What Rakeback can do for Live Tournament Players

A sizeable percentage of poker players opt for the online game today because it’s quick, convenient, full of variety, and loaded with potential profits. However, nothing beats the prestige and social aspect of live tournaments, which is why there are still plenty of grinders who love these events. And for these players, you wouldn’t think that rakeback is too important.

After all, rakeback is a way for online poker players to recoup a large percentage of the rake fees they pay internet sites. Seeing as how live tourney grinders aren’t getting rakeback on their buy-ins, it seems like such a pointless concept to worry about. But the truth is that even live players can greatly benefit from a deal and we’ll explain why below.

Giving Everybody a Chance
While many poker players dream about playing in multi-million dollar tournaments where life-changing sums of money are offered, the truth is that most people can’t afford these events. After all, big live tournaments are at least $1,000 to enter – if not $10,000 or more! Sure this is nothing to the top pros like Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu, but most players would have to spend their entire bankroll on these seats.

Luckily, the poker world came up with a solution to this problem years ago: satellites. Online satellites give just about anybody a chance to win seats for major live poker tournaments. For example, you could buy into an $11 satellite and work your way up to a seat worth $10,000. There are even cheaper satellites for those who don’t mind playing lots of poker to win a tournament seat.

Where Rakeback comes in
Let’s say you’re a low stakes grinder who loves trying to win live tourney seats; so you buy into eight $30 + $3 satellites throughout the week. Assuming you had a 33% rakeback deal, you’d be getting almost $8 back from the $24 in total rake fees (0.33 x 24). Obviously this isn’t going to buy you into the WSOP Main Event, but it’ll certainly help over time.

The end result is that you’ll be able to play in more future satellites and have a better opportunity to win live tournament seats. And seeing as how many big-time poker players got their start from satelliting into a live tournament and winning, you should definitely try as many satellites as possible.