed by 72 offsuit, which had flopped 2-pair. These were not blind hands. They were middle-position limps. At the $200NL table there was typically 5 or 6, and at least every other hand a player would call a pot-sized or all-in bet with second pair or worse. It wasn't a matter of these players ranking low on the NLHE skill-o-meter...rather it was as though they had devised their own completely foreign measure of texas hold'em skill. The blind structure and unspeakably shallow stack sizes were also conducive to crazy action. With a $200 max buy-in, and two five-dollar blinds, a proper raise if there had been a couple limpers in front of you would be up to $40 or $50. If/when that was called by the limpers (it inevitably was), it would leave you with around $150 behind, and the pot was also up in the $120 - $150 range...so you really only had one move: all-in for a pot-sized bet, which would nearly always be called by an opponent if he had a pair or any sort of draw. Long story short, in a little less than 2 hours, I left up $500 or so while my 2+2 compatriate left up $1,200. (Keep in mind this is a $200NL table.) There wasn't a single other player at the table who had won a dime while the two of us were there; we had collectively taken them for around 9 buy-ins, and I'm pretty sure there was no love lost when we decided to pack up and call it a day.

[aujoz]

I was Teddy's acquaintance in that trip to Star City - he is not exaggerating one bit.

[goofball]

I played in that game for a couple hours about 6 months ago, but it was mostly for the purpose of getting drunk on xxxx gold. or tooheys, I can't remember. Anyway when i played it had a $1/hand/player fee. Definitely couldn't be beat.

[knicknut]

I played that Star City game for $1/hand as well. Absolutely horrific (and no free drinks either, IIRC).

Unfortunately since it's the only game in town and I had no computer for my 5 months in Oz, I had no choice when I wanted to get my fix once a month. As Teddy said, though, it was about the juciest game I've ever seen--won the biggest pot of my life when my underfull on the river was bet, raised, and coldcalled twice BEFORE it got to me, and my underfull still held up. Rake killed any long term profitability but I ended up up and it was still a good time (not to mention I was under 21, so I couldn't play B&M in the states yet)

[Epple]

Reason it is juicy is because anyone that knows how to play wouldn't touch that game, the rake is too high. Try Crowns casino in Melbourne, their rake is less.

[aujoz]

[ QUOTE ]
Reason it is juicy is because anyone that knows how to play wouldn't touch that game, the rake is too high. Try Crowns casino in Melbourne, their rake is less.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is very bad thinking.

1) a juicy game is one that is profitable. don't discount a place because of its rake. discount a place because of its overall profitability.

mega-bad players + high rake > world class super star players + low rake



2) Brisbane is about about 1000 miles from Melbourne (Crown Casino). Unless you're looking at going on a poker holiday (from out of country/state), and trying to decide where to go, there are no people who would need to make a choice *between* the Brisbane or Melbourne venues.

They simply serve different markets.



Having played a decent sample size at both Sydney and Melbourne, I believe that Sydney is far more profitable for NL, although, because they serve very different markets, this comparison is not of much use. The Melbourne players have some idea - the Sydney players have none.

[Jago]

Actually, isn't the 1/2 NL game that's raked and time charged and the 5/10 limit game that has the rake + $1/hand?