Choosing a Rakeback Deal

With all the flashing text and animated banners that wink and blink at you on many of the promotional poker sites, it may be hard to find a trustworthy site to make a rakeback deal with. The purpose of all these flickering ads and pop ups is to coerce you into making an instant decision. While not all of the rakeback deals out there in cyberspace are insincere, they make it hard for you to truly understand what you are getting into and easy to jump without looking. For this reason, I hope to shed some light on rakeback and fully develop the concept of rakeback, so you can be an educated rakeback player instead of just another ill-advised sign-up.

Rakeback is Important

First of all, rakeback is important. If you are a regular online poker player, take a minute to calculate the money you’ve invested in one or more online poker rooms this month, including wins that were not deposited out of your own pocket. How about this year? Chances are, unless you’ve had a good run lately, that is an amount well into the hundreds of dollars, maybe more. Granted, not all of the money you’ve invested in your online poker business or hobby counts as rake, but by selecting the right rakeback deal, you could be getting some of this money back. Once you feel educated and safe about rakeback and the different ways in which it is offered, why wouldn’t you take advantage of this?

Choosing the Poker Room

The rake cap at most poker rooms is about $3-5 per hand. This amount includes everyone at the table. So, this is one thing you might look for: Just how much rake is being taken from each hand I play? Some rooms take more than others; some take less. Therefore, the less rake you pay in, the less you’ll get back, but the more you pay in, the more you’ll get back.

But it’s not that easy-there’s another factor that plays an important role in rakeback deal selection: What percentage of the rake will actually be returned to me? Reputable poker rakeback deals can return anywhere from 25% to 50% (anything less is not worth it and anything more is too good to be true-either way, if you find a deal that does not fall between 25% and 30% rakeback, it is probably more of a scam than a comp).

So, if you take into account the amount of rake you will be paying out at a poker room (is it on the higher end or lower end?) and then take into account the percentage of rakeback deals being offered to you, you can determine where the middle-ground of the two overlap and select the most lucrative rakeback deal for you. In other words, the best rakeback deal is where you are contributing to the rake at a certain rate that makes a particular rakeback percentage most profitable to you.

Other Things to Consider About Rakeback

Because rakeback selection is a different choice for everyone, other more personal things to take into account have to do with your playing style. How much rake you will actually be creating? Are you a once-in-while player, an average player, or are you a high-roller? While rakeback is for everyone, it goes without saying that players who generate more rake will essentially profit more from a rakeback deal. Also, generally, no-limit games produce less rake than fixed-limit games because you will be more inclined to fold pre-flop. In addition, there are two types of rake collection: contributed and dealt. Poker rooms operate under one or the other. Contributed rake means that, when a hand is in play, if you don’t contribute to the pot, you don’t contribute to the rake. Dealt rake collection means that if you are dealt cards in hand, you pay in to the rake, regardless of whether you act or fold. At a contributed rake table, tight players are going to pay less, and alternatively, more active players are going to generate more rake. So, looser players may want to choose a rakeback deal at a poker room that collects a dealt rake; whereas, tight players will want to play at a room where the rake is contributed.

Also, in the long run, players of low-limit and mid-limit games will essentially benefit more from a rakeback deal. This is because the $3 rake cap hits a $50-dollar pot harder than it does a $500-dollar pot.

Conclusion

Different sites take different rakes and likewise, different rakeback deals yield varying rake percentage rebates. Taking these stats into consideration with your own personal playing style, do some research and find the right balance. Don’t jump right in to the next flickering rakeback banner that promises a 33% rakeback deal. Check it out first. Look into the site that the banner promotes and check their rake structure. Then go check out another one.