Well, my fight continues with poker since Black Friday. It's been an ugly combination of running bad/trying to find a game I like.

Tried live again today at a charity room. $10 1 rebuy tournament, 20% rake. So, $16 going into the pot, 20 ish people show (probably paying 3).

Then, I get the fun news. This is a turbo style tournaments, blinds basically double every 15 minutes. $20k in chips blinds start 25/50, but in 2 hours, it's a shove fest. Anyway, now, they institute 'dealer appreciation', $5 for 5k more in chips (and in other tournaments at this place, the $5 gets you more). However, if you do this, the effective rake on the tournament (forget tipping here which is encouraged) is at 34%. I mathed it out, and back when I use to play the 45 man sit n goes, and I would have effectively been a breakeven player over my sample (400ish games...I know not enough for a sample, but you use what you have).

Is it possible to skip the dealer appreciation, live with the rebuy (still a healthy stack, but with $20k chips instead of $25k) and figure the play is so bad, I can beat that too. If it matters, the bulk of players don't use their one rebuy at the start, so they play with $15k chips, and then rebuy at the break or when they go out.

The answer may be to just play cash. But, I've never been all that good at cash (loser but over a small sample), but I really feel my strengths help me in tournament play, and my deepstack play, though decent, isn't my strongest atribute, so I'd much rather play poker (plus, I enjoy playing tournaments more, where I don't have to worry about table selection, and can just focus on trying to win).