MIDNIGHT POKERCLUB

If you have any desire to Play Texas Hold’em poker online seriously then the rake is going to have an effect on your bottom line. Consider a player who plays online poker playing no-limit Texas holdem for twenty hours a week. Over the space of a year they show a loss of $2000. But yet in that time they have generated $12,000 in rake for the card room. This rake has contributed to their loss because if this had been a home game with no rake then they could have added $12k to their result for a net profit of $10,000 over the course of the year.

However sites offer rakeback and a site that offered 30% rakeback would have paid this player $3000 over the space of a year and so this player could have essentially made a $1000 gain over the year instead of showing a $2000 loss. This is precisely why you can get two players with exactly the same abilities playing in exactly the same games and yet showing vastly different bottom lines.

It is a massive difference and one that when compounded leads to a player potentially being able to play the game for a living or as a serious second income stream and not being able to. At the end of the day, playing poker is like any other business in so much that you must be mindful of your overheads and if those overheads become too severe then they can totally cripple your chances of making money.

So just why is rake and the attaining of rakeback so important? Well the modern online poker game is becoming increasingly tough to make money from in meaningful amounts. Everyone is acutely aware these days of how to play poker reasonably well. This means that it isnt always possible to play decent poker and make money. For example, in low-stakes limit holdem games then the rake can be brutal and this is where getting rakeback is critical for success.

There are essentially two sorts of rake collection and these are contributed rake and dealt method. Contributed means that you need to have contributed to the hand and the rake in some capacity to qualify for rake while the dealt method means that all you need to do to qualify is to be dealt in. This form of rake collection makes playing tightly and folding more of a viable option. While the contributed rake collection method makes playing marginal pots more attractive as you will be generating more rake and thus earning more rakeback.

Many novice poker players simply do not comprehend the effect of the rake at all when they set out to play cash games but yet at the lower levels then it is without a doubt your biggest drain when it comes to losing money. So you simply must offset this negative effect as best you can. I am aware of players who play 16 tables and merely break even on those tables but make thousands upon thousands of dollars a month in rakeback.