Rakeback
Say you are sitting at a $50 No Limit Hold Em table at your favorite online poker site. To your delight, you are staring at a pair of aces. Of course, you raise. Your heart begins to race as an opponent behind you re-raises. You decide to shove your $50 into the pot, and lucky for you, your opponent, who has you covered, calls! There’s $100 in the pot when you see his pocket Kings and it only takes seconds for the hand to play out and the pot is shipped your way. Wait… there must be a mistake. You only have $97. What happened to the other $3?
Ok, so you probably know what happened to your $3. That’s how the sites make their money, it’s their cut – the dreaded rake. The rake is usually about 5%, and generally there is a max of $3 or $4. But this rake adds up incredibly fast. Wouldn’t you love to keep some of that money? Well now you can simply by signing up for poker rakeback before opening your next account.
Poker rakeback is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You play poker, and in turn for you patronage and loyalty, the site pays a portion of your rake back to your account. The amount of rake you get back can vary widely, from about 25% to 40% or even more in some cases. The most common rakeback percentages are between 30 – 40%.
This cash back can be huge for your poker bottom line. In fact, there are a whole breed of poker players who play a form of rakeback poker. They tend to play very tight ABC poker (for the most part) on multiple tables. Most of them are barely break even players and some are even slight losers. However, because of rakeback, these players become profitable. Some of them very much so!
There are a few other things to research if you are choosing a poker site that offers rakeback. Some of the poker sites deduct things like bonuses or even poker points from your rakeback, while others do not. Obviously it is much better to find a site that does not deduct. Although long term it really will not make too much of a difference. Also consider the fact that most sites that offer a very high rakeback percentage are going to be smaller and newer sites. They offer these high rates to entice players to sign up. This can be a good thing if you sign up early too. Eventually, many of them will lower their rakeback rate, leaving you grandfathered in at the higher rate, enjoying the benefits of a more mature site.