Players signing onto CoinPoker last week got an unpleasant shock when they logged onto their cash game tables. Without giving advance notice to players, CoinPoker introduced a huge increase in cash game rake. However, the real insult came in how players learned about the price hike. Instead of going directly to CoinPoker’s rake page, which has been active since CoinPoker started, to get their rake numbers, players found that CoinPoker removed the rake page (located at coinpoker.com/rake) and set a redirect to a rakeless page.
This caused an immediate negative reaction from the community regarding CoinPoker’s long history of touting itself as transparent. Many have referred to the new rake structure as “an effectively unplayable rake structure” due to the fact that it negatively affects four main aspects of the cash game environment simultaneously and two additional formats for tournament players.
CoinPoker Rake Increase – What Changed?
Although CoinPoker did not alter just one part of the rake structure, the rake increases will affect multiple areas of the cash game environment at once along with two different areas of the tournament space.
Pre-Flop 3-Bet+ Rake
CoinPoker will start charging rake from 3-bet+ pots that terminate prior to the flop. Pots that reach the flop and subsequently are folded will still not incur rake; however, rake will be assessed on every hand where a 3-bet, 4-bet, or 5-bet results in a pre-flop fold.
High-Stakes Cap Increases (up to 233%)
NL500 and PL500 and above rake caps have been increased significantly. Although I do not know what these new rake caps will look like, according to some information that was quickly released on social media and then promptly deleted, rake caps were increased by as much as 233% at higher limits.
Higher Antes
CoinPoker increased its base ante from .016 BB to .025 BB. The added dead money raises pots before cards are dealt, thus causing hands to hit the rake caps much faster.
Heads-Up Battle Cap
In addition to the 3 BB cap being implemented for heads-up matches, a new 3 BB cap will apply when a regular player competes against a recreational player, whereas the 3 BB cap will continue to apply in regular vs. regular match-ups.
Over 20 BB/100 — The Math behind the Backlash
To show you how detrimental the CoinPoker rake increase impacts win-rates, take a look at high-stakes NL1K – NL5K ($5/$10 – $25/$50) head-to-head games.
At a 5% rake with the new 3BB cap, the baseline rake alone devours 18.0 bb/100 per player prior to rakeback. Additionally, raking 3-bet+ pots that end pre-flop adds approximately another 3bb/100 in costs plus the larger 0.25 BB ante. Putting it all together and considering no other rake costs such as jackpot/splash pot fees, the new default heads-up rake tops 20 bb/100 per player.
Taxing pre-flop 3-bet pots is always a hot potato issue among online poker players. Aggressive poker players have to three bet/four bet pre-flop simply to vie for the blinds and widened 0.25 BB ante. Charging rake on aggressive pre-flop bets creates a house tax instead of encouraging further aggressive action.
Deleted Posts & Community Backlash
The backlash towards the CoinPoker rake Increase began spreading rapidly over Twitter (X) soon after. Players noted that an article discussing the 233% cap increase at higher stakes was removed from the Internet shortly after posting; players questioned why a site that currently charges very high fees would need to raise them by 233%.
Well-known voices in the poker world also chimed in; commentators called into question whether sites like GG Poker/Coin Poker continually move towards raising fees, implementing jackpots/bonuses/winning rate suppressing mechanics solely for the purpose of maximizing their share of deposits made by players.
A particularly sharp reaction was generated amongst many users concerning the pre-flop fee. One well-known user stated he would block/unfollow anyone who supported raking pre-flop 3-bets.
Other users took it upon themselves to create comedic responses using satire. A popular parody post titled “CoinPoker Patch Notes: High Stakes Balance Update” mimicked a traditional software developer update and ridiculed CoinPokers actions as a nerf directed at winning players who generate too much EV through aggressive preflop strategy.
The parody jokingly stated that past rake hikes were insufficient to prevent players from profiting via 3-bets, therefore the site decided to nerf all 3-bets regardless of position again and implement an “Additional Skill Tax” on bluff heavy strategies and penalize regulars for isolating weak opponents who “prefer click-call.”
Because of the CoinPoker rake increase, people who continue to play there might need to alter their strategy in the games. You can read more about how rake structure and caps influence the strategy for each poker format.
