Gigabet is my hero...
I posted something on a CardPlayer forum... figured I'd repost it here on my blog. The full thread can be found at CardPlayer.com.
A lot of people on this thread have looked at a few things I said in interviews and on the site and somehow came to the conclusion that I don't think poker is beatable. I've never said that. I know for a fact that poker is beatable. I've sustained myself just on poker for the last five years. I do think anybody trying to beat this game for a living, though, is doing themselves a huge disservice if they are playing small and medium stakes in live casinos.
Here are a couple interesting things to think about :
1) CardPlayer had a survey a few years ago where they asked readers whether they were up or down overall. If I remember right, only 20% of readers responded that they were down... 25% were beating the game and 55% were breaking even. Poker is a great game like that because it is SOOOO easy to trick yourself into thinking you're winning. A lot of times I'll catch myself after a losing session excusing the loss.
"Well, if those Kings had held up, I'd be winning for the session... so I'm not really down. Plus I got $50 in the mail for my birthday from my uncle... so really, I'm up for the day."
2) There was an anthropology book written about poker back in the 70s by a guy named David Hayano. He broke down four different types of "professional" poker players. These types were all players who were trying to make their money exclusively by poker. He found that most "pro" players drift back and forth between real jobs and poker because they would continue to go broke. That doesn't necessarily mean that most of these pros this guy studied were losing players... it does mean, though, that they weren't making enough at poker to sustain themselves.
3) A few people have talked about how the stakes effect the beatability of the game. I don't think there is any player out there who could consistently beat a 2/4 limit game in California for anything over minimum wage. In California, they take a drop instead of a rake... so the house takes $3 out of every hand regardless of how big the pot gets. The rake ends up being a lot higher than 10% of the pot. Then you add in the dealer tokes. Bottom line is when I was propping the games in San Jose, none of the props were beating the 2/4 game. The 3/6 game is where it started getting beatable for most of us... but not for a lot. Online, however a 2/4 game is quite beatable. The rake structure is different and you don't have to worry about dealer tokes. The percentage of players who beat the 2/4 limit games online, though, is lower than the percentage of players who beat the 20/40 limit games online. The reason for this is NOT because the players at the lower limit games play too fishy and your aces are more likely to get cracked. The reason is because the rake paid is a smaller percentage of each pot, of each big blind, and of each average buyin... which leaves more money on the table to be thrown around between the winning players.
4) After spending years making my money playing poker, I can say definitively that the best way to make money for a medium stakes player (anybody playing less than 100-200 limit) is multi-tabling the limit games online. There are hundreds of online players making six-figure a year incomes and a handful of players making seven. I personally have come to the conclusion that limit holdem games is the way to go... sit-n-gos, tournaments, nl games, non-holdem games... they are all beatable. But they aren't beatable for as much as the boring but trusty limit holdem game.
5) If you are a good limit holdem player, you'll win around 60% of your sessions. Let's suppose you're like me, though, and only win about 55% of your sessions. That means the chances of any one session being a losing session is 45%, the chances of any two sessions both being losers is .45 x .45. Stay with me now... this is going somewhere. The chances of any four sessions all being losing sessions is .45 x .45 x .45 x .45 = roughly 4%. What I take this to mean is that if you have four sessions in a row where you lose, it is much more likely that you are a playing with a negative ev than that you are just getting unlucky. Going even further with this... if you put in a solid week of online limit play and multitable, it's not that hard to get in 5 or 6 thousand hands a week. This is the equivilent of a month's worth of live play. Being positive after a 5000 hand week for a winning player is a lot more likely than being positive after a single session... I'd estimate somewhere in the 80 - 90 % range. If you have two weeks back to back that you're down even though you've gotten in > 5000 hands, the sad truth is it is statistically improbable that you are just on a bad run. You are much more likely a losing poker player.
IN CONCLUSION :
Something went very wrong with poker. Back in the day there must have been some guy with a lot of time on his hands who came up with this game and played it out in some field somewhere with his buddies. Then some other guy saw them playing and decided he could make a decent chunk of money charging all of them to come inside and play in his bar. That's where poker went wrong.
Poker was supposed to be an even-sum game... like chess, scrabble, backgammon, bowling, pool, etc. Somewhere something got screwed up, and operators saw poker more like blackjack or slots. I blame Vegas and the whole $/sq ft mentality. A rake is easy to justify, though, because you have so many people to pay... dealers, security, floorpeople, brushes, cashiers, cocktail waitresses, electricity, etc.
Then back in around 1997, it got even worse with online poker. Here was a completely different business model then the live counterparts... yet everyone based their revenue model on what was already out there. The first, Planet Poker, based their pricing model on the live counterparts... then every online cardroom that came after based it on the existing online operations. Overhead is SOOOOOO much lower online. And what's more is the games are played so much quicker, so the cost/hr is higher for the players. The rake structure online is based on what players are willing to pay, and not what operators can reasonably afford to offer. There should not be a rake in online poker.
The rake is what makes poker a hard game to beat. It's not enough to be better than average to beat the game as it currently is... you have to never be worse than the 3rd best player at your table. If it weren't for the rake, more than 50% of players would be winning players. Losing players would last longer. All of the games would be softer at every limit. You'd have multitabling 2/4 online players making six figures a year and 15/30 players making over a million a year. Poker would explode and become more popular than anybody could ever imagine. This is the way poker can be and should be. RakeFree.
- Dutch Boyd
=====
One more thing... however you might feel about me personally, the idea of eliminating the rake is good on its own merits. There are plenty of bad people in history who desired world peace... it does not mean that world peace is a bad idea. RakeFree is a good idea.
