Rake!

Yesterday I had a truly horrific session. Played all day, actually felt I was playing well (but who knows), but just couldn't catch a break. Lost 16 (!) buy-ins. When I was finished I looked at my VPP's for the day, and they were of course pretty crazy high (personal record!) which got me thinking about the insane amount of rake i had paid.

So I checked, and it turns out I paid more rake than my loss! Dunno why, I should know better by now, but this really blew my mind.

I am amazed, in retrospect, at how terrible the day felt considering that I was roughly breaking even (marginally winning) against the other players. I swear, I felt like I was losing every significant hand. Yet what was really happening, if I could have stepped back from the game a bit, was I was just pushing my money back and forth across the table, and PokerStars was quietly charging a toll for each pass.

There are two main things I take from that. The first is the obvious one: rake is a mother fucker. If there were some magical internet poker game with no rake, anybody with half a clue would make decent coin from the pokerz. But, in combination with variance (which pushes a significant percentage of pots to even the worst of players), the rake slowly erodes the financial reward your skill edge brings. Until only the most skilled are left making anything at all. Nothing new here, of course, but no matter how long I've known this to be the case, it still sucks.

The newer revelation is that I still worry far too much about results. Because I was, in terms of winning or losing pots, breaking even in the game. Yet I felt like shit and at one point tilted away a buy-in or two before gathering it back in. It is just not believable to me that I would have felt the same during the session if I had never looked at totals while I was playing. In fact, I think I would have been totally shocked by the results when I did get around to looking. How could I possibly have the distinct impression I was getting my butt kicked when, in fact, I was not?

I'd like to just never look at results, although right now I feel like the stress of wondering what's going on over on the cashier page might outweigh the benefits of not checking. That's a goal, tho, even if I know it probably has to wait until I get 'over-rolled' for the games (which is another goal). Getting to the point where I'm comfortable being ignorant of the day's results does sound rather blissful.