In poker parlance “the rake” is the amount of money that a poker room takes from every pot in order to earn money. At most online poker sites the rake is typically a percentage (usually 5% on Internet poker sites) that is taken from the pot after each round of betting. When playing poker online, if you look closely you’ll often see the rake being stacked at the top of the table near the dealer.
Normally there is a cap on the amount of rake taken from each pot. At many online poker sites the rake cap might be as little as $ 3 per pot. That rake percentage may sound relatively low, but it can really add up over time. After all, online poker sites earn a ton of cash don’t they?
Rakeback is a method for getting back a piece of the rake that an online poker room takes from you. You can think of rakeback as a rebate on your rake. Many people actually call it a “rake rebate” instead of rake back, but for this article we’ll just call it “rakeback”.
How exactly does rakeback work?
Rakeback works like this. All online poker rooms have affiliates that recruit new players to sign up at their poker rooms. These affiliates advertise heavily on the Internet, so chances are if you’ve ever searched for online poker rooms you’ve come across an “affiliate site”. You may not have even realized it.
When a new poker player goes through an affiliate to sign up for their poker account, the affiliate is paid a commission. The affiliate can choose either a one-time flat fee commission per new player signed-up, or a percentage payment plan. Rakeback is available from affiliates that choose the percentage payment plan.
When an online poker affiliate chooses the percentage payment plan then the affiliate is paid a portion of the rake that the poker room earns from the poker player. The commission might be as high as 60% of the total rake, but at the more popular poker rooms the commission is usually in the 25% to 35% range.
A rakeback affiliate returns a portion of what he earns from your rake back to you, and usually keeps a small amount for himself.
How does a rakeback affiliate know how much my rake was?
When you sign up for a “rakeback plan” through a rakeback site you have to provide the affiliate your username on the poker site where you’re planning to play. The affiliate then receives a report periodically from the online poker site that shows your username, along with how much money you’ve contributed to the rake during the period. Some online poker sites provide these rake reports daily, while others send rake reports only once per week, or even once per month.
How long can I continue to earn rakeback?
You can continue to earn rakeback for as long as you continue to play poker at the online poker site. That is the beauty of the rakeback system. But, when you stop playing poker, the affiliate stops earning commissions, and therefore you stop receiving rakeback payments.
So I can get free money from my contributions to the rake? But what’s the catch?
There are a few catches. First, not all online poker sites allow rakeback. For example, Party Poker, the largest online poker site in the world, does not permit rakeback. They won’t show affiliates how much rake it has earned from each individual player, only aggregate totals, so the affiliate has no way to know how much to pay back to the players he has signed up. Some other online poker sites do provide the detailed rake reports, but their terms of service and affiliate agreements expressly forbid returning a percentage of the rake to players.
The other big catch is that if you already have an account at a particular online poker room, you may not be able to sign up for rakeback at that poker site. The reason for this is that online poker rooms only pay commissions to affiliates for NEW poker players. Some online poker sites, particularly up and coming poker sites, have relaxed this requirement, but the general rule is that you must be a new real money player in order to qualify for rakeback.
How do I find out more about rakeback?
Rakeback is not usually offered directly by the poker rooms. In fact, many poker rooms would probably prefer if you did not even know that it was possible to earn a rebate on the rake you contribute. Therefore, rakeback is not widely publicized on online poker websites.
To learn more about the rakeback industry please feel free to browse through our little resource here at Rakeback Monitor.
