RAKEBACK: IN-DEPTH - how rakeback fits into the online poker schema, and why you shouldn't play without it   by Chris Vandergaag

The majority of online poker players are playing in one of 3 basic arrangements:

1) NO AFFILIATE

You went to a site and signed up. The house collects ALL of your rake and tournament entry fees. You get nothing back, except your wins. Paying a few hundred dollars a week in rake is typical, for serious poker players. For some of us it's thousands. Rake is taken a little at a time, out of each pot, so you don't miss it. But it adds up.

Rake is expensive. A 5-10 limit player in a loose online game easily contributes 20 dollars an hour to the rake, per table (when players report hourly expectations such as "1.5 big bets per hour", this is net profit - what they make, above and beyond rake (most players pay attention only to their bottom line, after rake has been siphoned off).

2) STANDARD AFFILIATE

You signed up via an affiliate link. The house collects your rake, pays the affiliate a percentage (20-30% usually) as a reward for getting your business, and keeps 70-80% for themselves. Again, you get nothing back; you pay your rake and at the end of the month, you have your winnings, which hopefully are greater than the amount paid in rake.

3) AFFILIATE OFFERING RAKE REBATE

You signed up via an affiliate who is offering you RAKE REBATE. You play your game, take your winnings, pay your rake over the course of the month. Then the affiliate gets paid his percentage (20-30% in most cases) of the revenue you generated for the site, and repays you some - and if your affiliate is treating you right, MOST - of the money he was awarded. You wind up getting roughly a quarter (sometimes more) of your rake paid back to you, minus administrative fees, which can regardlessly equal thousands of dollars, just because you were savvy enough to choose the right affiliate (or demand your affiliate give you a better deal).

There is NO reason to be playing without a rakeback plan! Lots of online poker players still are!

Rakeback puts the hourly rate of winning players through the roof. Break-even players become winners. And it picks up where deposit bonuses leave off; while deposit bonuses are a one time shot, rakeback plans continue paying you back - month after month.

If you're playing online poker under an invisible affiliate who offered you only mediocre bonuses when you signed up, and offers you no rake rebate:

You deserve a better arrangement.

Your affiliate should know who you are, should answer all your questions, and with poker promotion being as competitive as it is, should share his profit with you. After all, your affiliate gets paid by the casino, for every raked hand YOU play! Rakeback deals are fairly easy to find. If your affiliate isn't giving you a sizeable chunk of his commission, you can do better.

Your poker-playing is the reason affiliates exist! YOU are their livelihood. Yet many affiliates rely on customer ignorance, the fact that most players are still unaware that they should be expecting rake rebate... let's take a fictional player, "Bob".

Bob is a good poker player. He makes a good secondary income playing cards. He prefers playing online, because he can play more than one table at at a time, the game moves more quickly, and there is ALWAYS a game available. He plays a lot of hours at fairly high limits, and pays somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars per month in rake.

But he makes a good hourly wage when he plays. So Bob settles into a groove at a specific site, he's winning, no one has ever offered him any kind of loyalty incentive, but he likes the site. He's mainly concerned with his bottom line, after rake has been siphoned off. He's never questioned his arrangement much - he's a winner as things currently stand.

After all, he figures, he's just a guy playing cards, and playing rake just goes with the territory... You have to pay if you want to play. So he keeps on playing, and keeps on winning, and doesn't think much of it.

But what's happening behind the scenes here?

An invisible affiliate, who provided him with a signup link months earlier but has no contact with Bob whatsoever today, is collecting a substantial chunk of the money he makes for the casino every month! $2000 a month, in fact. The house takes roughly $8000, out of Bob's pocket, the affiliate gets the rest, and Bob just gets his winnings. Does this seem fair? If Bob had the right affiliate, he'd be getting the bulk of that $2000, paid to him in a lump sum. After all, he's the one playing cards.

Rake is expensive. Even when we have a winning week, we flinch when we do a rough calculation and figure out how much we spent on tournament entry fees and rake.

Do you know how much you're paying in rake? It adds up quickly, and most players, even good players, are taken aback. This is all the more reason to start playing with a rakeback plan - the amount of the rake rebate is usually a pleasant surprise to the player getting it.

After all, it's your money. For players playing <5-10 Limit or 2-4 NL, the house is generally raking $30 for every 100 hands they play. Having a rakeback plan lessens your losses, pads your winnings, and makes an enormous difference to your monthly expectation... and it requires no extra work on your part, beyond choosing an affiliate wisely.

I urge you: DEMAND rakeback when you play online. If your current affiliates won't offer you any, someone else will. It's worth the hassle to get set up properly.

Chris Vandergaag

About the Author

Chris Vandergaag is a writer, editor, online poker player, and online poker affiliate.