Effects of Rake on Preflop Ranges

Anyone who plays cash games knows that their games are raked. The casino takes a certain percentage of the pot after a flop, and then some more after subsequent streets. I’m not going to dive into the topic of whether a rake structure is excessive or not. It’s up to you to decide that. This article is about how rake structure affects preflop strategy. 

Rake structure consists of two factors:

• Percentage of the pot
• Cap

Here is HoldemResources Calculator’s Under-the-Gun (UTG) range for a six-player table under this rake structure. You should try to do something similar but human-friendly, and then adjust as you learn more about your opponents:

With a 3 big blind (3bb) open raise size, the UTG player opens 18.5% of hands. Note the strong emphasis on suited aces and kings.

Here are the Hijack (HJ), Button (BTN), and Big Blind (BB) strategies for defending against the UTG open:

What should jump off the page at you is how tight this range is. You only defend 9% of hands here. You fold JTs, KQo, and usually 77. Your 3-bets are limited to value of KK+, AK and balanced by a smattering of bluffs, mostly in the suited aces. 

Cold calling caps your range, putting you in the position of paying rake to play with a capped range and risking an overcall in position after you. So you only cold call with very strong hands that can flop well, or hands that can flop a set.

Here is the Button (BTN) defense against an UTG open:

Button (BTN) defending ranges typically add a lot of cold calls. This is because there is no risk of playing out of position after the flop. But notice that this is still a very tight defending range. You fold 88% of the time.

Here is the Big Blind (BB) defense against an UTG open:

The Big Blind (BB) can call more often than other seat positions because he gets a better price and can close the preflop action. However, he still only defends at a frequency of 18% of the time. 

Note that the minimum defense frequency (MDF) for the BB is pot over pot plus bet = 4.5bb / (4.5bb + 2bb) = 69%. The BB is defending much less than the MDF. This is because allowing the HJ to profit from the BB’s folds is less costly to the BB than paying rake to defend many marginal hands out of position.

Here is the UTG opening range:

The percentage of hands the UTG player opens with is not changed much from our baseline of a $7 cap on the rake. However, the range morphology is a bit different. You add some suited connectors and baby pairs. You remove KTo.

Here are the defense frequencies against an UTG open when there is hourly rake:

There is substantially more cold calling with no table rake than with a table rake capped at 0.7bb. 

Note the extremely low 3-betting frequencies for the HJ (2.4%) and BTN (3.6%). In my opinion, this is way too low against human opponents. 3-bet something more like TT+, AK, and AJs for value, and bluff more with other suited broadways. Try to get your 3-bet frequency to something like 8% or more.  

The BB 3-bet range against an UTG open looks reasonable. Note how the overall defense frequency (24%) has increased compared to when there is a 0.7bb cap (18%).

Just for giggles, I tested to see if a rake of 5% capped at 0.7bb like that at my local casino has different results on preflop strategy than our baseline of 10% capped at 0.7bb. I kept all the other parameters equal. Here’s what I found:

The differences between 5% rake and 10% rake both capped at 0.7bb is insignificant. The BB has a few minor adjustments, but not worth spending time on. For us mere mortals, the percentage of rake taken is irrelevant to preflop strategy.

What are the effects on strategy if you raise the cap of the rake, as the number of big blinds? In HoldemResources Calculator I entered the rake taken by Americas Cardroom on the 5NL cash game. They rake 5% capped at $0.50, which is 10bb. All other parameters are the same as our baseline. Here is the result for the UTG opening range:

The UTG opening range drops from 18.5% when the rake cap was 0.7bb to 17.4% with the rake cap at 10bb. Offsuit broadways, suited aces, suited kings, suited connectors, and baby pairs all tighten up. You need to be tight. Hands that are marginally profitable with the smaller rake become unprofitable at the big 5NL rake. 

Interestingly, A5o is added to the opening range. This is an outlier that you probably don’t need to use.

Let’s see how the bigger rake affects defending ranges:

In the HJ and BTN positions, cold calling and 3-betting are much tighter with the rake cap at 10bb than at a rake cap of 0.7bb. The solver in the HJ is only defending 8% of hands while the BTN is only defending 10% of hands.

Pro Tip: The vast majority of your human opponents aren’t 3-betting with the low suited kings that the solver 3-bets with. When there are a lot of low suited kings and other low suited broadways in a solver’s 3-bet bluffing range, you as the open raiser can adjust from the solver’s defense range with less bluff catchers.

There is a heavy emphasis on suited aces and kings in the 3-bet bluffing range, due to the blockers getting folds and saving you from paying rake. 

This results from the added effects of the tight UTG range and the fact that marginal hands become unprofitable to take to a flop in a heavily raked game. 

I think you can go a little wider than this against human opponents. But don’t go much wider than this, unless you are exploiting a weak UTG open raiser. But don’t go hog wild. Very few hands are profitable in this heavily raked game.

In HoldemResources Calculator in the BB seat the defending range drops from 18% for a 0.7bb rake cap to 16% for a 10bb rake cap. The significant increase in cold calling stems from the better price that the BB has to call and the fact that he can close the preflop action.

The defending range is still very tight. You just can’t afford to pay a heavy rake to see a flop out of position with any but the best holdings.

I used the node locking feature of HoldemResources Calculator to simulate such a prolific cold caller. I often see HUD statistics with about a 30% cold calling frequency.

I gave our prolific cold caller a 50% possibility of raising pocket queens, and 50% for cold calling them. These guys can go either way with this. I’ve seen quite a few of them cold call with AK, so I just left the range with a 100% possibility of cold calling big slick.

Here is the simulated range:

Here is the UTG opening range when such a cold caller is in the BTN seat:

Even with the significant range advantage the UTG player has against the prolific cold caller, the solver’s opening range decreases (15.4%) compared to when everyone plays optimally (17.4%). It is just not profitable to go to a flop with any but the strongest hands.

Here is the HJ defending range, knowing that he’ll likely have to see a flop out of position against an overcall if he cold calls:

In the HJ position, cold calling is nearly nonexistent. The solver defends only 7% of hands overall. He even folds 99 and AQo. The prolific caller yet to act has slowed us down a lot. Against human players you can probably play a few more hands than this, mostly for 3-bets.

The solver exploits the prolific caller in position with exploitative folds.

Game selection comes into play here. Unless you have a good read that you can strongly exploit the prolific cold caller who has position, it might be best to take your action to another table. This is probably not a super profitable situation.