Is this game beatable?

I've been playing at a local cash game venue and have been running hot. I have been thinking that I'm having a good swing because the rake is too much to make a profit in the long term. I was trying to work it out but I don't understand all this stuff so I'll give you guys the numbers:

Money won:
$820
Money invested:
$476
Net profit
$344
Games played:
14
Cost to enter one game:
$20+$14

So what is the rake% at this game? Is it beatable long term(the players are quite terrible) How many games would I need to play in order to take the ROI reasonably seriously?

Thanks in advance!

Holy crap, $14 rake on a $20 buy-in? Ow. =(

Yeah, the $14 rake comes in the disguise of being forced to buy a meal to enter

That's what.. 40% rake? Dude.. you should quit playing there. That's not rake.. that's rape.

The only "rake" I've seen that high were for charity tournaments, and at least half of that goes to the charity foundation that the game was being played for.

I think it is 70% rake, not sure though.

Better be one helluva meal. You'd have to have an enormous edge on the other players to make that rake beatable.

I don't think I have a 70% edge over my opponents.... Let's say that I improve a lot; is 70% beatable?

the meal cant be counted as rake unless it its inedible? Is it any good? What do you figure its worth and subtract it from rake amount. Even so seems still high...probably in the $7 -8 range?

Yeah thats about 70%.

Find a better game.

You're averaging $24.57 over those 14 games. Hypothetically, if it's a 9 handed SnG, total prize pool is $180, payouts are $90, $54, $36, zero for placing 4th or lower, I'm assuming you've won a couple outright and placed ITM like half the time. That's a heckuva nice run that I wouldn't expect to continue, unless you're playing against total droolers (which does happen live of course).

The payout structure is the key to figuring out how much of an edge you need. But with that kind of rake, I'd be looking at this as a social event and not an ROI issue. Or, if the ROI were important to me, I wouldn't play, I object to 10% rake online let alone 70%.

What? Does this ^ count towards freeroll club membership?

How much is the meal worth? How many people play in the tournament? (& how many get paid).

Seems ridiculously high imo. I doubt you'll ever be able to maintain an ROI high enough to keep eating & playing there for free.

suggestion - go to McDonalds & invite a bunch of the players over to your house for a weekly SNG (or a couple of them) and then swap houses where you meet at the following week. OR, order a pizza & charge them rake to play ($20+5 covers pizza for them & cleanup fees). Maybe twice a week? There's a few games like that where I live.

btw, you're doing awesome!!! (this wouldn't by chance be a 'brag' thread would it?).
Tournament fees where I live are a bit high (~100 players in them) but it's not charged with a 'tourney fee' added to the buyin. No, they're sleazier about it (lol) the money just isn't included in the prizepool (but rake works out to ~30%). They're not held in casinos but do have to abide by a bunch of gov't. regulations (ie. 'non-profit', some of the prizepool has to be donated, etc.). They do have dealers though, & a hall big enough for the events (pretty sure the hall is free because many of the players eat & drink at the establishment afterwards & the dealers work on a volunteer basis. {and no 'free' food}

Rake is 70%. You also might want to factor in food and drinks which is usually over priced. The rake is insanely high for the buy in amount, but if these players are the average fish player, then I think it can be profitable. How many play usually?

"hmm never thought about rake percentage probably because i don't have any yet.but when i do i will get back to this thread."

LOL? "Because I don't have any?" I can't wait for his response...

I never thought of it like that; I'm not sure how much it is worth to me. I would rather work out how much I'm loosing then how much the experience is worth to me

Give the guy a break; a lot of the very small games have no rake

lol nah this isn't a brag thread

There's usually about 60 players. The payout structure is rather retarded; 50% for 1st, the rest is distributed to the top 7 or so players in . So it encourages very loose play late when the blinds are large; at the final table a monster stack would be 4 M.

The players are rather awful. Limp way too much/ only raise good cards preflop/ don't adjust to the blinds, still limp K6, the exception with this is when at the final table, they tighten up with 1-2M and the magic all-in number for them is 2BB instead of 10BB/ most can't fold two picture cards, vast majority have bad preflop judgement. Just hopeless players really. Sorry about going on a bit about that just I only just got back from the said tournament and the plays I seen/comments they said truly made me wonder how I ever thought they were good competition.

I'm really interested in the concept of ROI; do you guys have any links to articles about it? How many games would I have to play to have a VERY rough estimate of it? Is it possible to beat a rake of 70%?

EDIT: If only it was that simple to get a home game going, it's illegal over here so McDonald's is definitely a bad idea + people don't like playing against me, I raise too much I've been told; hell a bunch of people just an hour ago were threatening to chop of my balls and other unpleasant stuff if I kept stealing "their" blinds(very satisfying for them to finally play back at me with their K high when I had a straight) + and they were very frustrated when I made a "terrible" play and donkeyed them( folded to me, on the CO with 25o, have 3 M effective stack, one of the three scared nits called my all-in with AJs and my pair of twos busted him, always fun) I guess I could learn a more "friendly" style if I was to host home games

^^ "Thats not rake its rape", all too true.
Quit playing there, that rake is ridiculous...

If this is the case, it doesn't sound too bad to me. Typical live tournament rakes are 30%+, so if you're getting an $8 value meal plus your tourny buyin for $34, then really the tournament is like $20+6.

I agree with this ^

Also, having had a bit of time to think about this, I think I'd keep playing if I were you.... it's worth it for the experience (& entertainment) alone.