A lot of people on this thread have looked at a few things I said in interviews and on the site and somehow came to the conclusion that I don't think poker is beatable. I've never said that. I know for a fact that poker is beatable. I've sustained myself just on poker for the last five years. I do think anybody trying to beat this game for a living, though, is doing themselves a huge disservice if they are playing small and medium stakes in live casinos.
Here are a couple interesting things to think about :
1) CardPlayer had a survey a few years ago where they asked readers whether they were up or down overall. If I remember right, only 20% of readers responded that they were down... 25% were beating the game and 55% were breaking even. Poker is a great game like that because it is SOOOO easy to trick yourself into thinking you're winning. A lot of times I'll catch myself after a losing session excusing the loss.
"Well, if those Kings had held up, I'd be winning for the session... so I'm not really down. Plus I got $50 in the mail for my birthday from my uncle... so really, I'm up for the day."
2) There was an anthropology book written about poker back in the 70s by a guy named David Hayano. He broke down four different types of "professional" poker players. These types were all players who were trying to make their money exclusively by poker. He found that most "pro" players drift back and forth between real jobs and poker because they would continue to go broke. That doesn't necessarily mean that most of these pros this guy studied were losing players... it does mean, though, that they weren't making enough at poker to sustain themselves.
3) A few people have talked about how the stakes effect the beatability of the game. I don't think there is any player out there who could consistently beat a 2/4 limit game in California for anything over minimum wage. In California, they take a drop instead of a rake... so the house takes $3 out of every hand regardless of how big the pot gets. The rake ends up being a lot higher than 10% of the pot. Then you add in the dealer tokes. Bottom line is when I was propping the games in San Jose, none of the props were beating the 2/4 game. The 3/6 game is where it started getting beatable for most of us... but not for a lot. Online, however a 2/4 game is quite beatable. The rake structure is different and you don't have to worry about dealer tokes. The percentage of players who beat the 2/4 limit games online, though, is lower than the percentage of players who beat the 20/40 limit games online. The reason for this is NOT because the players at the lower limit games play too fishy and your aces are more likely to get cracked. The reason is because the rake paid is a smaller percentage of each pot, of each big blind, and of each average buyin... which leaves more money on the table to be thrown around between the winning players.
4) After spending years making my money playing poker, I can say definitively that the best way to make money for a medium stakes player (anybody playing less than 100-200 limit) is multi-tabling the limit games online. There are hundreds of online players making six-figure a year incomes and a handful of players making seven. I personally have come to the conclusion that limit holdem games is the way to go... sit-n-gos, tournaments, nl games, non-holdem games... they are all beatable. But they aren't beatable for as much as the boring but trusty limit holdem game.
5) If you are a good limit holdem player, you'll win around 60% of your sessions. Let's suppose you're like me, though, and only win about 55% of your sessions. That means the chances of any one session being a losing session is 45%, the chances of any two sessions both being losers is .45 x .45. Stay with me now... this is going somewhere. The chances of any four sessions all being losing sessions is .45 x .45 x .45 x .45 = roughly 4%. What I take this to mean is that if you have four sessions in a row where you lose, it is much more likely that you are a playing with a negative ev than that you are just getting unlucky. Going even further with this... if you put in a solid week of online limit play and multitable, it's not that hard to get in 5 or 6 thousand hands a week. This is the equivilent of a month's worth of live play. Being positive after a 5000 hand week for a winning player is a lot more likely than being positive after a single session... I'd estimate somewhere in the 80 - 90 % range. If you have two weeks back to back that you're down even though you've gotten in > 5000 hands, the sad truth is it is statistically improbable that you are just on a bad run. You are much more likely a losing poker player.
IN CONCLUSION :
Something went very wrong with poker. Back in the day there must have been some guy with a lot of time on his hands who came up with this game and played it out in some field somewhere with his buddies. Then some other guy saw them playing and decided he could make a decent chunk of money charging all of them to come inside and play in his bar. That's where poker went wrong.
Poker was supposed to be an even-sum game... like chess, scrabble, backgammon, bowling, pool, etc. Somewhere something got screwed up, and operators saw poker more like blackjack or slots. I blame Vegas and the whole $/sq ft mentality. A rake is easy to justify, though, because you have so many people to pay... dealers, security, floorpeople, brushes, cashiers, cocktail waitresses, electricity, etc.
Then back in around 1997, it got even worse with online poker. Here was a completely different business model then the live counterparts... yet everyone based their revenue model on what was already out there. The first, Planet Poker, based their pricing model on the live counterparts... then every online cardroom that came after based it on the existing online operations. Overhead is SOOOOOO much lower online. And what's more is the games are played so much quicker, so the cost/hr is higher for the players. The rake structure online is based on what players are willing to pay, and not what operators can reasonably afford to offer. There should not be a rake in online poker.
The rake is what makes poker a hard game to beat. It's not enough to be better than average to beat the game as it currently is... you have to never be worse than the 3rd best player at your table. If it weren't for the rake, more than 50% of players would be winning players. Losing players would last longer. All of the games would be softer at every limit. You'd have multitabling 2/4 online players making six figures a year and 15/30 players making over a million a year. Poker would explode and become more popular than anybody could ever imagine. This is the way poker can be and should be. RakeFree.
- Dutch Boyd
=====
One more thing... however you might feel about me personally, the idea of eliminating the rake is good on its own merits. There are plenty of bad people in history who desired world peace... it does not mean that world peace is a bad idea. RakeFree is a good idea.
posted by Dutch Boyd at
06:54
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