During the TV-fueled boom of no-limit hold’em and around Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP main event win, friends and I would travel every year to Vegas to play in the side games and satellites leading up to the WSOP. Staying in the (now gone) Imperial Palace for $25/night, it was relatively easy to beat the single-table satellites by enough to pay for the flights the first Friday and then grind out an overall profit on the rest of the days.

That’s a special case of “big advantage in skill” in the sense that the WSOP/TV boom drew a bunch of players with way more aspiration than skill/experience and the games were easily beatable by players of typical home game winner level of skill as a result.

The typical big-casino rake isn't that large. From memory (it has been 2 years since I've physically been in a poker room), the typical rake at a full 9-player table at the Encore (Everett, MA, USA) worked out to ~$12-15/hour per person.

For a professional dealer, good chips, and a continuous flow of players, that seems like a pretty fair price to pay.

Yeah, but it tends to be lower in online casinos. And you clearly know the percentage.