Is Rake the Plague of Poker?

Does Abarone68 Consider Rake Bad Per Se?

Actually, no: but he sees the rake increase as a bad thing for poker that limits its growth:

“Early on when poker was just a hobby for me, I didn’t make a lot of money, but a good chunk was from various sites’ “loyalty programs” — rakeback, deposit bonuses, etc.  

Eventually I stopped bonus hunting and played all my volume on one site specifically because of their $15+$1 SNGs, an unparalleled rake to prizepool ratio.  

Worked out well for both of us; I was able to turn my time and effort into a side hustle and then a career, while the site made hundreds of thousands of dollars off my rake in that format alone.

But does that path even exist anymore? Rake is significantly higher across the board and it seems like your best chance to get some of that back is by making a mildly amusing video.”

While professional players are the most obviously affected by the rake increase and as a result loudly unhappy with it, recreationals pay the same fee silently. But when they realize how big a rake that venue or organizers take from them, they often decide not to put their money in the game anymore. And this situation is slowly killing poker, as Aaron explains in his post:

“There’s this argument that recreationals don’t care about rake, which might be music to corporate’s ears but is wholly untrue.  Sure recs might not be scouring over a structure sheet and skipping one specific tournament, but they are interested in paying a fair price for entertainment.  Aren’t we all?  Treating them like mindless sheep is insulting and has consequences.  The higher the rake, the quicker their deposits dwindle, the less fun they have per dollar, and less likely they are to return.

But if operators insist on treating their customers like sheep, perhaps they can remember the old adage:

You can shear a sheep many times, but only skin it once.

None other than the best poker text blogger of 2025 Sam Greenwood supported Aaron in his opinion by sharing the piece of personal experience — but not his own:

“My wife dabbled in online poker and was playing $1 6-man SnGs. When she realized how much money was taken out of the prize pool, she was pissed off and felt like she was getting scammed. People care about the scoreboard and want to end up in the black.”

Why Poker Operators Continue to Increase Rake?

If your first thought is “well, in this economy…”, you are partially right about the reasons. But, as usual, things aren’t so superficial in reality as our first reactions are.

The list of most obvious reasons includes:

• Increase in the overall cost of living and maintaining company facilities
• Experiments with advertising in an attempt to attract a non-poker audience
• Expensive collaborations between online operators and live brands
• Constantly changing market presence
• Need to support businesses in compliance with regulatory requirements in different countries
• Introduction of new technologies such as AI, which in theory are supposed to reduce costs in the future, but for now only increase them.

However, Aaron also thinks that short term profit became more important for industry than sustainability — that is why rake continues to increase explosively and much quicker than it should.

Joey Ingram calls this choice of action “the rake killer strategy” because it drains bb/100 from every game.

The Team 651 representative joins them, stating that the main reason for rake to be increased now is that corporations lost their focus:

“At the end of the day it is obvious that these corps don’t understand what their job actually is…

Their job is to build a strong community of people that want to consistently play on your site and then support them with a functioning site at all costs! […]

Even recs notice rake increases. I also don’t think that the suits believe that the recs don’t notice it, it’s more like they need to pretend so that it’s not their fault in the end.

Because, who would promote a person who is responsible for increasing the rake, knowing that it would lead to the loss of players?

So it is a game of musical chairs but with one massive downside, that there will be 0 chairs at some point and then everybody loses.”

As the conclusion to this part of discussion, Aaron Barone outlined his position regarding poker operators in general: