PokerStars vs. PartyPoker (rake)

I made a spreadsheet sometime ago where you could input some data from your database as to the amount of rake paid etc. and it would tell you how much RB% you need to breakeven when comparing 2 sites etc. it took into account rake cap, rake%, avg pot size and some other variables. Unfortunately I can't upload the file here, however add me we'll share skype and i'll tell you how to use it. After that you can always compare rake between rooms on your own.

whoa, that sounds nice maheepsangari

could that spreadsheet work on google docs?

let me check. I think it should.

BTW just ran quick numbers for NL 2. If you play on stars and are bronze and I only take into account the 1000 FPP reward and no Stellar rewards then you need 32.5% RB on Party to breakeven. Or you need to win at a higher rate at Party to make up.

Anyway let me try with google docs.

Aw...variables? Apparently I have no idea how rake works. I thought it's just a percentage from every pot that goes to the poker room. Though, bb/100 hands would not make much sense if this was true.

So it's not 2.6 times cheaper to play on PokerStars?

I would really appreciate if someone could find some time to give me a short overview of how it works. Or at least a link to an easy and well-written article.

Ok here goes.

You can't edit it so go to File, Download as and then you cal play around with it.

Room 1 is where you play, Room 2 is where you are planning to move or want to compare.

All bold cells have a formula and other cells need to be input.

I'll run you by how it works using NL 10 at Pokerstars comparing with William Hill for example.

I enter the bb as 0.10 for Nl 10, Rake % and rake CAP are very easy to find, just google the room name followed by rake structure and you'll get it.

For Stars I enter 4.5% and $1.50 as the respective numbers, do the same for William Hill.

The Room CAP pot size is the amount of bb in the pot when rake CAP hits, quite self explanatory.

Now you need to go into your database, filter for hands that were below the CAP size on this limit. In HM2 you'll find it in More Filters, Advanced Filters, Other, Final pot size in bb is...

I'm sure PT guys will manage to find it too.

So I input the number of hands where final pot size<333.33 and the avg. pot size in that sample.

Now same filter for number of hands above CAP.

You get total rake paid and this is rake paid by all players across all hands where you played. You contributed a certain % of this rake. Most rooms now use weighted contribution method to calculate rakeback so this should normal out as the assumption is lets say you payed 10% of the total rake on Room 1 and played same hands on Room 2 you would have still paid the same 10% which in absolute terms would be different which is what I'm trying to compare.

Put the RB% you get at your current room I'm normally Silver star on stars when I play NL 10 so I get roughly 15% RB from Stellar rewards and FPP cash exchange bonus thingi.

Same routine for William Hill where average pot size below CAP and number of hands above and below CAP will be different as the CAP size is different.

So same way total rake is calculated payed by all players had those hands been played on William Hill and I get that I need 39.74% RB at William Hill atleast.

If you expect to get a certain amount of RB fromm room 2 then you can also calculate roughly how much absolute increase in win rate is needed in Room 2, so I assumed if I get 20% RB on room 2 then I'll need an increase in 16.44bb/100 in William Hill to make up for extra rake paid.

Maybe I took a bad example cause at NL 10 rake at William Hill seems very high but as you go higher in limits the difference should decrease.

This can also work for fixed limit or other type of games too, at fixed limit just be careful you convert everything to bb and not BB.

EDIT: I made a mistake in calculating increase in win rate needed, forgot to divide it by number of players at the table as that total difference in rake would be shared by all the players on a table. This is just a rough estimation of increase in win rate needed as not all players will pay equal amount of rake. Fixed it now, so in my example incrase in winrate needed would be 2.74 bb/100.

EDIT2: When filtering for pots below CAP also add another filter where hands saw flop since rake is charged only if a flop was seen. Should refine the results further.

Originally posted by Th334
Aw...variables? Apparently I have no idea how rake works. I thought it's just a percentage from every pot that goes to the poker room. Though, bb/100 hands would not make much sense if this was true.

So it's not 2.6 times cheaper to play on PokerStars?

I would really appreciate if someone could find some time to give me a short overview of how it works. Or at least a link to an easy and well-written article.

There is a Rake % and a Rake CAP. Rake % is obvious and Rake CAP is the max rake a room can take from a pot. For example at NL 2 in Stars, Rake% is 3.50% and rake CAP is $0.30 meaning, after the pot hits $8.57 the rake will stay at only $0.30 so for a $9.0 pot only $0.30 is taken instead of $0.315.

These are the basic variables in rake structures.

BTW it can't be as simple as 2.6 times cheaper cause things change if Rake CAP is very low and your playing style what % of pots you participate in and how often the CAP is hit.

