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The rake calculator is a way of figuring the rake.  Is the rake significant?  In fact, the rake is usually not important!  But a lot of players are bothered by the rake.  Juicy Stakes will discuss the rake.  Then we will give some tips about how to lower the rake’s significance.

What is the Rake?

For many players, the rake is a kind of cost of playing that irritates them.  After all, the key to success playing poker is to play well, to make good decisions, to mislead your opponents, and to either fool them into thinking that you are bluffing when, in fact, you have a strong hand or to fool them into thinking that you have a strong hand when, in fact, you have a very poor hand!

Then the house takes away some of your winnings!

The Cost of Providing a Place to Play

When you play poker on a weekend with friends, there will always be some beer, perhaps pizza, chips, maybe cold cuts for sandwiches, and so on.  The host may foot the entire bill for all of these necessary provisions but usually there will be a kind of division of shopping!

That is, Joe will bring the beer, Tom will bring some snack foods, Sally will bring soda pop, Molly will bring salami, and others will supply mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, bread, and so on!

It’s quite the preparation for an evening of friendly poker!

Well, Juicy Stakes Poker is also responsible for some necessary provisions.  As an online poker room, we provide internet access, powerful computers that allow hundreds of games to go on at the same time around the clock, encryption to keep everyone’s money safe, and a wide range of games and stakes levels so anyone who knows the rules of a given poker variation can find a game that suits his or her skill and stack.

The way Juicy Stakes gets the money to provide all of the necessities is through the rake!  We take out a small portion of every pot to pay our costs so you can have a great place to play poker online at your individual comfort and convenience.

How Does Juicy Stakes Calculate the Rake?

Of course, we don’t have employees calculating the rake on a pocket calculator!  We use sophisticated software that immediately determines the rake for that hand and takes it to the house’s account.  The rest of the pot goes to the winning player’s account without a hitch!

We also provide the big blog space where this article and hundreds of other articles are published as a public service to players.

Let’s Calculate Some Rake

On the Juicy Stakes home page, scroll down to the FAQ section.  There you will find a section on the rake calculator.  Open it and you’ll see five drop down menus.  You have to select the game first before you can use the other menus.

Let’s select Texas Hold’em.  Next we have to choose the betting limit.  If you choose the fixed limit, the next two menus are inactive since they are designed to show betting ranges.

Let’s select pot limit.  The difference between pot limit and no limit is that the size of pots in a no limit game will be greater than in a pot limit game.  As an aside, we recommend that new players use either the fixed limit or the pot limit before expanding your horizons and going to a no limit game.

When we select pot limit, we get a long drop down menu that shows the range of the blinds.  The game you choose will be determined by the blinds.  As you can see, you can play in micro-stakes games with one and two cent blinds and you can go all the way up to blinds of $10,000 and $20,000

Next you choose the number of players in the game.  Naturally, in a game with many players most of them will fold either before the flop or just after the flop.  So, her we will choose seven players.  Now we click on calculate rake and we see that the standard rake is $1 for every $20 in the pot with a maximum rake of $3.

And that’s it!

In most hands with $2 and $4 blinds, the rake will be either $1 or $2.  As the blinds get higher, the pots get bigger.  Let’s quickly look at the rake for a game with ten players and $15-30 blinds.  The rake in this case is one dollar for every twenty dollars in the pot with a maximum rake of $3.  Thus we see that as the pots get bigger the rake gets smaller as a percentage of the pot.

How Can Players Reduce the Significance of the Rake?

In practical terms, the rake is insignificant.  It is a higher percentage of the pot in low stakes games but it is still far less significant than many other aspects of poker.   Here are a few tried and tested ways to reduce the significance of the rake:

  1. As Nancy Reagan might have said, “Just say no” to the idea that the rake is important.
  2. Learn the basics of poker math so you don’t have to obsess about the rake boogey man.
  3. Learn to confuse your opponents.

How Can I Confuse My Opponents?

The best way to confuse opponents is to vary your betting activity.  While you will fold most hands before the flop, you should from time to time play a hand in early position that you would normally fold without a thought.  The best time to do this is when your stack has grown a bit from a few nice wins.

If you usually decide quickly what your next decision should be, from time to time play more slowly.

The best way to confuse opponents is to observe them so closely that you can find very small nuances in their behavior or betting style that you can exploit.  Nothing frustrates a player more than having an opponent who seems to know what cards they are holding!  Increase your powers of observation continually!

Play a Lot of Poker.

This one is pretty obvious.  In baseball, they say that a hitter needs to see ten thousand pitches before they have a good idea of what is happening in the give and take between batter and pitcher.  Every year, there are hitters who seem to break out.  What is actually happening is that they have learned a lot about hitting when their batting statistics were pedestrian.

The same applies to poker.  Play poker often.  Rest when you get tired.  Eat when you are hungry.  Avoid alcohol during a game.  Watch and listen and most of all play online at Juicy Stakes Poker.  At Juicy Stakes you will get the much needed experience that will raise your game.

Join Juicy Stakes Poker NOW!

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