[scrawnybob]

hi

the rake is the small % players contribute to on SOME hands as they play (there are all sorts of different ways of working it out and all sites have similar but different rakes

the rake is the small percentage of the pot in a hand that goes to the poker room - this is to cover ... their costs, their development, bonuses, advertising, staff, licencing, promotions, player incentives, hosting costs, software costs and commissions to affiliates / advertising on tv etc etc

and most crucially things like funding guaranteed tournaments funds and other promotions

and after all those costs - their profit for running the poker room

poker rooms pay out SOME of THEIR money (ie. from the rake) to affiliates for introducing players to their sites etc

Some sites operate rakeback where players will get a % of the rake they have contributed to - back into their accounts ... this comes from me & the poker rooms giving back a % of the rake which was originally covering things like tournaments / costs etc etc (before making profit)

so for example if you get a 30% rakeback deal - then 30% of the amount you rake at the tables on your play will get paid out to you every month (for example)

its basically a way for the poker rooms & affiliates to reward active players for continuing to play on a regular basis

some sites seem to rely on it as a marketing tool / player retention incentive ... others do not do rakeback and prefer to invest their money into more tournaments / bigger guarantees etc

hope thats a help - where we can organise working with sites with totally in-house legit and reliable rakeback we will ... some sites dont do it and some sites dont endorse it (so I wont do it)

Before everyone gets all excited about rakeback - if your a low stakes player playing for pennies its pretty pointless worrying about it - you'll get it automatically at some of the sites we are organising it for but unless you put indecent hours and decent stakes - it wont save your game or make you a fortune ... if you dont know how much you rake or what rakeback its the chances are it wont change your life

The important thing for all players to remember is the rake becomes the rooms money and NOT the players - once it's raked ... too many players seem to think they're entitled to rakeback (it should be thought of as another promotion / incentive by the rooms (and to an extent the affiliates - as we end up paying / losing alot for the rooms providing it to players)

The best analogy I can think of is going shopping at a supermarket - you buy the products (with a margin of profit for the supermarket) ... you wouldnt then go to the supermarket and demand because you filled your trolley your entitled to some money back ... the goods have been priced fairly and so the supermarket can continue to open and offer goods at a reasonable price and pay their bills and make a profit ... but if they then run a regular shopper promotion (ie. poker rooms call it rakeback) they're not giving a refund on goods ... they are running a discount promotion for being a regular shopper at their store.

Another store down the road might not have a "regular shopper promotion" but instead prefer to spend their profits on having a nicer store with alot more choice or better product specific promotions rather than customer specific discounts / incentives (more big money tournaments, bigger bonuses, more games, more live game seats etc etc)

Crucially once the shopping is paid for - that money is no longer the customers but the shops to do as they see fit ... reinvest in the games, give back to specific players or keep for their shareholders

cheers scrawnybob

ps. as Ive said befor ANY promoting or mentioning of sepcific rakeback sites / offers / sites doing rakeback which we dont offer will get deleted / treated the same as any other spam / advertisings (ie. it gets deleted) - dont forget there is google