RakeBack Guide

A Guide to Rakeback Rakeback

Although being one of the most profitable tools in poker, is still a relatively unknown topic for the average poker player. The system is still confided to the superior online poker ranks, and the average Joe has no clue what rakeback is. In fact, many players don’t even realize that rake is taken out of most pots! Because of that, we wrote this article to help everyone understand what rakeback is, and if it’s a good idea for your personal playing tendencies.

What is Rakeback?

This seems like a great place to start our discussion. Well, rakeback is when players receive a percentage of their rake back. Duh, right!
Let’s take a closer look at this: every time you play at an online poker ring game, you’re paying the house for the privilege to play there. For example, an average $10 pot will be raked $0.50 or so. The poker room takes this rake so they can make money, since they are a business after all.
Since the rake of each hand is only a small portion of the pot, many players don’t even realize its being taken. However, when you add it up from tens of thousands of hands and thousands of tables, it turns into an enormous sum of money.

How Rakeback Works

There are basically two forms of rakeback that are offered at online poker rooms today: in-house, automated rakeback, and third-party rakeback. Let’s look at each of these now.

Automated Rakeback

Automated rakeback is the easiest form of rakeback, and is preferred by most online poker players. In automated rakeback, the player signs up through an affiliate (a third party poker site), and then the actual poker room handles everything from there. You see your daily rake, and receive your rake payments directly into your poker account. Basically everyone agrees this is the easiest form of rakeback. Some poker sites that offer automated rakeback include PKR poker rakeback and Cake Poker rakeback.

Third-Party Rakeback

The other form of rakeback is “third-party rakeback”. In this form players sign up through a third party site, and then that site handles everything regarding the rakeback. Even though you play at the poker room, the third party site keeps track of your daily rake and pays you out at the end of the month.
The reason third party rakeback isn’t that great is because sometimes payments are delayed, stats are wrong, or support isn’t provided as well as you’d like it to be. We recommend sticking with automated rakeback.

Should I get Rakeback?

Hmm, YES! Even if you’re a casual player you’re probably raking over $1,000/year, and on a standard rakeback deal you could get at least $250 of that back. If you happen to be a big time player, you’re probably missing out on $1,000′s if not $10,000′s of dollars per year, so make sure to look into it now.