Rake and Rents
If you visit different online casinos and poker rooms, you will find that house rules and policies vary. How your money is raked by the establishment is a rule you might want to become familiar with before putting any money on the tables.
In poker tournaments, the buy-in that you hand over is often the sum of both the tournament entry as well as the house’s rake. The standard house cut is 25%, but that’s not always the case. Certain charity poker rooms actually rake less. In New Hampshire, most poker rooms payout 80% of the tournament buy-in. Likewise, some smaller rooms might rake more to make up for other costs. There should always be a printed tournament structure available when you sign up for a tournament, and these often show how your buy in is divvied up. Take a peek.
In cash games, there are essentially two manners in which your money is raked; Time (sometimes called rent) and pot-rake. Foxwoods Resort and Casino takes a $5 time rake every half hour from each player at the table (with exception to some stud games). So, if you are playing $1/2 NL Texas Hold’em, you’re giving $10 every hour to the house. If you’re playing tight and not getting premium hands, a time rake is often taxing on your stack in smaller stakes games. You might not be playing any hands, but you’re still losing money.
With a pot rake, usually 10% up to a certain capped dollar amount of each pot is taken by the house before being awarded to the winner of the hand. This means that the money coming off the table is coming from the winners of each hand. This takes the pressure off off tighter players as time is not a constraint. Just 3 Miles away from Foxwoods is the Mohegan Sun casino. They take a pot- rake of 10% up to $4 maximum, from each pot. However, some of the charity games in NH take 10% up to $7 from each pot.
You should always know how the house is taking your money before you enter any poker game.