Comparing Stars to Party Party's rake is 5% but CAP is $1.0 which means even in pots beyond $8.57, say $10 the rake will still keep running at 5%.

You'll hardly ever be in such big pots unless you play very deep but the whole Rake CAP dynamics change from stakes to stakes.

For example at NL 25, CAP on Stars is hit when pot reaches 177bb while at party it hits at 240bb. So not only are you paying 0.50% extra on Party but in single buy in all in pots you'll be paying more cause of the rake cap difference too.

Originally posted by Th334
Hi all,

I need your advice. I have been playing on PartyPoker only up until now. Holdem, NL, cash, micros, to be precise.

Accidentally, it happened to me to compare the rake these poker rooms impose. I couldn't believe what I see. NL-2 on PokerStars has 4.5 bb/100 rake, while PartyPoker 11.5 bb/100.

I mean, really? More than twice (2.6 times)? Two most popular poker rooms have such a difference?! What on earth people (and me) are doing on PartyPoker then?

I'm seriously considering moving from PartyPoker. Not like I'm making crazy money on micros and want to maximize the profit, but it's simply a robbery

What would you advise?

I think I went a little to far with all of my shit.

Move to Stars, play untill you reach NL 10, then decide what site you want to play on depending on other factors.

Till NL 10 Stars has a very low Rake and after that most sites start to have similar rake%. Till NL 10 you won't even be able to get a lot of RB from any site anyway, besides NL 2 and NL 5 competition should be very similar on Stars and other sites. Plenty of fish to go around.

You can also use this link later to decide what room you want to play on.

Just wanted to say thanks for all of this! ♠_thumbsup:

yeah, maheepsangari thanks. this is brilliant. haven't checked it all yet. but i definitely will.

Hi, thanks.

Let me know if you guys have any problems or find any flaws in it.

Wow! That explains a lot.

Thanks mate, it's always good to know your bills.

I have a quick question: Basically, when we comparing two poker rooms, we want to find out not only their flat rake %, but also the rake cap and how often do we reach it, depending on our game style, yup? Obviously if we reach it often -- that's good. So why then do we have different hand-history figures in Room 1 and Room 2? I would imagine that we just take the data from our tracker and enter it in both rooms, then compare where we would pay less.

Originally posted by maheepsangari:
Move to Stars, play untill you reach NL 10, then decide what site you want to play on depending on other factors.

Awesome. Not only you explained me why Stars are good at NL2-10, but also gave an easy formula how to account "other factors" should I decide to change the room again.

Really appreciate your time

Originally posted by Th334

I have a quick question: Basically, when we comparing two poker rooms, we want to find out not only their flat rake %, but also the rake cap and how often do we reach it, depending on our game style, yup? Obviously if we reach it often -- that's good. So why then do we have different hand-history figures in Room 1 and Room 2? I would imagine that we just take the data from our tracker and enter it in both rooms, then compare where we would pay less.

We don't reach the CAP based only on our style but also on the style of other players. See the rake calculated here is total rake played by all 6 players (or 9 or 2 depending on table size). When you filter for hands that hit the CAP you basically input not just hands where you hit the CAP but hands where every hand you played hit the CAP, you might have just folded preflop and 2 other players hit the CAP.

What I tried to do is to make 2 parties, all players on your tables vs. room. Trying to calculate collective rake paid by all players in your room and what it would have been had you played the same hands on another room. In the first room whatever rake you actually paid would be a fixed percentage of total rake, based on weighted contribution method used by almost all rooms, that fixed percentage would have been the same for the other room too cause you would have ended up contributing the same % to every pot in that room too.

What I''m trying to say is say you would have paid x% of $2000 at one room and x% of $2700 in another room, since x% is the same, i'm just comparing the total 2000 to 2700 thats all.

Your style of play will have some impact obviously since you are partly responsible in all hands to some extent and decisions you make will have a certain amount of impact. For example because you squeezed in some hand might have killed the hand preflop which never reached flop and no rake was charged on that.

As for your second question. We don't have different hand history for different rooms. Its the same and the same number of hands, if you total hands that hit CAP and hands that were below CAP for both rooms it'll be the same number.

What I effectively did was use data for NL 10 at Stars use that to seperate the total rake paid into below CAP and above CAP. Since rake% and CAP size is different for the other room, the number of hands below CAP and above CAP in same database would obviously be different and that is something that people don't take into account a lot, what I tried to show was that it makes a difference especially if the CAP is significantly different. Do the same exercise for NL 2 on Stars vs. any other site, you'll know what I mean.

Ok one thing I realised I should have taken into account. When you run this please add another filter which shows hands that saw the flop and take average pot size of those hands that were below the CAP, not all hands. Rake is only charged on hands that see the flop and that should refine the results a bit more.