Sat, May 18, 12:52am by Ethan Anderson
Last Updated Fri, Jan 17, 1:41am
Poker is a game between players, with the casino, whether it be land-based or online, serving as a facilitator for the game. The casino of course, makes money from the game of poker via the poker rake fee.
Without the rake, the poker room wouldn’t make any money.
What Is The Poker Rake?
Rake is the small amount of money that’s taken out of the pot by the casino after most hands. This is essentially the way the table pays for the game; the casino doesn’t actively play against the players at the table, so they must make their money in a different way. The rake is usually taken only after the end of the preflop betting. The following is a survey of the rake structures at six major Internet poker rooms. For all the work that went into this the bottom line is that the rakes are more or less than same among every site surveyed except Pacific Poker, which has moderately higher rakes. $2 / $4 to $10 / $20 4 - 5 $1.00.
Find the best cash games in town with our extensive list of cash games in the Las Vegas area, including Downtown, Henderson & Southeast, North Las Vegas, Summerlin & Northwest, and The Strip. Click on any of the listings to see complete details, including minimum and maximum buy-ins, rake and comp info, and more. There are 31 poker rooms in the Las Vegas area, and we at PokerAtlas provide complete and up-to-date information about every room in every location including Downtown, Henderson & Southeast, North Las Vegas, Summerlin & Northwest, and The Strip. Poker is better in Las Vegas. The rake in Las Vegas is lower than at many other places in the world. The cap is normally $4 and even with a tip of $1-$2, the effective rake is relatively low. The dealers are skilled and the games are therefore often fast-paced. Tip the dealer if you win a pot when a flop is dealt. May 15, 2018 The ARIA’s rake is ten percent up to $5 for all cash games below $5/$10, and high-limit games are assessed a time charge. While most Las Vegas poker rooms adopt a $4 maximum rake, the ARIA’s $5 rake is commensurate with other high-end poker rooms, such as the Wynn and Bellagio. Also, like other higher-end rooms, there are no bonus drops.
Poker rake is the free charged by the live poker or online poker room. It is used to generate revenue. There are different types of poker rakes. One type is the pot rake.
During cash games, a small proportion of the pot will be removed by the dealer upon the completion of a hand. Poker networks differ in exactly how they do this, but it is normal for no rake to be taken from the pot unless the hand makes it to the flip. If a player raises pre-flop and everyone folds, no rake is taken. A typical amount for this type of pot rake is between 5 and 10 per cent of the total pot in cash games.
Some casinos use the dead drop, to ensure everyone pays the same rake.
The player on the button pays an agreed fixed rake to the dealer before the hand begins. As an alternative to the above and a policy that applies to land based casinos is timed collection.
This is where a fixed amount of the rake is collected, for example, every 30 minutes from all players. Timed collections and dead drops are less common and most of the online poker sites use the pot rake method, which is understood by all cash game players. In most legal jurisdictions, taking a rake from a poker table is illegal if the party taking the rake doesn’t have the proper gaming licenses or permits.
The gambling laws in many jurisdictions do not ban poker player in a private dwelling, provided nobody takes a rake.
How Do You Calculate The Rake?
The rake is calculated differently depending on the type of game being played.
In cash games, the rake is based on the amount of real money in the pot. For tournaments, there is a pre-set rake amount built into the buy-in. In online cash games, the rake will often vary based on the stake being played, but it is a pre-determined threshold of rake that is taken up to a certain cap.
For example, a $0.01 might be taken for every $0.20 in the pot, with a max rake of $0.20. In most live casinos, the rake is usually at 10 per cent up to a cap of between $3 and $5. The rake is almost always much less punitive the higher you go in stakes. The lower you play, generally the more the rake hurts you.
Using The Rake As Part Of Your Strategy
Poker rooms increasing their rakes is a part of poker life.
There are a few adjustments players can make to their game to try and get ahead of the game.
