Tournament Rake Analysis

Ragequit

Ragequit

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Hi guys, I did a study on Rake at pokerstars Sit & Go Tournaments (Full Ring). I'm just sharing what I found. You will hear many Cash regs talk about Rake and game selection. SNG players need to be similarly careful, as fees erode prize pools and your ROI (Return on Investment).


So let's get into it!


Ok. Let's say you play $3.50 SNGs. On Stars, $3.16 goes into the Prize pool and $0.34 is retained by the site as their fee. Nine players pay in a total of (9 x $3.50) = $31.50. So a total of (9 x $3.16) = $28.44 goes into the prize pool. At the same time (9 x $0.34) = $3.04 is retained by stars. This is the rent (if you like) for them to host the game. If we quickly work out a percentage (Entry Fees / Total Buyins), we find that Pokerstars keeps ($3.04/$31.50) = 9.7%. We will call this the 'Rake' of the tournament.


Briefly checking the lowest buyin of $0.50, we find that stars retains $0.06 of this and adds $0.44 from each player to the prize pool. Which means the rake is ($0.06 / $0.50) = 12%, which is a good bit higher than 9.7% on the 3-fiddys. I don't want this post to be unnecessarily long so I worked it all out. Here's what I found:






So what does this mean?

For me personally, it means that I avoid playing $0.50 and $1.50 SNGs like the plague. 12% disappearing from the total prize pool is not something I enjoy. Obviously we don't all have the bankroll for $7 and $15 SNGs. I'd recommend rolls of $300 and $600 for these respectively (At a minimum). But for most of us I think $3.50 is a nice compromise at only 9.7% rake and needs only about a $140 bankroll (40 x $3.50)*.



In Conclusion

If you you want to be a serious regular SNG grinder, and maximise your long term ROI, then I would not recommend playing SNGs below $7. You could throw in some $3.50 without worrying too much. But there's a huge difference between the 12% rake at $1.50 and 7.4% rake at $15. That's nearly 5%, which for some players is whole winrate. So whatever site you play on, make sure you know the rake. Some sites (Particularly the Sports betting ones) anything on the iPoker network should be checked carefully. I was playing on a similar site and found they were raking 15% of the buyin which is obscene. So choose your site carefully.



One disclaimer: Just because the rake is lower at the higher levels, doesn't mean you are ready to play there. You can't just move up to $15 SNG from $1.50 because you're getting a better Rake deal. Both YOU And your Bankroll must be ready. Opponents will be tougher, and therefore your winrate will go down. So what you save in Rake you might lose in winrate. For beginners playing at $0.50/$1.50, you can give $3.50 a try, save some Rake without worrying too much. Good experience. But maybe avoid $7.00 and higher until you are ready for tough competition. But if you are an experienced player then I encourage you to get a bigger bankroll, move up and save yourself some money.


Hope you enjoyed the article and got something out of it. Please feel free to ask anything in the comments below.


Give em hell out there,
Rage







* Search for SNG bankroll requirements. There is great material out there on this topic. 40x Buyins is a good place to start.
 
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whosdaboss25

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Good article yes 12-15% rake these sites are making a killing with there rake structure on these SNG's at lower levels it like murder for these newer players just starting to grind there bankroll upward hard to get going when your paying in a 12-15% rake to the site to play the SNG isn't it but that's the price people pay for only depositing 50-60 bucks on-line at a time and working up I guess. When all's they have to do is wait just a while longer and deposit 150-200 and they can payout just 7-9% rake instead and make a better ROI per SNG by going up to the $7 SNG's yes the compo is a little hard but that mean you just tighten up a little more with your hand standards and play better.
 
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chronical

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TY for the analysys.
The only thing I can add is that on most sites rake at mitcors seems liek a robery 888/PP but it's ussualy not filled with good players so it's not that bad. + from my experience, we all like to think that we are best at poekr but 5+$ games can be filled with regs, maybe not best, maybe not that strong, maybe... but still
 
Cajin007

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I guess without all the U.S. cash players, they have to up the maintenance cost for all the fish tanks. It's a very nice article, and i'm sure the same applies to their buy-in tournaments as well.
Wonder how many SNGs they host a year?
 
makisaa

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Well done! Very nice work and informations! Every site-company has its profits from our games. I think it would be more fair to have the same rake in all levels.
 
Navin Sarabjeet

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Hi guys, I did a study on Rake at Pokerstars Sit & Go Tournaments (Full Ring). I'm just sharing what I found. You will hear many Cash regs talk about Rake and game selection. SNG players need to be similarly careful, as fees erode prize pools and your ROI (Return on Investment).


So let's get into it!


Ok. Let's say you play $3.50 SNGs. On Stars, $3.16 goes into the Prize pool and $0.34 is retained by the site as their fee. Nine players pay in a total of (9 x $3.50) = $31.50. So a total of (9 x $3.16) = $28.44 goes into the prize pool. At the same time (9 x $0.34) = $3.04 is retained by stars. This is the rent (if you like) for them to host the game. If we quickly work out a percentage (Entry Fees / Total Buyins), we find that Pokerstars keeps ($3.04/$31.50) = 9.7%. We will call this the 'Rake' of the tournament.


