Rakeback is an extremely simple concept, one that needs to be thoroughly understood though in order that you should be able to properly exploit it.

Let’s start with the basics: as a poker player, you have to jump on every tiny opportunity to secure an edge. Poker rakeback is definitely not a small edge, and as such, if you leave it unexploited, you won’t ever be able to call yourself a proper poker player. This is how rakeback works:

Whenever you play at a real money table in an online poker room, you pay rake. The poker room makes its money through the rake, and will therefore never miss the chance to collect it according to the rake contribution rules it features. The rake collected is generally a 5% share of the pot, up to a maximum of $3 (some poker rooms cap their rake at $5). Now that may not seem like a lot, but if you’re a frequent player and you add up the money you lose on the rake over a month’s time, your jaw will drop. You can literally lose hundreds, even thousands of dollars to the rake.

If your consolation is that the rake is paid by the winner anyways and therefore your rake contribution has to be extremely meager, you’re wrong. First of all, the rake is NOT paid by the winner. The rake is taken off the pot before it goes into the winner’s possession, which means the rake is paid by the entity to which the pot belongs before the winner pockets it. That entity is made up of the players who put any kind of money into the pot (blinds, whatever) and that means if you contribute any money to the pot, you basically pay a part of that rake. This way, you’ll end up generating a humongous amount of rake, of which you’re entitled to receive a percentage, provided you sign up for rakeback.

A rakeback deal makes sure you get a set percentage of your rake back. The industry standard is around 30% (the Full Tilt rakeback is 27% only, while the RedStar rakeback is 33%) but some poker rooms offer you more. They can go as high as 40-50% on a square rakeback deal.
Poker prop deals are basically pimped up rakeback deals, which offer you close to or often more than 100% of your rake back.

Does it make perfect sense to sign up for rakeback now? That’s what I thought. It’s not only the small upstart poker rooms which offer you good rake rebate deals. Some of the industry’s most dominant operations offer rake back to their players too