A rake is a fee that poker rooms or casinos charge players for organizing a poker game. The amount of rake can significantly impact your long-term winnings and influence your overall strategy.
First, we will explain the different types of rake and how they are charged.
Percentage of the pot value
The most common rake scheme in online poker rooms involves taking a percentage of the pot from each hand, typically ranging from 2.5% to 10%. Generally, there is a “cap,” which is an upper limit on the rake. This means that once the pot reaches a certain size, no additional rake will be taken, regardless of how large the pot becomes.
Also, most poker rooms do not take rake at all if the hand does not reach the postflop. If you successfully steal the blinds, you win the entire pot. This is known as the “no flop, no drop” principle. Therefore, it’s important to choose your playing room carefully. Nowadays, even some online rooms take a rake from preflop play, which can significantly impact your expected value (EV) in those games.
Time fee
This rake scheme is primarily utilized in offline formats at high limits. All players at the table contribute a specific amount of rake every half hour, which is predetermined by the house.
«Dead Drop»
This is a very rare scheme in which only the BU player pays the rake for each hand. The amount is pre-set and not tied to the pot in any way.
The Impact of Rake on Gaming Strategy
There are two main spots in poker that require significant adjustments to high rake:
- Defending the Big Blind
- Defending against 3-bets
The presence of rake in the game reduces our expected value (EV). This means that as the commission fee increases, we should tighten our ranges. In practice, this leads to the conclusion that all our marginal calls should be converted into folds.
When it comes to postflop play, the rake continues to influence our strategy. The profitability of our marginal openings, calls, and 3-bets in the preflop stage will depend on the same marginal value bets, bluffs, and calls during the postflop phase.
In the section below, we will discuss how to create a big blind (BB) defense range against various openings. Once you grasp the fundamental principles of building this range, you’ll be able to design your own BB defense strategies that consider your specific rake structure.
Big Blind defense range
In this section, we will explore how to construct a solid defending range for the big blind against raises of any size. You can then use this approach to develop your own ranges, adjusting them to the specific rake structure and bet sizing at your poker room.
Let’s say our game has a fixed rake of $5 after a hand reaches postflop.
Live play. $1/$2. 9-max. Effective stack size $200.
Hero on BB with XX.
5 players fold, CO opens to $8, 2 players fold, Hero…?
To establish a solid defensive range in this situation, we first need to calculate our pot odds for making a call. We must call $6 to compete for a $12 pot, which consists of the following: the cutoff (CO) raises $8, the blinds total $3, and the hero calls $6, minus a $5 rake. This results in pot odds of $6/$12, which equals 0.5 or 50%. Therefore, for our call to break even, the bettor must have at least 50% equity against the CO’s opening range.
Before we continue, we should note one important point. Since we may not always reach a showdown, we won’t be able to fully realize the equity of our hands. This aspect is crucial when constructing optimal defensive ranges. Depending on the hand we have while in the big blind, we might require slightly more than 50% equity or slightly less.
A few words about equity
Each hand realizes its equity differently.
Strong hands, such as AA, AQo, or JTs, whether they are paired or suited, tend to achieve more significant equity. These types of hands often “over-realize” their equity, meaning they can make profitable calls even when their equity is lower than what is required for the pot odds.
Small offsuit hands realize less equity, for example A2o or Q7o. These hands often “under-realize” their equity; in the example above, they would need more than 50% equity to make a profitable call.
The position and skill level of players significantly influence the amount of equity they can achieve. A player in a favorable position is likely to realize more equity than a player who is out of position. Similarly, an experienced professional player will generally achieve more equity than a novice player due to their superior skills in post-flop play.
If your hand has borderline equity, consider the following:
- Call if you have a strong playable hand or if you believe you have a skill advantage over your opponent.
- Fold if your hand is weak or if you are uncertain about your skill advantage.
Now, with all of this in mind, let’s look at the equity of all possible hands in Hero’s range against the CO’s opening range:
On the left, we have the CO’s (cutoff) estimated range for opening raises. On the right, you can see the equity distribution of all hands against this range.
Before I show you which hands Hero needs to defend, let’s examine how much equity we would need if there were no rake involved.
Pot odds = $6 / $8 (CO open raise) + $9 (our call size + blinds)
Pot odds = $6 / $17 = 0.35 or 35% raw equity
As you can see, the difference is a whopping 15% (35% equity with no rake and 50% equity with rake)!
Now let’s see how different the ranges of defense will look with and without rake (I replaced unplayable unplayable off-suit hands with higher equity for playable suited hands with lower equity):
As you can see, the difference is more than significant.
3-Bet defence range
In this paragraph, we will examine the process of creating an optimal calling range when facing a 3-bet. We will consider variables such as the size of the 3-bet and the range that follows it.
Let’s look at another example:
Live. $1/$2. 9-max. Effective stack size $200.
Hero in CO with XX
5 players fold, Hero opens to $6, BU 3-bets to $18, 2 players fold, Hero…?
First, let’s look at the CO’s open-raising range in live games:
Red – Raise
Pink – Optional Raise
Blue – Fold
By analyzing our spot, let’s assume that Hero open-raises all “optional hands” from CO.
As for the BU’s 3-bet range, in live games it might look like this:
Red – 3-bet
Pink – optional 3-bet
Orange – 3-bet or call
Green – call
Blue – fold
By analyzing our spot, let’s assume that BU plays only “red and orange hands” via 3-bet.
To determine what range a player should defend on the cutoff (CO), we use the same logic as in the previous section. First, we need to find the pot odds:
Pot odds: 1 to 1.83 or 12/(18+6+3-5) = 0.35 = 35% (required equity in raw form)
Now, let’s calculate the conditional pot odds if there was no rake in the game:
Pot odds (without rake): 1 to 2.25 or 12/(18+6+3) = 0.30 = 30% (required equity in raw form)
As you can see, the difference in equity is not as sharp as in the previous case. This is because we have a capped rake. That is, the rake amount remains the same – $5, but the pot itself has become much larger. Last time $5 was withdrawn from a $17 pot, and this time $5 was withdrawn from a $37 pot.
Let’s look at what the defending range would look like in each case (again, I’ve cut off unplayable hands that won’t realize their equity enough):
Conclusion
The rake in poker plays a much bigger role than many people realize. Yes, we looked at examples with a fixed rake for live poker, and if you substitute the input data for online, the difference, of course, will not be so drastic. But believe me, it will still be noticeable. And if you consider that some of the popular online poker rooms today charge rake right from the preflop, the picture can be even worse.
Study your online rake retention system, and then use that data to develop optimal ranges. After doing some work, you may find that your ranges are not as tight as the examples in this article, but you may still be surprised at how much of an impact rake factors have on the ranges you play in online poker.
Remember: don’t underestimate the rake when choosing where to play. It’s more important than you think!
