What is rakeback?

Have you ever wondered how the poker operators make their money? The answer is rake. For every pot played on their website, the operator in question takes a small cut which generates considerable revenue if there are hundreds of thousands of pots played. The rakeback is not dependant on whether you win or lose the pot.

The two main categories of rakeback on the market today, are ‘contributed rake’ and ‘dealt rake’. Contributed rake means that you will only get rakeback on the pots you have contributed to, by posting blinds or betting. The total rakeback will then be split between all the players who contributed to that particular pot. The major difference between this and dealt rake, is that in dealt rake everyone at the table (who are dealt cards) are automatically included in the rake stats for every pot played at that table for as long as they’re being dealt cards, regardless of whether they contributed or not.

Some would argue that contributed rake is a more fair method since it will award active players. The downside to this, is that contributed rake does not take into account how much you contribute. As such, someone posting a blind and then folding the next round will get the same share of rake as someone who went all in in the same pot. This is also the advantage with dealt rake, as it tends to balance out quite well, if all players are active.