My poker partner and co-editor of this website pointed out to me an interesting observation one day while we were sitting at a $4/8 limit table. Do any of you have an opinion on this?
He said a table of 10 of us could be sitting at a table at the casino for 4 hours and with $100 each (that'd be $1000 all together) and if none of us left and none of us rebought in, the house would have most of the $1000 and most of us would barely win or none of us would win...so supposedly the house is just dealing and the poker playing is between the 10 of us..but with the rakes the house takes, we are all already on the losing edge.
I wasn't quite sure how that could be and he explained it to me.
He said we see an average of about 200 flops in 4 hours, so about 50 flops an hour. The house takes a rake of about $3 per hand in say, a $4/8 limit game. So after 200 flops, the house would have about $600.
Then there's the tipping of the Dealer for about $1 each time...that's another $200. I'm thinking wow...that's $800 that didn't even go to any player. He said there'd be even more lost if there was a rake taken for a bad beat jackpot.
The only reason you see player's winning and having stacks in front of them is because you don't have the same player's sitting down for 4 hours and also there is a constant rebuying in throughout the 4 hours...so there's always tons of money being put into the table. ..Some goes to the winning players and some goes to the dealer's.
What I thought was interesting was the fact that if NOBODY rebought in, nobody could win by the end of 4 hours, the house would have it all.
The reasoning is sound although you will see more like maybe 40 flops in an hour and probably less in a no limit game, but also a lot of houses in Vegas take a max of $4 for the rake so the end result is close to what you list. This is one strong reason for not playing lower limit games, because the pots are generally smaller, so a larger percentage of the pot goes to the house. Thank goodness there is always a steady flow of players and plenty of rebuying or it would be impossible to win over time.
