The Rake Is Eating You Alive

Saturday night at Rivers. Guy to my left has played every hand for three hours. He looks miserable. Says the cards are against him. (The rest of that night's table — the Capital One VP, the 55-year-old who plays like a machine, the GTO kid, Buddy A — is the subject of a separate piece called Saturday Night at River's.)

Eight players, thirty hands an hour, rake about eight bucks a head. That's $240 an hour the house pulls off that table. Divide by eight. Thirty bucks an hour, before tips. You're paying that just to sit there.

The casino posts the rules. They gotta make a living. Dealers need paychecks. Same as laser tag — nobody complains about the per-hour cost at laser tag. Fine. But if you're bleeding every Saturday and you don't know why, that's on you.

Tip your dealer. They make about two-thirds from tips. Just do it.

If you're already past the basic EV-of-AJo question and into the squeeze-the-limpers weeds, the math gets worse before it gets better — that's the subject of a piece on squeezing limpers against the rake.

Here's the thing. You sit down with AJo. Someone raises. You gotta know what you're calling. Eight players, multiway pots likely, and you're already paying thirty an hour. The math failed before the flop. You're folding AJo not because it's a bad hand. Because the hand doesn't work when you factor in what the house takes out of every pot. The single number that decides whether you're playing poker or donating — your stack-to-pot ratio — is the subject of a piece called The One Number.

He's not bad at poker. He's bad at math.