What is Rakeback?

Internet poker rooms are not casinos. That means that when you are playing poker you are playing against other players and not the house. Whilst casinos make money through the in built house edge in the games they provide internet poker rooms make money by taking ‘rake’. Rake is where a small amount of money is taken from each pot.

Rake is typically 5% of the pot up to a maximum of $3 and is often visibly stacked at the top of the table you are playing at or can be seen by hovering your mouse cursor over the main pot. Rake is much more clearly displayed in SnGs and MTTs where you will often see a buy-in quoted in the format of $10+$1. In this case $10 goes to the tournament prize pool and the $1 is kept by the poker room as a fee.

Due to these high costs of playing it is extremely difficult to be a winning poker player. Not only do you need to be a better player than the ones you are playing against but you also have to be able to beat them at a big enough margin to come out ahead of the rake. This is where rakeback can help transform you from a breakeven player to a winning player or a losing player to a breakeven one.

Rakeback is a refund on the rake you have paid to the poker room. You can typically get between 25%-60% of your rake back depending on the poker room and the affiliate you choose.

In order to get rakeback you must create an account at the poker room via a rakeback affiliate. This typically involves creating an account at the affiliate’s site FIRST and then clicking on their special tracking link which directs you to the poker site you want to play on. Once there you create an account on the poker site as usual, sometimes you also need to fill in your affiliate’s bonus code. If you have done it correctly you will now receive rakeback straight into your poker account either weekly or monthly depending on the room.

Poker rooms will never give out rakeback directly so you have to go via a rakeback affiliate. Rakeback affiliates are paid a commission for referring you to a poker room. This commission is a percentage of the rake you have paid. Whilst many affiliates keep 100% of this commission to themselves a rakeback affiliate will actually give most of this back to you in the form of a rakeback payment.

Like in all competitive markets not all rakeback affiliates offer the same deal. Some affiliates offer better deals than others in the form of exclusive promotions such as rake races, freerolls and free training site subscriptions.

How Much Rakeback Can I Earn? Is It Worth It?

How much rakeback you can earn is obviously dependent on how much you rake which is in turn dependent on the stakes you play and how many hands you play. Even recreational players paying just $500 a month in rake can receive $1,800 a year back by signing up to a 30% rakeback deal.

You can also roughly estimate how much you would earn rakeback through the following formula:-

Average rake = (Average Pot size(Viewable from Lobby) x 5%)= A
Number of players per table = B
Number of hours you play a day = C
Number of days you play a month = D
Number of tables you play at once = E
Number of hands per hour = F

Total rake you pay a month = (AxCxDxExF) divided by B

Then multiply this number by your rakeback percentage.

Rakeback is always worth getting as at the end of the day it’s free money and you should never turn down free money. It’s always nice if you are running bad and losing money for the week that you will receive some money back to reduce your losses.

There are no real disadvantages to receiving rakeback. It should be noted that if you already have an existing account at a poker room it is highly unlikely that you will be able to get rakeback retrospectively. In these cases it is recommended that if the room is part of a network then simply apply to another room on the same network. For example if you have an existing account at Ultimate Bet without rakeback sign up to Absolute Poker instead. Since they are on the same network you will be playing against all the same players and the same tables as before but with slightly different graphics.

Rakeback can however effect and bonuses you might be receiving such as sign up or reload bonuses. This varies from room to room. However at a large number of rooms bonuses are deducted from your monthly gross rake. This means that if you rake $1000 during a month and receives a $100 bonus - your new monthly gross rake becomes $1000-$100=$900 which is the amount you will receive XX% rakeback of. Therefore you still attain a higher effective rakeback rate when releasing a bonus.

EXAMPLE

if XX=30% you receive $100 in sign on bonuses and $270 in rakeback giving a total of $370 whereas you would have received only $300 without the sign on bonus. As can be seen it is always better in that you make more money by having both rakeback and a sign up bonus rather than just one of them.