On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, mike wrote:
> No matter how you cut it, if $100 goes into the pot and only $95 gets
> paid out, poker, like sports betting is a negative expectation game.
You are correct as it pertains to the population of poker players as a
whole. But for individual players who can beat the game, like Doyle, they
have positive expectation, as you yourself observe:
> Which of course doesn't mean it can't be beaten by the sharpest players.
"Beat the game" is more or less what "positive expectation" means.
To put this another way, suppose for the sake of discussion that Doyle
could make $200/hour in the absence of a rake.
If the actual rake is $140/hour ($4/hand at 35 hands/hour is in the
ballpark), Doyle still makes $60/hour even if he pays the rake fully by
himself, which he obviously doesn't -- it's spread across all the players.
