The cash game rake debate has been going on for years, and much like our streaming subscriptions they only ever seem to go one way, and that’s up, until we cancel them. Nowhere does it cut deeper than to regular players on the cash poker tables at Australian casinos. Cash games at Crown Melbourne and The Star casinos in Sydney, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast feature rake structures so high that many players would argue the games are simply unbeatable and are sucking the ecosystem dry.
Australian Casino Rake Compared
The Star properties:
- $2/$3 blinds: 10 percent capped at $20
- At a $20 cap and 25 to 30 hands an hour, around $400 to $600 is going to The Star casino per hour.
Crown Melbourne is even tougher on players:
- $1/$3 blinds: 10 percent capped at $20
- $2/$5 and higher: 10 percent capped at $25
- At a $25 cap and 25 to 30 hands an hour, around $500 to $750 is going to Crown casino per hour.
On top of that, players do not receive any reward points, comps, or perks for paying so much rake other than free parking. The money simply leaves the table and goes straight to the casino, straight out of the poker ecosystem.
How Australia Stacks Up Against The Rest Of The World
To understand how high it is, consider Las Vegas. Even at the most popular poker rooms such as Bellagio ($6 cap & $2/hr comps) and Wynn ($5 cap and $1.50/hr comps), rake is much lower. These rooms sometimes charge an additional $1 to $3 for promotional jackpots, but even then, the cost to play is far below the insanity that Australians are charged, with no additional benefits.
And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
In Canada, Ontario’s 10 percent up to $20 rake recently made headlines as “criminal” by players.
Reference: Jon Sofen, “Why These Canada Poker Rooms Charge Absurd Rake but Remain Packed,” PokerNews, September 3, 2025. Available here: PokerNews article.
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2025/09/expensive-poker-cash-game-rake-in-canada-49588.htm
The once mecca of Australian poker and still home to the Aussie Millions, Crown’s $25 cap in $2/$5 games is surely close to a world record. Meanwhile, Playground Poker Club in Quebec, one of the most respected poker destinations in North America, caps rake at $8 in low-stakes games. Many European casinos use caps of €5 to €7.
Against this global backdrop, Australia clearly has the worst cash game poker environment of all.
Why Do Players Put Up With It?
The biggest factor is lack of alternatives and competition.
Typically, running fully dealt cash games that take a rake in Australia requires a casino license. This means to play a regulated cash game in Australia your options are The Star properties, Crown, and a few other sparse casinos around the country like SkyCity Adelaide.
Since 2017, regulated online poker has been banned in Australia. Australian players have no regulated legal online options.
For aspiring cash game pros or regular grinders it really makes bankroll building close to impossible, at least in the short term. For recreational players it means that even casual nights all add up to paying thousands of dollars in rake over years of social visits to greedy casinos with no perks other than free parking. Sure, there’s some entertainment value, but poker is the game in a casino that should be beatable. With the highest cash game rake in the world, it isn’t.
Despite the insane rake, poker rooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast remain busy, as any player who wants to play in a secure, safe, and fully regulated live cash game has no other options. This makes it unlikely that operators will change anything voluntarily.
Some players may also overestimate their win rate, not factor in the rake, not document results at all, or simply not care. Regardless, if players care about the rake or not, perhaps they are just there for the social interaction and to pass the time as an entertainment expense. It is important that players are at least aware of the bad deal they get playing a cash game at Australian casinos and to call it out.
The Rise of Underground and Alternative Games
One of the consequences of the extortionate rake does not stop at the casino doors. With live games so expensive to beat, many players who want to have a chance to win in the long run are being pushed underground or into the black market.
Large cash games running outside casinos create obvious security concerns for both players and operators.
The unregulated app games and private online clubs are the Wild West of online poker. While there are many app-based clubs available in Australia that service players’ needs, and many players may never have had an issue, unregulated sites often lack player verification and responsible gaming measures, and can involve risks of collusion, scams, and sudden shutdowns with little chance of recovering funds.
A growing new trend is “timed tournaments” being used as a kind of Trojan horse for cash games. Timed tournaments are a great innovation for players who want to experience tournament poker in a set time frame so they can plan their activities around them with a predetermined finish time. Due to the high rake at casinos and lack of competition, some timed tournaments are actively being advertised as cash game alternatives. Some even include bomb pots, but often lack transparency, possibly due to chip-chop payouts, which are against most state laws if fully dealt. Some timed tournaments, once rake is accounted for, can still drain nearly as much money from the table as casino rake, in a limited time.
A Difficult Landscape, Monopolies, No Regulated Online Poker
The lack of competition among licensed casino operators in Australia, leading to the highest cash game rake in the world, in combination with lack of regulated online alternatives, has left Australian poker players incentivised to seek alternatives in a riskier environment than players in other countries.
Until laws change, or other poker rooms and operators are allowed to run fully dealt cash games and take a rake, or casinos are simply forced to reduce rake due to more players staying away, poker grinders and recreational players will continue losing most of their buy-ins just by sitting down at a casino cash table. That does not mean players are powerless. If poker players consistently speak out, raise the issue with media such as PokerNews , provide feedback to casino operators, and discuss the issue openly within their groups, awareness will grow. The more players understand how much money is being drained from every game and the poker ecosystem, the harder it becomes for casinos to ignore the problem.
