The Importance of a Rakeback Deal in Free Poker Games

As you probably already know, rakeback is extremely beneficial to online poker players because it earns you poker cashback - and that applies even if you lose! So if you were to buy into a $100 + $10 poker tournament at Intertops Poker and you had their 33% rakeback deal, you’d receive $3.30 back (10 x 0.33) before you'd even won any money!

As you can see, the rakeback concept applies to real money play rather than free poker games. So it would seem that rakeback deals offer up no benefits to somebody who just enjoys playing free poker. However, the truth is that it’s still worth signing up for a rakeback deal even if you're not a serious, real-money poker player.

To illustrate why, let’s say that you sign up at an online poker site simply for the play-money games - maybe just so you can learn poker. After playing free poker games for a while, you might decide to make a deposit so that you can play real money games. If you signed up for a poker room through a rakeback site like RakeTheRake, you’d start getting this money straight away after switching to real money tables.

So how do you put yourself in line for a top rakeback deal if you’re only planning on sticking with free poker games? Well, the first thing you need to do is find an affiliate poker website that offers these deals. The reason for this is that it's not the online poker rooms themselves that pay out the rakeback; the poker rooms pay commission to affiliate rakeback sites that in turn pay out rakeback to you for earning them commission.

So if you wanted to get the 40% rakeback deal at Minted Poker, you could do so by signing up through a rakeback provider such as RakeTheRake. Once you’ve signed up at an online poker room – through an affiliate like RakeTheRake – you can make a deposit and start playing real money games. As you pay rake fees, your rakeback amount will be tracked. Then at various points during the month you’ll receive rakeback payments.

So remember: even if you only plan on playing free poker games, make sure that you’re eligible for a rakeback deal just in case you decide to play for real money later.