Why you shouldn't play without rakeback
In order to truly understand why and how rakeback helps your overall game, you need to understand a few basic concepts about the rake itself.
Every poker player knows that online poker rooms make their money by taking a "rake" off every real money pot played at their tables. This rake is not much, the industry standard is 5% of the pot, up to a maximum of $3. Note that some poker rooms take less than that, either by raking just 4% or by setting the maximum rake cap lower, to $1 or $2. The size of the rake also depends on the limits, and on the number of players taking part in the hand. Short handed and heads-up tables are generally raked less.
Now then, one might assume the rake is indeed the perfect setup for an online cards or gambling operation to generate revenue, because nobody minds the rake. The winner of the raked pot is happy that he won, so he doesn't mind giving that small a percentage up. The losers couldn't care less because they're not the ones who pay the rake anyway. Dead wrong.
The rake is much more intricate an issue than a beginner poker player would realize at first glance. The pot itself never belongs to any particular player until the room awards it to the winner. Up until that moment, the pot is a separate entity, created by all players who actively took part in the hand. The rake is taken from the pot before it is given to the winner, therefore, the winner is certainly not the one who pays the rake alone.
Since the pot was created by the players who paid blinds, (antes or bring-ins) and put bets into it, it is only logical that the rake is paid by all these guys (including the winner, of course). This means that if you take part in a hand by putting money into the pot one way or the other, you do indeed end up paying part of the rake.
Different poker rooms have different methods of determining how much poker rake each individual player pays in a given hand. Rookies again might say they care not how much rake they generate, because it's all lost money anyways, and there's not much sense in crying over spilt milk. Wrong again.
It is extremely important that you know how much rake you generate, because through rakeback, you can get a certain percent of that rake back. The amount of rake a player generates is called his/her MGR, so we'll refer to it like that in the proceedings. Rakeback or rake rebate as it's also called, is usually about 30% of your MGR, but some poker rooms offer 50%, while others can offer as much a 135% within a special deal (called a prop deal), but more about that in a different article. Standard rake return has the potential to reward you above and beyond your real MGR. How is that? Simple. Some poker rooms use the contributed rake calculation method to determine your MGR. In such rooms, rakeback offers you an exact reward depending on your performance, because this system only adds MGR to players who actively take part in hands, and it does it in a proportional manner with the money they put into the pot. This is a fair system. Other poker rooms however, allot MGR to all players who were dealt cards in a given hand. This is where you can exploit the system a bit. This is called the dealt rake method, and what it means to you is, that you'll be generating MGR even when you do not actually risk your money in any way. Since you get your rakeback based on the MGR, you'll be earning money on hands in which you do not risk a penny.
Online poker is about exploiting small edges time and time again. Trust me on this. Rakeback is a self-supporting edge, which means that once you sign up for a rakeback deal you can as well forget about it, it'll do its job anyway, without you having to go out of your way every time you want to apply it.
The benefits of a rakeback deal should be obvious to all readers by now, and I hope I managed to bring some solid arguments to support my theory. If you're a half-serious online poker player, you should play with a rakeback offer backing you up. |