Try and avoid small pots
The rake diminishes, as a percentage of the pot, as the pot grows beyond the size necessary for the maximum rake. For example, in a room with a 10 per cent, $6 maximum rake taken at dollar increments, any pot of $10 on up to $60 will be raked the full 10 per cent. However, a pot greater than $60 will be raked at less than 10 per cent.
The larger the pot is beyond that, the lower the percentage of the pot will be raked. A $60 pot is raked at $6, exactly 10 per cent. Meanwhile, a $120 pot is also raked at the maximum $6, which is 5 per cent of the pot.
Avoid heads up pots
There are two reasons for avoiding heads up pots.
One is because two-person pots are likely to be smaller than multi-way hands. It also gives the house an advantage, because the pot is raked on its total size, not the amount you’re actually winning.
If you win a heads up pot of $60, the house rakes 10 per cent up to $6. Your winnings have been raked at 20 per cent, $6 from the $30 your opponent contributed!
On the other hand, if the $60 pot is a 6-way hand, then you are only having 12 per cent of your winnings raked, since you only contributed $10 and are winning $60, hypothetically.
Online Casinos and Rake Alternatives
The rake is more or less here to stay.
It is used universally in online poker, but there are some alternatives in live poker, such as time charge. This is popular in no-limit high stakes games. In this system, every player pays a set fee for being at the table, usually every half hour or hour. In exchange for paying this charge, the casino does not take rake from every pot.
There are a number of online poker rooms that offer different rake fees. Depending on the type of game you play, the rake fees will be different.
Before you play online poker at any online casinos, and any game type, you should check what the rake is and how it is calculated because each and every site will take different amounts and calculate it differently.
Update: This article was published in early 2014. Since that time, Caesars has made drastic improvements to its poker product. Caesars Palace moved its poker room into the sports book area. It is much more comfortable and attractive to passersby. Caesars Palace dropped its rake from $5 to $4 cap. It also removed the jackpot dollar. This put it in line with the largest Las Vegas poker rooms.
Harrah’s dropped its max rake from $5 to $4, but kept its jackpot drop. The Quad/Linq/Imperial Palace poker room is no longer in operation.
Original Article
There is a rumor floating around Las Vegas that Caesars Palace will close its poker room after the World Series of Poker Circuit event leaves town later this month. The poker room is located next to the Pure Nightclub. The speculation concludes that Pure will take over the space vacated by the poker room. Caesars Palace will still offer poker, but it will be a much smaller scale, according to these reports.
The estimates are that 15 tables will be spread in the new room that will be located within the table games on the main casino floor. There are currently 29 cash game and 33 tournament tables, according to All Vegas Poker.
Caesars Palace was intended to be the flagship for poker in Las Vegas when it opened in 2006. Many players feel that the opening of Venetian’s poker room doomed Caesars Palace. The latest reviews of the poker room at Caesars Palace are all below average.
The issues with Caesars Palace are not unique to poker rooms owned by Caesars Entertainment, its parent company. The company closed two of its poker rooms in the past two years. O’Sheas closed its poker room to make room for a remodel and expansion of Imperial Palace. O’Sheas reopened, but without a poker room.
![Casino Casino](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/7d/c6/737dc6815d01489a64f11ab7813b92df.jpg)
Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall closed in 2013 for a remodeling and rebranding. It will reopen as The Cromwell, but without poker. The company’s remaining poker rooms are small and draw mostly hotel guests and a few locals.
Comparing Caesars Entertainment’s Las Vegas poker rooms to competitors
We compared the traffic at Caesars Entertainment’s poker rooms with large ones in Las Vegas the past two weekends. Most of this information was found on the Bravo Poker app.
