Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Brandon (Drexel) went and played it yesterday, and reported back to me.
He found a few things:
1) He wasn't able to earn anywhere near 1000 tier credits per hour at the highest limits. He likely didn't play as quickly as John Mehaffey did (especially because he didn't realize until part way into the session that he could "end hands" early once he folded), but he only earned a little over 100 tier credits in an hour of play. So this may not be a good way to reach 2500 or 5000 tier credits in a day. I suppose it's also possible that Harrah's decreased the tier credit earning power since John played.
2) Brandon ran badly and lost money (nothing huge, but a lot compared to how long he played and the $2/$4 stakes). However, he theorizes that it is unbeatable due to both the rake and the ante.
3) He agreed with Mehaffey's statement that the bots play like the fish on Party Poker circa 2001.
4) He described it as a "card catching contest', as the bots do not fold with any semblance of a hand or draw, so therefore they cannot be bluffed. Therefore, the best hand always wins -- which is different than normal poker we are used to playing.
Since then, I have done a bit more thinking about the rake and whether the game is beatable.
I decided to do this in terms of the number of big blinds won per 100 hands -- a common metric to determine how good cash players are.
First, I approximated that at the $2/$4 limits, your average total bet per hand will be about $10. The minimum bet is $2 (the ante), and the maximum bet is $48 (capping every street), but I figured the average will be around $10. Whether I'm correct or not on that is immaterial, because it can't be too far off, and its accuracy isn't that important for what I want to show.
Since there are 6 players in the game (you and 5 bots), and since bluffing is virtually impossible, the hands always go to showdown, which means that the winner is always simply the player who catches the best cards. If all players were identical, this would mean each player would average 16.67% winning hands.
However, due to different standards regarding playing hands preflop, as well as different standards for folding postflop, the tighter player will win a smaller percentage of hands than that, but will also lose less on the hands he doesn't win.
It is fairly certain that a competent human player will be tighter than the bots.
So let's say that the human player wins 12% of the time, and one of the bots wins the other 88% of the time.
Again, this is just a guess, and the accuracy isn't important.
In a hypothetical session of 5000 hands (which is what would be required to earn 5000 tier credits, assuming a $10 average bet per hand), this would mean the player would win 600 of them and lose 4400 of them.
Let's say that the pot size in those 600 hands averaged $50. That would mean $30,000 worth of won pots, before rake.
Now of course we have to look at the 4400 hands that the player lost. These are not raked, but the player loses a minimum of $2 each. Let's say that the player averages $6 loss per hand, making a total loss of $26,400.
So before the rake is considered, the player won $3600 ($30,000 - $26,400) in 5000 hands of $2/$4. That breaks out to a profit of $0.72 per hand -- which is 0.36 big blinds (which are $2 each) per hand. That means the player won 36 big blinds per 100 hands played, before rake.
BUT WAIT!
The estimated 20% rake on $30,000 comes out to $6000! So the player actually walks away having LOST $2400 after the rake is taken out!
This is absolutely insane, given that 36 big blinds per 100 is an EXCELLENT win rate in limit holdem. To give you a comparison, when I have an extended period of time where I run well in limit holdem on Bovada, I average about 7.5 big blinds per 100 hands! This is nearly 5 times my best medium-term win rate on Bovada, and yet still I would LOSE if I achieved that rate! Ouch!!
So in our hypothetical above, the player would have to win $33,000 in those 600 hands before rake -- meaning a $6600 profit after losses are subtracted, in order to break EVEN after the $6600 rake is collected. This would be $1.32 per hand overall, and a staggering 66 big blinds won per 100 -- just to walk away even.
No matter how bad the opponents, I don't believe it is anywhere near possible to win 66 blinds per 100 (or anywhere near it) in limit holdem in anything but the super-short term.
Therefore, I declare this machine to be wholly unbeatable.
Even if my calculations are off and you simply need to win 30 big blinds per 100, that again is not possible to do for any extended period of time.
So what is the game's hold?
Well, even taking my first example (a good player beating it for 36 blinds per 100 before rake), that still equates to $2400 lost per $50,000 wagered after the rake. That's a hold of 4.8%, which is far more than most video poker machines in Vegas.
And if the player instead only manages to beat it for 10 big blinds per 100 (which may be more realistic), he would lose $4480 using the figures above. That would be a hold of almost 9%, which puts it on par with slot machines.
In other words, this looks like a sucker's game from my early calculations.
The rake is too damn high.
Also, developing a strategy to do better is tough. If you play tighter, you are costing yourself money because of the $2 ante per hand (there's no such thing as "folding a free hand"). If you play looser, you are going to have issues with having your weaker hands rarely hold up against the ever-chasing bots. That is, don't expect middle pair or ace high to win at showdown too often (whereas these hands are frequent winners at normal 6-max games, where people chase much less). Looser play also means that you will get raked more, as you will be entering more hands.
Therefore, playing tight has a downside, and playing loose has a downside. This will make it tougher to develop a play style which could negate the huge rake advantage that the house has in this game.
Conclusion: This machine looks like a waste of time and money.