Rakeback
Rake back is all the rage at online poker rooms. What many people don’t know is that rake isn’t only an Internet phenomenon. There are also raked pots at brick and mortar casinos. In fact, that is where rake has its origins, though rakeback deals have become a major phenomenon in the online universe. Today, you can get rakeback form most online poker rooms, including Ultimate Bet rakeback and Absolute Poker rakeback. Brick and mortar casino players don’t have accounts set up in the same way as online players, so rakeback doesn’t make sense in Vegas or Atlantic City.
Unlike other casino games, poker is not played against the house. In poker, players compete against other players. The rake is the tax that poker room’s take off of each pot as a fee for hosting the poker action. There is no build-in house edge that makes poker profitable for poker rooms and casinos. Poker rooms must take cut in order to make hosting the poker game a profitable venture.
In brick and mortar casinos, the alternative to rakeback was offering bonuses and incentives. A frequent poker player might be rewarded with prizes—sometimes even a vacation or car for serious high rollers. This could take the place of money lost on the rake, but technically it is not a form of rakeback. Rakeback only came into its own with online poker rooms. The rise of online gambling coincided with the rise of interest in poker, so a higher percentage of people were playing poker online than normally play at standard casinos.
These players started noticing huge losses in the rake. At first, online poker sites offered incentives and bonuses just like standard casinos—gifts or just hard cash. Pokre rooms and affiliates then directed these incentives towards poker players—the bulk of online gamblers—in the form of rakeback. Players can now get around 30 percent of their net raked returned to them. It was a way to reward players for extended play. Ultimately it was a way for poker rooms to bring in new players and new money. The money that players earn in rakeback usually goes right back into the poker site, so it’s not really considered a loss.
Rakeback offers have brought in a whole slew of new poker players online. It’s yet another way that poker sites can market themselves online. Internet poker rooms compete with each other for better and better rakeback deals so it’s possible to find some very lucrative rakeback deals online.
