Rake or Bonus?
Rakeback doesn’t coach you on how the game is played, but it does allow you to have an increased win rate. This doesn’t mean that you actually win more hands, it means that you retain or regain more money over time if you take advantage of rakeback offers.
What’s Rake?
The rake is the means by which online sites make money for providing tables for poker. Since poker games are not played against the house, poker rooms need another form of the house advantage, so they created the rake. The rake is an amount between five and ten percent that is taken from each pot. In most cases any player who receives cards gets credit for participating in the rake. Some online poker rooms give grace by declining the rake when a hand ends before the flop.
How Does a Rakeback Offer Work?
When you sign up with a rakeback affiliate site, you begin accumulating rakeback as soon as you start to play. The web site will offer a percentage of rakeback to be awarded to your account at the end of each month. So if you pay $100 in rake over the course of a month and the rakeback rate is 26 percent, then you will receive $26 dollars back into your poker account at the end of the month.
Typically, when you calculate win rate, the rake is already factored in. So consider the increase with a rakeback return. If you generally maintain a win rate of $15 an hour playing in raked games, then your win rate stands to become $17 or $18 after collecting rakeback.
Consider Rakeback
If a large sign-up bonus already drew you to a specific site, you will not be able to sign up for rakeback on that particular site. If you are still weighing your options between a sign-up bonus and rakeback, consider your own attention span. Are you someone who prefers a new poker site every few weeks? Then hefty sign-up bonuses might be the better choice for you. If you are a player who likes to stick with familiar tables and return adversaries, then the rakeback is probably a wise move.
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