What is Rakeback?

Rake is how poker rooms make money

To understand what is rakeback, you must first learn how poker rooms make profit by charging rake from all real money players. Rake is the only way for poker rooms to make money, since unlike with other casino games, in poker the players are wagering money against other players and not against the house. Think of rake as a small entry fee taken by the poker room for organizing the games.

Poker players do not directly lose any money to the poker room, but the room is steadily raking in micro payments from every cash game pot and tournament entry. The proportion of rake taken online is roughly the same 5% of pot size as in brick and mortar casinos, and depending from stakes it can be anywhere from one cent to five dollars.

Rakeback is a refund of rake

Rakeback is a way for you to save on poker rake costs. By creating your new online poker room accounts through Rakeback.com you will save on average 30% of any rake you pay. Once your poker account is registered in Rakeback.com system, we can keep track of all rake you pay to the poker room. And based on revenue share agreement made between the poker room and Rakeback.com, we are able to credit your poker account with rakeback payments of your rake. Rakeback is typically paid once per calendar month, directly back to your poker account.

Please try the Rakeback Calculator tool to see an estimate of how much rake you are currently paying, and how big your savings could be if you were using rakeback.

How your rake is calculated

Some online poker rooms display the total amount of rake taken from a pot, but none show what your individual rake contribution has been. For accounting purposes however your personal rake is recorded in the poker room backend, and rakeback is based on these rake reports. There are two main ways that poker rooms use to calculate your individual rake contribution: shared and contributed.

In the shared method, rake is divided evenly among all players that were dealt cards. For example if there are ten players sitting at the table and total rake is $1, each player would be assigned 10 cents of rake.

In the contributed method, players must contribute money to the pot to get assigned rake. The rake a player gets credited with is proportionate to the amount of his/her pot contribution. If you were to contribute $50 to a pot of $150 and the total rake taken was $3, you would be assigned $1 rake.

So how do I get rakeback?

Getting set up with a rakeback deal is easy. Please select a room from the poker rakeback page, and fill in the simple rakeback deal application form.