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Originally, the tribute was a flat 10% of the pot, rounded down to the nearest coin.
Then I added a 4-coin tribute cap (tribute never larger than four coins).
This still seemed pretty big, so I just made a further adjustment:
The tribute is now capped at only 1 coin (even if both players go all-in), but it is collected if 17% of the pot is over one coin (on pots containing 6 coins or more).
So, as long as the winner will profit MORE coins than the one-coin tribute, the tribute is taken.
(In a 6-coin pot, the winner is profiting 2 coins, with a 1 coin tribute---the winner gets 2x more profit than the house).
Chart:
Pot contains 2 coins, tribute 0
Pot contains 4 coins, tribute 0
Pot contains 6 coins, tribute 1
Pot contains 8 coins, tribute 1
...
Pot contains 200 coins, tribute 1
Also, don't forget that only matched bets count. Any unmatched bet (when the opponent folds) is returned before the tribute calculation is done.
So, this makes the tribute a more common sight (it's taken from pretty much every non-trivial pot), but also makes it much smaller. It's also consistent ("Oh, one coin was taken."), and it doesn't make you stop and think about the math (was that really X percent? That was a lot of tribute coins). And the "It's just one coin" feels better, I think.
Also, this lets us set the number of rounds at one table before the total rake starts getting too large. If too large counts as "more than 25% of the profit," then you can play at least 25 rounds at one table before we get to that point. That's a lot of rounds, I think.
Before, with a cap of 4, it all depended on how big the bets were.
And, finally, it preserves the "winner always profits more than the house" rule of thumb. Worst case, winner gets 2x what the house gets.
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I think this new system is fantastic. In the old system were there many games where there was no tribute collected?
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You know, I'm actually not tracking any per-round stats.
I'm just tracking stats about whole games.
In the history of this server, there have been 361 games, and 83 where the house raked $0 total from the game. Of course, that counts abandoned games too.
With the old 10% cap-4 system, the server was taking an average of 2.5% of every buy-in. I'll be watching the totals over the next few days to see how the new system works. I'm hoping to keep the net effect at about 2.5%, but just make it feel different and more fair.
Over $260 have gone into games in the past few days, but I've made only $8 total.
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I think this system is going to feel more fair overall to the player; and will start to swing toward the tribute being a higher percentage as people play more and understand strategy of the game. As it is, I have been playing games with fairly low stakes (around a quarter to buy-in generally) and TONS of games end with both sides all-in. Only taking one coin here seems like shafting the house. As people play more, I think they will start to see more strategy and start to make more conservative bets (even after playing only a few days I am starting to see this in myself). And as people start learning the game, I think we will see games played with higher stakes more frequently (again, Ive seen this in myself over the past few days, starting doing 10 cent games moving to 25 cent and even trying games over a dollar).
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I feel that the old cap of 4 was fine. The problem with it was that it ramped up to the cap far too quickly, creating the awkward system of medium value rounds having relatively high tribute and low and high value rounds no or relatively low tribute. Also, in my own games (playing until winner takes all) I saw the tribute consistently total to around 15-20 coins (I'm surprised to hear that was 4 times the average); don't know what it is in the new system yet, but I imagine it's going to be about half.
I like the new system, but also wonder if it's really going to take enough for the house. It should also slightly encourage bigger bets.
I would concur that I've also become more conservative with bet sizes, but that's just anecdata. I'm less comfortable with high stakes because people can just go all-in whenever they want. I'd be interested in hearing whether there are any plans for limited bet size rules/games.
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I am all for referring to the rake as tribute. Thematically it just feels so much better.
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After playing a bunch of games today, I feel that the amount taken through the tribute is probably lower than you wanted. In my own games it seems to total to 3-4 times less than before. The new system only takes a larger tribute than the old system if the pot is between 6 and 8 coins. In many other cases it takes less than before. Obviously 6-8 coins is an extremely narrow band, so it's inevitable that you much less than before.
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The new rake feels good to me. The old one felt excessive.
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I think I'm going to table any further tribute adjustments for now.
The old system (10%, capped at 4) took about 2.5% of every buy-in. The new system seems to be taking 1.5%, which seems pretty good.
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