The Invisible Hand

We don’t live in an ideal world. In the world of physics, most concepts are taught from within the artificial confines of a frictionless environment. It’s a smart way to eliminate minor effects from the overall behavior of a system. Only when the time comes to model real-world events does friction enter the equation.

Poker is similar. Ideally, poker is a zero-sum game. I win a pot, you lose a pot. Your chips go from your stack to mine in an equal but opposite reaction. Well, almost. Poker has friction. The little bit of energy generated by the transaction. You know it as rake.

If the pot is big enough, you barely notice it. What’s a few dollars to the house when you double up through some moron? If the dealers are savvy enough, you barely notice them reach into the pot, remove part of it, and place it into the drop. Online poker does it too. It’s usually the last thing you’ll notice on a hand history.

The poker population is skewed. Several sources claim that the winners are outnumbered by the losers by a factor of 9 to 1. Part of that reason is the rake. Many break-even players and small losers would find themselves winners in an ideal, frictionless environment.

Here are some statistics just for a frame of reference.

I’ve been playing some PLO8 on FullTilt, small stakes, only a $25 buy-in game. In the last month or so, I’ve logged 13,099 hands.

Amount won: $293.40 for a 4.48 PTBB/100 win rate.
During that same time, thanks to having 27% rakeback, I’ve received $144.57 for my efforts. My winnings, which are modest, are only 2x the amount I received via rakeback. Now, in reality, my contribution to the rake is nearly 4x that amount (1/.27 = 3.7) If there were no rake, I’d be up a much larger amount. That’s a serious amount of friction for any player to overcome. Few people recognize it and few do anything about it.

Now, just to be clear, I understand rake has its place. It’s not easy to set up a poker game, online or live. I host enough home games to know that providing the environment for a fun, successful game is work. It’s a service, and people are willing to pay for it. But if you ever think seriously enough about the setting you’re playing in, you’ll realize that the invisible opponent at the table is perhaps the one most difficult to beat.