Introduction to Online Rakeback

Poker rooms make their profit by raking the games, which means they charge a fee on every pot. When you play hundreds and thousands of hands, your small rake contribution starts to add up.

Even a serious small-stakes player can end up paying over $1,000 in rake per month, resulting in hundreds of dollars of rake back. If you are a busy high stakes player you can earn thousands of dollars every month, money which until how has been out of your reach.

The rake is mostly a percentage of the pot up to a maximum amount, usually 5% up to $3. The rake is taken in intervals of $0.25 or $0.50. The same goes for tournaments where a fixed amount is added to the entry fee.

The standard for tournament fees is around 10% of the cost of entering the tournament. There are requirements for how large a pot must be before it qualifies (which means that they are large enough to rake, small pots are not raked).

Cash games stand for 80-85% of industry revenue as rake is taken on almost every pot. The tournaments are not as profitable, where a fixed fee is charged and they usually take many hours to complete.

Regardless of the time it takes to play, however, it does not cost the player more than the initial fee. The low limit players pay a larger percentage on the pots but the high limit players pay a higher sum.

From a rake perspective, high-limit online games are very advantageous compared to high limit offline games, where a high hourly fee is normally charged. But on the other hand, there are more hands dealt per hour and if players play at multiple tables they will end up paying a large sum per hour anyway.