Jul 06, 2012
Rakeback: The Big Difference Between Live and Online Poker
By RTR Dennis
Ever since the rapid rise of online poker in the early 2000’s, people have been debating which is the superior version - internet or live poker. And the debate is certainly a lively one because both forms of the game offer specific perks. Here’s an abridged version of what the two types of poker have going for them:
Online Poker
- Convenience
- No travel costs
- Rooms run 24/7
- More stakes available
- Social aspect
- Weaker all-around competition
- Physical tells present
- Nearby entertainment
Depending upon how you weight each of these attributes, it’s virtually up in the air as to which form of poker is better. However, there’s one colossal aspect that tilts the scale in favor of online poker – rakeback! Unfortunately for land-based poker rooms, rakeback can only be offered in online poker and as you’ll see below, rakeback is a huge advantage.
Lower rake fees increase your Profits
Every time you play in a real money poker tournament or cash game, you’re paying rake because poker rooms collect rake as a fee for running the games, which is understandable. The standard tournament rake fee is an additional 10% tacked onto the buy-in, while poker rooms take 5% from each cash game pot (although both fees decrease for high stakes players).
Luckily you can still be a profitable grinder if you learn some strategy to improve as a player, and if you take advantage of rakeback deals. As for the latter, rakeback lowers the amount of rake you pay by returning a percentage of these fees. So if you get the 35% rakeback deal at Carbon Poker, then 35% of the rake you paid would be returned. Assuming you bought into a $100 + $9 Carbon tournament, you’d get $3.15 of your buy-in back ($9 x 0.35).
As we mentioned before, you can only get rakeback in online poker. However, there’s a little more to the equation than just signing up somewhere and expecting rake fees to be lowered - you have to sign up at a rakeback poker site through an affiliate such as RakeTheRake.