Almost everyone acknowledges that it’s harder to win at poker now than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, and so forth. The biggest reason for that is the increasing skill level of the average player.
However, players cite higher rake as a driving force as well:
Is there any data about rake in live poker tournaments over the last 5/10/20 years? It feels like the total amount taking out the prize pool gets progressively higher. When will it / does it have to stop?
— Patrick Leonard 🫡 (@padspoker) October 8, 2025
But is that true? Has rake continued to put an ever-growing squeeze on live tournament poker players?
Card Player decided to investigate.
Rake Has Mostly Risen in Poker Tournaments Over the Past Decade
Card Player compared live tournament rake from events in 2025-26 to comparable events in 2015 and 2019. The data showed some clear trends:
- Rake has mostly gone up, with the World Poker Tour a notable exception
- The magnitude of the increases is mostly pretty small, generally around 1% or less
- The greatest impact of rake increases has occurred at the $500 level
Card Player examined three tournaments each at the $10,000, $3,000-$5,000, $1,000 and $500 levels. Here’s a look at the full picture of rake changes across roughly the past decade:
| Tournament | Rake % (2015) | Rake % (2019) | Rake % (2025-26) | Change from 2015 | Change from 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WSOP $10,000 Main Event | 5.99% | 6% | 7% | +1.01% | +1% |
| WPT 5 Diamond/World Championship $10,400 Main Event | 6.73% | 6.73% | 5.77% | -0.96% | -0.96% |
| L.A Poker Classic $10,000 Main Event | 4% | 5.32% | 7% | +3% | +1.68% |
| EPT Prague €5,300 Main Event | 8.49% | 8.49% | 8.49% | 0 | 0 |
| WPT $3,700/$3,800 | 8.62% | 8.24% | 7.89% | -0.73% | -0.35% |
| WSOP $5,000 | 6% | 7% | 8% | +2% | +1% |
| PokerStars $1,100 | 11.81% | 11.81% | 12.73% | +0.92% | +0.92% |
| WSOP $1,000 | 11.70% | 10% | 12% | +0.30% | +2% |
| WSOPC $1,700 Main Event | 10.45% | 10.88% | 10.88% | +0.43% | 0 |
| WSOP $500 Colossus | 11.50% | 16.50% | 17.00% | +5.50% | +0.50% |
| Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood ~$400 multi-flight | 14.29% | 15% | 18.00% | +3.71% | +3% |
| WSOPC $400 multi-flight | 18.08% | 17.50% | 17.50% | -0.58% | 0 |
For the top players at their respective stakes, the rake increase produces a small hit to their bottom line, but they’ll still be comfortably profiting. For instance, Jeremy Ausmus recently released a video where he revealed that he has a return on investment (ROI) north of 40% in his live no-limit hold’em tournament career. Players posting a win rate that elite will probably barely notice the tiniest drop in their bottom line.
The story is different for players closer to the breakeven threshold. A player with a 10% ROI, for example, is seeing a significant portion of their winnings disappear when the rake goes up a couple of percentage points.
Combine the increased rake with tournament formats that allow more reentries and later registration, and the tournament ecosystem has begun to drain bankrolls faster than ever before. Players may be seeing the effective of that in a tournament like the World Series of Poker main event, which has lost entries year-over-year twice in a row now.
Bigger Buy-ins Could Have Bigger ROIs
Players near the bottom of the live poker ecosystem are seeing the biggest squeeze. As costs for operators continue to rise, it makes sense that an ever higher buy-in level will become the “threshold” for where tournament poker is theoretically beatable for the average aspiring player.
What’s fascinating about that is that the rake difference between a $500 buy-in and a $1,000 buy-in, contrasted with the relative skill difference of the player pools, creates a situation where many players would, bizarrely, have a higher ROI in the higher-stakes events.
Sure, there are some players who will fire into a $500 event and not a $1,000 one. But they’re probably a small portion of the pool.
Small-Stakes Players Need To Evaluate Carefully
If the player pools are similar, a winning player is going to show not only a better ROI for two reasons. The rake is making up a smaller percentage of their buy-in and they will be playing for larger dollar amounts. Not only are they moving up in stakes, but players are also getting to keep more of their buy-ins in the prize pool.
A player in that situation constrained by bankroll would be better off simply selling some additional action in order to play bigger than wasting time and effort in the higher-rake games.
Plus, players voting with their wallets would have the added effect of pressuring operators to place more lower-rake events on tournament schedules. If players consistently avoided the higher-rake tournaments in favor of the lower-rake ones, it might result in a better landscape overall for the players.
The bottom line is that live tournament rake as a whole isn’t climbing at an alarming level. However, players at the lower stakes should do their research when choosing where to allocate tournament dollars. Edges at small stakes have become thinner, while higher stakes costs have stayed about the same.
