The rake

... and how you increase your winrate with rakeback

When you play poker online, and in live card rooms, a certain amount of every pot goes to the house. This amount, which the poker room makes it's winnings from, is called the rake. A typically rake percantage is 5% of the pot - capping at $3.

The typical beginning player see this 5% as a quite small amount and doesn't worry about losing this sum when playing. "Hey, I just won $20 so why bother about this $1 they just took from the pot".

In fact, the rake affect low limit players more than it affects the high rollers. This is because the pot most often won't be raked for more than $3 when playing online. The pot has to be about $60 for a rake of $3. ( (rake percantage 0.05)*$60 = $3 = Max rake. As a consequence, if you are playing mid-limit and win a pot of $200 the rake will be capped at $3. That is equal to a rake percantage of 1,5%. A pot of $500 equals a rake percantage of $0.6.That is quite a difference compared to the 5% rake percantage you have to pay as a low limit player.

If the rake percantage is to high your skill won't help you even if you are the best player around the table. This means that you won't beat the rake. All players will lose their money and the only winners are the poker rooms, cause your winnings wouldn't cover the expenses of your total losses + the rake taken from your won pots.

How much do you lose because of the rake?

In the article "playing multiple tables" I explained how you could beat the low limit tables and increase your winrate by playing more than one table at once.

By choosing the loosest games, playing tightly, using only premium starting hands and by using the knowledge of odds calculation we won $546 after 45 hours of playing when we played four tables simultaneously. How much did we pay in rake?
Answer: $307 - according to Poker Tracker which were used to import the statistics. And this just by playing the absolute lowest stakes. In other words, you should almost double your winnings if you didn't have to pay any rake to the poker room. (Almost, because the result for the 10000 hands played was probably a little bit optimistic). And that's the way it is. If you are winner at low limit Hold'em the poker room will win as much as you do. Unfair, isn't it?

A mid limit player, as for example a $10/$20 player, could give the poker room thousands of dollar every months even if he is only a break even player himself. The poker room always win.

Get some of your rake back - rakeback!

Rakeback means that the poker room gives some of the money a player has paid in rake back to the player. Very often is given to some players to make sure they play a lot which in turn will make ordinary customers find poker players around the tables 24/7. A poker player benefits a lot from rakeback. Rakeback ISN'T cheating - you just get money back which actually belongs to you instead of giving it to the poker room.

A mid limit or high limit player which is only a break even player will earn thousands of dollars if he choose to sign up for a good rakeback deal and suddenly makes enough cash out of poker to call himself a pro!

For some players rakeback is the key to success. Without rakeback they wouldn't stand a chance to earn a living out of playing poker.

You pay the lowest rake at 24hPoker where you will also get up to 60% rakeback. This poker room is definitely recommended if you don't want to pay to much rake to the poker room!