Sep 01, 2012
Does Micro Stakes Rakeback help much?
By RTR Dennis
Those who play micro stakes poker – or limits of $0.01/$0.02 to $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold’em – are typically recreational players who want to learn the game without risking too much money. As you can imagine, these players aren’t always worried about concepts like rakeback. Going further, many of them are not even sure if rakeback is worth pursuing in low stakes poker. However, the truth is that rakeback can make a big difference, even for low limit players. In fact, let’s go further into this subject to explain just how much it can help micro stakes grinders.
Every Bit counts
To set up an example of how useful low stakes rakeback is, let’s say that you play two tables of $0.02/$0.04 NL Hold’em for four hours (roughly 800 hands). Also assume that you are credited with $0.01 in rake per hand. If you had the 40% Minted Poker rakeback deal, you’d be collecting 0.4 cents per hand, which is hardly anything. But over the course of 800 hands, that rakeback would add up to $3.20 (800 x 0.004).
Okay, so $3.20 isn’t going to make you a full-time professional online poker player. However, if you earn this every day for a week, you’d have $22.40 in rakeback alone. For a $0.02/$0.04 Hold’em player, $22.40 in a week is a huge bankroll boost! Anybody whose goal is to eventually move up in stakes could greatly accelerate this task with online poker rakeback.
How to get Rakeback
The great thing about rakeback deals is that beginning players have very little trouble getting one. All a player needs to do is sign up at a poker room through an affiliate site like RakeTheRake. Once you visit the affiliate and complete their signup instructions, you’ll be eligible to receive money back on rake paid. One very important thing to note is that you cannot sign up directly through a poker site and still get rakeback because affiliates are the ones who pay this money.
What to do if you sign up without Rakeback
As mentioned before, some beginning players discount rakeback while thinking it’s not valuable. So they sign up directly through an online poker room and fail to take advantage of a deal. But based on what we’ve already discussed, it’s worth going back to get rakeback as a micro stakes player.
Now you shouldn’t try to visit an affiliate and create another account for the same room you’re already playing at; otherwise, it will eventually be shut down. However, you can go to an affiliate and sign up for another online poker room to get your deal.