Rakeback is one of the most incredible rewards programs ever devised in the online poker industry. A real-money online poker player can earn Rakeback just by playing their favorite cash games. Win or lose on the virtual felt, your Rakeback earnings are the same.

What is Rakeback?

Rakeback is when a player gets a portion of their contributed rake paid back into their pocket. To better define Rakeback, we must first define the poker rake.

What is Poker Rake?

Poker rake is a simple way for online poker rooms to make money. See, and online poker room does not stand to earn money from its players in a traditional fashion. Players at online casinos are betting against the house, therefore each time a player loses, the casino makes money. Online poker rooms do not work this way – players compete against players, not the house.

So an online poker room must be able to bring in a profit in order to pay administration fees, employee costs and keep the operation running, with a profit to make it worthwhile. This is where the poker rake comes in.

Each time you play a real-money cash game, a small percentage of the pot is raked by the poker site. The standard poker rake is 5% capped at $3 or $5, depending on the stakes and number of players participating.

There’s also an important rule applied by most online poker rooms called No Flop, No Drop. This means if the hand doesn’t see a flop, no rake is taken. This is important in calculating Rakeback, since you must omit these types of hands.

How Does Rakeback Work?

So we know that each time you play a cash pot, a portion of the money you place in the pot is going to the rake. It is from this small contribution that your Rakeback will be paid. Rakeback programs will always come with a percentage. The average percentage is 30%. Earning 305 Rakeback means that if you play a session of online poker, contributing about $10 in rake over that time, you would receive $3 in Rakeback (30% of $10 = $3).

We’ll break it down for you…

Let’s say you’re seated at a 6-player table, earning 30% Contributed Rakeback (see Types of Rakeback to learn more about different Rakeback programs). You are seated in the Big blind position.

Two players fold, two players call your $2 Big Blind, and the Small Blind ($1) folds.

P1: Fold
P2: fold
P3: Call $2
P4: Call $2
SB: $1, Fold
BB: $2

There is $7 in the pot, $2 coming from your stack.

The flop comes down. You bet another $2…

BB: $2
P3: Call $2
P4: Fold

Now there is $11 in the pot, $4 from your stack.

The turn comes down. You bet $5…

BB: $5
P3: Call $5, Raise $5
BB: Call $5

The pot is now $31, $14 from your stack.

The river comes down. You check, Player 3 checks, hands are revealed and the hand is over. We’ll say you won, because we like to see our readers smile ;)

The total pot ended at $31, with you contributing $14. That’s just under half of the entire pot contributed by you. According to the industry standard poker rake, the pot would be raked at about $1.50 ($1.55 to be exact). We know you contributed nearly 50%, and you’re earning 30%, so we take half of the rake [$1.50 / 2 = $0.75], and you get 30% of that [$0.75 / 30% = $0.225].

With basic estimation, we know that you’ll be earning around $0.22 in Rakeback for this hand alone. (See Calculating Rakeback to learn exactly how to calculate Rakeback.)

Playing a full session of about 100 hands like these could easily earn $22 in Rakeback.


Learn More About Poker Rakeback
If you’re interested in earning Rakeback and want to learn more about how poker Rakeback works, please visit the following links.

Types of Rakeback
How To Earn Rakeback
Calculating Rakeback
Make a Profit with Rakeback