The numbers below represent cash game traffic at poker rooms owned by Caesars Entertainment at 9PM on March 1, 2014:
• Caesars Palace – 9
• Planet Hollywood – 6
• Flamingo – 5
• Harrah’s – 3
• Bally’s – 3
• Rio – 2
• Quad – 1
• Planet Hollywood – 6
• Flamingo – 5
• Harrah’s – 3
• Bally’s – 3
• Rio – 2
• Quad – 1
Large Las Vegas poker room traffic at same time:
• Bellagio – 30
• Venetian – 25
• Red Rock – 19
• Orleans – 18
• Aria – 17
• Wynn – 12
• MGM – 10
• Venetian – 25
• Red Rock – 19
• Orleans – 18
• Aria – 17
• Wynn – 12
• MGM – 10
This ratio is consistent with the Las Vegas poker surveys performed by Two Plus Two four times a year. (Author’s note: I help compile that info.)
Bellagio had more cash games than all Caesars Entertainment poker rooms combined. There were seven poker rooms with more traffic than Caesars Palace. Two of those were locals’ casinos.
What does Caesars Entertainment do wrong?
House Rake Poker
The first reason Las Vegas poker players will often give as to why they do not play at Caesars Entertainment properties is the rake. The company’s poker rooms all take a $5 max drop. This is the worst in the city. All other poker rooms in Las Vegas have either a $3 or $4 drop. Caesars Entertainment properties also take a jackpot dollar. The only exception to the jackpot rake is in the Rio Convention Center during the World Series of Poker. The $5 max rake still applies.
Caesars was not the only group that tried to up its rake to $5. Some Station Casinos poker rooms tried to raise the rake up to $5. Player counts at Station properties dropped quickly and management realized that was a mistake and reinstated the $4 max drop. Unlike Stations, Caesars decided to stick with it. Slot machines los angeles ca.
The best known Caesars jackpot in recent years was the MegaBeat. This was a citywide bad beat jackpot that paid any player that was seated in a game at any Las Vegas Caesars poker room. Bad beat jackpots can be problematic. The biggest issue is the hundreds of thousands of dollars that leave the poker economy before it is hit. Most of that money leaves the poker rooms once it is unlocked. Most Caesars rooms now pay high hand jackpots.
Jackpot drops are not popular among experienced players. This seems to be demonstrated by the fact that the top four Las Vegas poker rooms do not offer any jackpot. All four of these rooms – Aria, Bellagio, Venetian and Wynn – offer a $4 max rake. This makes the effective rake one-third lower than Caesars properties, assuming a player does not hit a high variance jackpot hand.
Some might argue that these rooms do not offer a jackpot because they are already busy. On the other hand, these rooms are busy because they do not have a jackpot drop.
What can Caesars do to improve poker business?
Caesars may be content with its low-volume poker rooms. Poker is never a substantial source of revenue. If there is motivation to improve the situation, there are several options.
WSOP Poker Room
A WSOP poker room was launched last week for Bally’s in Atlantic City. It allows players to enjoy live and online play at the same time. That would require a mobile app for WSOP in Nevada, but the same concept would work well in the home of the world’s largest poker tournament series.
Caesars Palace would have been the most logical place for a WSOP poker room. If that room closes, there are still several poker rooms on the Strip that this could be implemented. It would require expansion of an existing room. That casino floor space could be replaced by closing other poker rooms owned by the company. Rio might seem like the logical location for this type of project, but it is too far from the Strip. The shuffling of several properties to the interactive company makes this idea even more feasible.
A poker room the size of what I picture could remove the jackpot drop to stay competitive with large Las Vegas poker rooms. Smaller rooms that would continue to exist could keep promotions.
Lower rake to $4 Max
The highest rake in Las Vegas is a deterrent to many players. Bringing the excessive rake down to the industry standard would help the company compete against MGM and independent rooms.
Play poker community anger at Venetian to its advantage
Casino Poker Rake
The online poker community is furious with Las Vegas Sands due to Sheldon Adelson’s war against gambling on the Internet. This is the perfect chance to capitalize on that by advertising that Caesars Entertainment is a proponent of online poker and lobbies for its expansion. The Venetian is a short walk to all Las Vegas Strip properties owned by Caesars Entertainment.