Who Benefits the Most from Rakeback?

It’s often said that high stakes players are the ones who benefit the most from rakeback, people who post hundreds of dollars just in blinds. This is not entirely true. Rake – and consequently rakeback – has more impact on the low and mid-limit players’ poker economy.

Let’s look at two player types:

Player #1 is a semi-professional player who plays $30/$60 short-handed fixed-limit hold’em. In her regular game, the average pot is around $300.

The poker room deducts 5% in rake from every hand, but the rake is capped at $3, so no matter how large a pot becomes, the poker site will only charge $3.

This means that the poker site deducts 1% from an average pot.

Player #2 is a mid-limit recreational player who plays $5/$10 fixed limit hold’em. In his regular game, the average pot is around $60.

Again, the poker site deducts 5% from the pots with a $3 cap, but for this player, the rake is 5% of an average pot.

Speaking in absolute terms, player #1 pay more rake since it’s capped after only a pre-flop raise and a call. But at the same time, the rake corresponds to a much larger part of Player #2’s poker turnover. Therefore, the recreational player benefits the most from having a good rakeback deal, although both players earn money when playing with rakeback.

Take my bankroll as an example.

Bankroll: $825
Rakeback: $177 (February not included)

The rakeback is 24% of my total winnings, so it really makes a difference!

- LeCheese

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Rakeback Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.