Cost of Business

For those of you who are grinding and depressed about breaking even most of the time. Here’s a few figures to chew on.:


• Full ring tables average about 75 hands per hour.
• This means you do about 8.3 orbits at each table every hour.
• Each orbit costs 1.5 big blinds to complete.
• Therefore 8.3 orbits costs roughly 8.3 x 1.5 big blinds = 12.5 big blinds per hour


Let’s say you like to 4-table full ring cash games. Then you can expect to spend 12.5 x 4 = 50 big blinds per hour at your tables.


If you play at NL5, then you post:


12.5 bb per table per hour
x 4 active tables = 50bb per hour
or (50 * $0.05) = $2.50 per hour


If you’re a Full Ring NL25 reg playing 2 tables at a time then your cost in blinds per hour will be approximately.


12.5 x 2 x €0.25 = €6.25 per hour


So there’s a simple and rough estimate of your hourly bills* at the tables. Multiply the big blind by 12.5, and then multiply that by the number of tables you play.


Hope this is useful. It certainly helps me to understand why my lossy and breakeven sessions happen, even when I’m playing well.


Lastly, I’m assuming that 6-Max players can simply multiply this figure by 1.5? And they pay approximately 18.75 bb per hour per table? Please comment if that’s not a good estimate.


12.5bb per hour full ring x 1.5 = 18.75 bb per table at 6-max



R



* hourly rates cited here do not include house rake or losses incurred due to variance / bad play. They are simple estimates based on blinds posted per orbit.

To be even more accurate, one could apply the rate of successful blind steals into that. I steal 50% of blinds at the 10nl FR tables I'm playing at. I probably win more than 50% of the time when I'm called when I'm in the button.

I realise this is bordering into the realm of skill vs pure cost of play time, but I suppose if you always folded, and never stole a blind then that's the cost of playing. I think one can reduce that cost by 50% or so though, due to stealing blinds.

Anyway, nice article!

Absolutely. You could amend the approximation to:

Cost/ hr =

12.5 * bb * # tables
+
[EV (bb) of Blind Steals per hour]


Thanks very much for your input.

R

Yes rake is very high in cash games but site promotions can lure you in,
If I get a double up before villain has finished typing a note on me after stealing and stealing I will probably be logged out too.

I think it is a bit simplistic to refer blind posting as cost of business. Yes this is a fixed cost and universal to all players and you cannot control this part as this is the nature of the game.

I would spend more time focusing on the variable parts which extend beyond blind stealing.

quant1986 said:

I think it is a bit simplistic to refer blind posting as cost of business. Yes this is a fixed cost and universal to all players and you cannot control this part as this is the nature of the game.

I would spend more time focusing on the variable parts which extend beyond blind stealing.

Click to expand...

Hi, I’m not suggesting that this is the only consideration. This is a rough study on the impacts of blind posting on hourly rates. Particularly relevant to nits and tight tags who fold preflop 80-90% of all hands, and thus making blind payment rates relevant.