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Question about Rake and Rakeback Percentage

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  1. RustyNail RustyNail is offline

    Richmond, VA
    United States

    Posts: 358
    Joined: Jan 08

    Mar 27th, 2009 (3/27/2009 11:37am)

    Hello P5rs,

    I have a question in regards to rake and rakeback. Could someone please clear this up for me in regards to rake and rakeback?

    Does rake get affected by the amount of the buyin you play? Meaning, if I play 10NL what is the percentage of the rake? What is the percentage of the rake at 25NL, 50NL, 100NL etc.

    For instance,when I move up to 500/1000 (100,000 NL) one day, can I expect to still be paying say 20% rake at those limits? Say I win a $215,437.84 pot, would the rake be $43,089.57? When I play 25NL, and win say a $4.35 pot, I am paying roughly .87 in rake now. Thankfully I get rakeback, but as I move up to the higher stakes, I am just curious to what I am up against.

    Also, on the flipside, if the percentage of rake taken is in relation to the buyin (say 25NL vs. 100,000NL), is it really fair that the lower buyins have to pay such a higher percentage of rake than the higher buyin players? I mean, in all honesty, when I get to 100,000NL, I should in theory be able to afford the rake, correct?

    Also, how do the rakeback sites make money? I always wondered that, rakeback is great and it's really nice to get rakeback, but what would make the sites have rakeback available in the first place?

    Thanks for any help you can give me to these questions about rake and rakeback.

    Rusty
  2. Adam Adam is offline Emperor

    Atlanta, GA
    United States

    Posts: 12,628
    Joined: Dec 04

    Mar 27th, 2009 (3/27/2009 12:14pm) in reply to RustyNail

    Hi Rusty,

    Every poker site you play on should have a page on their website that explains exactly how the rake is calculated at various limits and with various pot sizes. Just about every poker site has a maximum rake per hand of $3. Here are URLS of a few of such pages:

    http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rake.php

    http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/rake/

    http://cakepoker.com/en/PlayPoker/Re...ames/Rake.aspx

    Regarding how rakeback sites make money, the basic idea is that poker sites have been willing for many years to pay "affiliates" a percentage of their referrals' rake for life. At some point around 2004, certain affiliates started using this money as leverage to get more players to sign up under their links. For instance, the affiliate would have been getting 40% from Ultimate Bet and offering 30% to players. The idea was that even though the affiliate was lessening their cut significantly, a whole lot more players would sign up through them because of this. It would also in theory increase the volume of those players' play.

    For years, a lot of rakeback worked in an "under the table" type way without having the blessing of poker sites. In the last 2 years or so, things have become a lot more regulated. Almost all of the rakeback deals are capped now; for instance, affiliates on Full Tilt are not allowed to offer players more than 27% of MGR.

    I hope this answers some of your questions. Let me know if you have any others.
     
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