Becoming a limit hold’em grinder
It is true that you can make very good money playing low-stakes limit Texas Holdem games. There are several reasons behind this even though the games are brutally raked. It is because the games are brutally raked that a good limit player can get an edge here. This is to do with rakeback and the importance in attaining it. A limit hold’em player who could play six limit games at $1-$2 at the same time could be generating $40/hr in rake quite easily.
The key here is to get as much of your rake back as possible. A 27% rake deal would return just over $10/hour while a 33% rake deal would be at about $13/hr. The bigger rake deals obviously give you more money back but the main drawback with these deals is that you could do far better. An 80% rake deal would return you $32/hour here and that is a massive difference from $10/hr.
So how do you attain yourself of a non standard rake deal? Well there are numerous ways to go about this but nearly all poker sites are part of networks these days. The main deal sees the network take a percentage of this money and so approaching a poker site to give you a 100% rake deal is unlikely to work because the site is usually duty bound to pay a set percentage to the host company. For example bwin poker would have to pay expenses to Ongame etc. So the best you could hope for here would be to get a “minus expenses” rake deal where the site takes nothing from you.
In return for this of course then the site would need something in return and this is where the services of a low-stakes limit player would be valuable. At the end of the day, there are many poker players out there who have tremendous value to poker sites and so you need to realise this. There are several barriers when it comes to being able to make money online. The first barrier is your own poker game and the second and third barriers are the rake and other good poker players. So if you avoid good players and strive to pay as little rake as possible then you have a serious chance of making very good money simply by breaking even on the tables.
It is often perceived that small stakes limit games are unbeatable because of the rake. This may be true and you do need to have a better game than average to offset that. But if you are creative in your approach to the game and are not prepared to accept the levels of rake that some sites take from you then you can create chances for yourself to make more money. So remember that the rake deals that are advertised are just that…..advertised. But you need to remember that your services may be of tremendous value to a poker site and you should be very cognisant of that fact.