Briefly checking the lowest buyin of $0.50, we find that stars retains $0.06 of this and adds $0.44 from each player to the prize pool. Which means the rake is ($0.06 / $0.50) = 12%, which is a good bit higher than 9.7% on the 3-fiddys. I don't want this post to be unnecessarily long so I worked it all out. Here's what I found:






So what does this mean?

For me personally, it means that I avoid playing $0.50 and $1.50 SNGs like the plague. 12% disappearing from the total prize pool is not something I enjoy. Obviously we don't all have the bankroll for $7 and $15 SNGs. I'd recommend rolls of $300 and $600 for these respectively (At a minimum). But for most of us I think $3.50 is a nice compromise at only 9.7% rake and needs only about a $140 bankroll (40 x $3.50)*.



In Conclusion

If you you want to be a serious regular SNG grinder, and maximise your long term ROI, then I would not recommend playing SNGs below $7. You could throw in some $3.50 without worrying too much. But there's a huge difference between the 12% rake at $1.50 and 7.4% rake at $15. That's nearly 5%, which for some players is whole winrate. So whatever site you play on, make sure you know the rake. Some sites (Particularly the Sports betting ones) anything on the iPoker network should be checked carefully. I was playing on a similar site and found they were raking 15% of the buyin which is obscene. So choose your site carefully.



One disclaimer: Just because the rake is lower at the higher levels, doesn't mean you are ready to play there. You can't just move up to $15 SNG from $1.50 because you're getting a better Rake deal. Both YOU And your Bankroll must be ready. Opponents will be tougher, and therefore your winrate will go down. So what you save in Rake you might lose in winrate. For beginners playing at $0.50/$1.50, you can give $3.50 a try, save some Rake without worrying too much. Good experience. But maybe avoid $7.00 and higher until you are ready for tough competition. But if you are an experienced player then I encourage you to get a bigger bankroll, move up and save yourself some money.


Hope you enjoyed the article and got something out of it. Please feel free to ask anything in the comments below.


Give em hell out there,
Rage







* Search for SNG bankroll requirements. There is great material out there on this topic. 40x Buyins is a good place to start.



Very nice analyzed.
But if you find this rake high i would like to advice you to make a calculation of the 6+ holdem rake:eek: cash and play money(for the americans and those who can't play cash)


You will be totally amazed HOW MUCH they take there


Good luck and may the cards be with you
 
Ragequit

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Cheers all, absolutely. Great to stay informed on Rake. Most recreational players don't understand what Rake is and are being taken to the cleaners. Bigger bankroll, higher games is definitely the way forward.
 
great_young

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I totally agree. If you want to be the best, you gotta beat the tough guys.
 
Ragequit

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Update: iPoker Analysis (For Comparison)

Hey guys,

I was really interested this evening to see how iPoker compares to Pokerstars in terms of Rake on SNGs. The results were pretty shocking. Take a look at what Ladbrokes charges players. I'm sure this is the same rake model on all iPoker skins. Can anyone confirm that?




Ladbrokes Poker - iPoker Network





So if you're grinding an iPoker client, don't play below €5 or you're just lining their pockets!

Rage
 
A

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Very useful analysis. But I almost didn't read this thread because PokerStars is in the title, and I haven't played there recently. But the analysis almost certainly applies to other poker rooms as well. Might I suggest tweaking the title to just "SNG Rake Analysis" and then just prefacing the post with "This was done using full ring SNGs at PS, but is certainly relevant at other sites."
 
Ragequit

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Great suggestion, is there any way for me to amend the title now?
 
Bozovicdj

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Great analysis! If you ever find spare time, do the same for MTTs, that would beeven more amazing then what you already posted.

As a comment on this: I'd say that is quite understandable that micro stakes pay more rake percentage wise.

I look at it this way: PS pays workers, servers, and other maintenance expenses for all the tournaments regardless of their buy-in. It is only natural to try and take as much money from the lower buy-ins, which are probably also being played the most. My best guess is that the amount (not percentage) of what they acquire from 0.5$ SNGs is not far off of what they acquire from 100$ SNGs considering the volume of play.
 
neiroob

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In tournaments there is also a huge rake, if you play a tournament with a buy-in of $ 215, then each player will receive a rake of $ 15.
 
A

AJantwan

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Great suggestion, is there any way for me to amend the title now?

For the record, I looked at some SNGs on ignition and the WPN network, and the buy-in is generally a flat 10%, so maybe there's less need to update the title after all :)
 
Ragequit

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Hey guys, thanks again. When a few of you mentioned MTTs it got me interested. I wanted to know how much Pokerstars make in Rake from different MTTs. That way I can plan which tournaments I'm going to play or avoid. So I figured it all out. Now I'm sharing it with everyone. I know it's going to help me, so I hope you all get something out of it too. The images look fuzzy but when you click on them they are crystal clear :) Using this data, which one's do you think are the best ones to go for and why?


All the best,


Rage








 
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Cajin007

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From the looks of it, rake is based on relative field density and popularity of the games offered. Average, I am guessing, looks to be around 8%. Also it seems the faster the game goes the lower the rake for it.
 
Ragequit

Ragequit

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Yeah agreed. And I think the $5.50 MTTs are looking like one of the optimal choices for most average bankrolls.

R
 
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