Poker? One Simple Question.

Last night I lost a little playing fantasy hockey. A meaningless goal by Niklas Hagman with 50 seconds left cost me a winner. Such is life.

I have been playing poker with a new found passion. Unfortunately, after achieving all of my November goals, I have been on pretty large downswing, about -150bb.

The last two sessions have left me frazzled and a little paranoid, wondering if I was the victim of some team play.

Regardless, I realize I'm getting eaten alive by the rake. On Stars, there is a VIP reward system which allows you to exchange your points for rakeback. At gold star level each VPP earned is worth 2 cents. With the average pot at my stakes collecting about .25 in rake, that's not even 10% rakeback. I'm sure there is another way of analyzing this but I haven't found one that makes it sound any better.

I realize my downswing is only a short term view, but looking down the road, I wonder if this is a winning proposition under any circumstances.

So poker comes down to one simple question: Can you beat the rake?

For me to find out, I may have to dig into my pockets a little deeper.

(This exact question if the reason I've stayed away from the $3/6 LO8 at Turning Stone. BTW, if you were to substitute FSL for poker, the answer to this question is YES!)