In my town the live tourneys are very entertaining..., you know how they all limp... (& probably you get one who'll minraise the limpers... & they they all call)... it's the same thing in my area (except there's over 100 of them you have to wade thru... although I'd say ~10% of them do know how to play). .... Last one I played I had ~12bb's EP limps, MP calls, I shove in SB w 10-10, BB just flats, & EP flats (with a 16bb stack?). They both get allin on the flop, BB with 87o picking up a straightdraw & EP with AQo (he limped in pre on AQo with 16bb?) calls with Ahi.... AQ hits Q on turn, BB hits straight on river (AQ guy feels he's been done a huge injustice, lol).
The tourney I played before this one, my busto hand table dynamics were somewhat similiar to how you've described (we're at about 15 players left on two tables, top 8 get paid out of 100). Avg. chipstack on table is <10bb (maybe 8bb). MP limps, I have 3-3 in SB, & it's folded to me,.. I shove, MP goes into the tank... & says, "Damn, I really hate to call here but I think I have too"... he calls & turns over J-J <?? Too funny.

$20 + $14 = $34 total
rake/total=rake %

$14/$34= 41% rake. I've heard live play has the biggest roi% of all but even the very best live players would only breakeven vs the very worst player with this high a rake imo.

Now that cracked me up.

Really about 10%? So much tougher than the field I play at, only one competent player of the 60 or so(and no I'm not counting myself ) He still doesn't do many necessary things like push-fold but he can read players well and is aggressive

Yeah I think it's good experience too but I'm starting to get a little bit bored of it; it simply isn't exciting as it once was because I'm starting to realise that they all are really, really bad. It's kind of amusing sometimes though, especially when they are debating hands, logic is not their strong point lol. Probably going to start going to the casino for the regular tournaments instead

One thing I didn't add is by going here I basically gain entry every 4 games into a $3000 tournament; this particular month it is a $10000. The beauty of it is there's only 100 or so players and they are really bad; some guy called me big bets all the way with K4 on the first hand, he had TP, then went all-in on the river when he hit his two-pair, beautiful for me with my set There were 8 people in that pot too

SO let's assume I'm an average player, I gain $30. That means that the rake is actually $6.5. Therefore, the rake is at 32.5%. I think I'm better than the average player by a decent amount so it's less than this, but the $3000 prize pool isn't cash, it's something like a $2200 entry to a big tournament and $800 accommodation so it's not that flash so that brings it up. I could work it all out to see if this tournament is +EV but I guess it doesn't particularly matter

With the monthly bonus tourney thrown in it actually sounds totally worth it now.
As far as 10% being good players in my area - - they're the ones who play online (there's a handful of decent online players in my area, most play cash tables but one is an MTT reg. & is up over $120K online (town pop. of ~7,500).

There's a lot of people who play online where I'm at too. They play freerolls.... Would be pretty cool to know local poker fanatics

whilst this game your playing in is easy to beat as the field is terrible, im sure u could find a game where the players are just as terrible (i reckon 95% of 'poker players' are actually pretty bad) and the rake is more reasonable. I have little casino or live experience but all the standard online games i play (SNGs and MTTs) have usually charge 10% of the buyin. eg. $20+$2 or $15+$1.50

Live games though, it's just not the case. There are expenses involved (who's dealing.. (if there's dealers), who's cleaning up?,.. who's renting the place where the game is?....etc.). Pretty sure OP knows they can pay 10% tourney fee online.

Just a thought... find a game (or game(s) ) in your area and let us know where you can get it in at 10%.

exactly but forgetting one thing... the illegal/home games, always fun, no rake and bad players

Home games are good if you smoke or do drugs or smoke drugs.

Last week the host went into his garden shed mid game and came back with a rake.

Half of us laughed histerically.

I think the house is taking way too much for anyone to take it seriously! Play out your run ....but look for another place to bet your $34.00...No way a rake on $20 should be $14....that's money in their pocket!

At 34 dollars, i think the entertainment value alone is worth it. You can be aggressive and steal, constantly pissing people off. It sounds like a blast. If the meal was any good it is a bonus Just make sure you make it home with your marbles (don't piss em off so much they castrate you)

Seriously if you enjoy playing in the tourneys dont worry about the ROI just consider it a social event and just have fun with it. I really think most home games should be considered that way, usually the quality of play is horrible at best. Way too many limpers and chasers to get a good read on there play. You have to run well to profit in these usually. These types of tourneys are not a true test of skill IMO there is way to much variance to overcome with good play.

The way this is profitable is if the meal you buy is worth at least $12.

At first I ignored rake when looking at the stats I guess cuz my eyes just tend to gaze past rake because it's so standard to be 10% or less of the buy in online, and it was like 14 games... 476 spent... wtf? I looked at rake then and it was like WTF.

14 is too much dude, get out while you're ahead and find another game. Think of it this way, about a 1/4 of what would have been your profit was paid as rake. 14 x 20 = 280, Money returned = 820, its just not as profitable to play with such a high rake.

The funny thing is the other night they threatened to do just that amongst other things; they were advising to limp and raise on the flop so that we can all see the community and when I didn't comply they became so frustrated. I stole soo many chips and it really was quite funny; the best part about it was after tripling up on stolen pots and being close to chip leader one very frustrated player went all-in on a AA8 board after my c-bet: the fact that she was threatening to castrate me and poke my eyes out suggested she was on tilt so it was a fairly easy call with my J8, which held up against her K4. I'm not popular in her books anymore; she was chip leader and I abused her limping with crap tendency to eventually bust her. Anyway don't why I decided to share that; just a real fun night that makes me chuckle thinking about it