Re: [ba-poker] live button vs. rake from pot

["James Kittock" <james(deleted the rest)>]

> Oh, wait... It's Rocks'n'Beer without the beer AND you
> have to pay for it. I'm trying to think this through. If
> they drop the antes what is the incentive to open the pot?

They only drop $1 if there is no flop.  So at 3/6, if it is
folded to you on the button you can raise to win $3.  Depending
on what you know about the BB player, this may or may not
make sense.  The problem is that if the BB calls, you are playing
for $6 ($10 in the pot, house immediately drops $4).  Some BB's
will realize that this sucks, and will usually fold.  On the 
other
hand, some BB's will feel the need to incorrectly defend their
$3, so you may get some implied odds from that.

Anyhow, Quick raises a good point--it is very hard to open the 
pot
except in early position, where you have a good chance of 
initiating
a limpfest.  For example, if you are in a 9-handed game and you 
are
5th or later to act, there's a reasonably high chance that if you
limp you will be fighting the BB for $3.  I don't recall seeing 
this
happen too often, though.

Overall, from what I could tell, the games at Bay101 were still
pretty loose.  An exception was the O8, where they drop $5;
I was at a table with some relatively careful players and for 
about
an hour the pots were averaging around $20 with the house taking 
25%.
It was lame.

So far, based on not much data, it seems to come down to this: if 
there
are loose players in the game, the new structure is cheaper for a 
tight
low-limit player, since you can fold for less ($4/round instead 
of $7/round
at 3/6 HE, $6/round instead of $10/round at 4/8 O8).  On the 
other hand,
if there aren't 2 or 3 loose players in the game to juice the 
pots, the
games tend to tighten up way too much.

For 6/12, I can't tell that there's a whole lot of difference 
between
dropping $4 from the blinds vs. taking a $3 button charge. 
Probably
for a good player it saves money in the long run, since you only 
get
taxed when you win, rather than every orbit.

But this is just initial impressions; I haven't played much and
haven't done any fancy analysis on this. :)

--james

PS Amusing: it was folded to me in the small blind, and the BB
said "chop chop?"; I asked the dealer where the $1 drop came
from and she said it was the small blind.  So "chop chop" = 
"fold"
for the SB, at least at 3/6. :P