In order to understand what poker rakebacks are you must first understand what a rake is.

Online poker sites make their money by collecting a small percentage “fee” or a “rake” from each pot that is played. This is how online casinos make their money. The rake is used to cover the poker sites marketing, personnel, promotion offers and any other expenses they may have. Generally this fee is pretty minimal usually 3%-5% of each pot and some even have a cap on how much they can rake per pot. Since online casinos have less overhead and hands are played more frequently (due to technology), than brick-and-mortar casinos online casinos can charge a smaller fee per pot; usually brick-and-mortar casinos charge about a 10% rake.

Now that you know what a rake is and how casinos use it to make money, we can look at what a poker rakeback is. You may think of a poker rakeback as a kind of revenue-sharing that online casinos offer their customers for playing with them. You get paid a percentage of the rake the online casino takes from the pots you were in. The industry standard percentage is about 30%, but some casinos offer up to 65%, and some even offer up to 100% if you play a significant amount. All poker rakeback terms and conditions should be read very carefully for each online casino you may be interested in playing at. There are two main ways that casinos pay out rakebacks. There is a shared method, which is when you earn rakeback any time you are dealt cards in a hand even if you fold without putting any money into the pot. For instance, if there are four players at a table, each person receives a 25% rakeback which means 25% of the pot belongs to you even though you did not wager any money. This is the more uncommon method of calculating rakebacks, but some online casinos do use this method so read the rules carefully.

The other method, which is more common of the two, is the contributed rake calculation. The amount of rakeback you receive is calculated based on how much money you actually put into the pot. For instance, if the pot is $50 and you only contributed $15 into the pot your rakeback percentage is based on the percentage of your money that is in the pot. In this example it would be 30% ($15/$50), this means that 30% of the rake that the casino took belongs to you.

If you plan on playing poker online you should look for online casinos that offer poker rakebacks as this could be the difference between winning and losing. Poker rakebacks are strictly an online phenomenon. They started due to the fierce competition in the online casino industry, and benefit the players. Rakebacks can increase your winnings significantly if you have been on a winning run, and they can also make you money even if you have been losing a lot. They are really the difference between making money at online casinos and losing money.

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