About rakeback and rake

2008-07-28 • Gugster • Visningar: 4222

Earn more money when playing poker.

Interview with one of the greatest players in the rakebackindustry. Alexander Stevendahl, part owner and CEO for Gamesurf Limited, who operates e.g. Rakebacklovers.com. World leading in offering poker players around the world rakeback deals on online poker sites. An article divided into two sections. The first is an interview with Alexander Stevendahl. The second part is facts about rake and rakeback and how it works, this section is further down the page.

Q: Who are you?
S: My name is Alexander Stevendahl and I am part owner and CEO for Gamesurf Limited down on Malta. We handle a large range of poker related online sites like [url= http://www.rakebacklovers.com/]Rakebacklovers.com, Bonuslovers.com, Casinolovers.com, Cardlovers.com and many more

Q: What is your experience in rakeback?
S: I am the founder and person that have operated Rakebacklovers.com which has existed since 2006. We have to today over 20 000 poker players with us, who has in one form or another some kind of rakeback through Rakeback Lovers.

Q: What is an affiliate?
S: An affiliate is a person or a company that recruits e.g. poker players to poker companies like [url= http://www.cardlovers.com/news/poker-room-reviews/betsson/]Betsson, [url= http://www.cardlovers.com/news/poker-room-reviews/unibet/]Unibet or [url= http://www.cardlovers.com/news/poker-room-reviews/diamondbet/]Diamondbet. There is different ways to work as an affiliate, and one way is to give rakeback to poker player so they sign up and play poker at different poker companies.

Q: How much can you get in rakeback?
S: There is no limit, on how much rakeback a person can get. Your rakeback is based on how much rake you have in turn over on the different poker companies that you are playing on. Rake is the fee you are paying in every pot you are competing in. The more pots you are involved in, the more rake you are paying and the more rakeback you will earn.

Q:What does this mean to a player that doesn’t play so much and in contrast to a player that is playing a lot?
S: It means extra money in the wallet. Regardless if you are a big time player or just play on and off, you are still paying a fee in every pot. So it’s always good to have a rakeback, regardless if you receive $80 or $30,000 extra a month through rakeback, it’s always money that you could have fun with.

Q:What’s the difference between e.g. a bonus and rakeback?
S: A bonus is often a sum of money that you receive once, because you have become a new customer and deposited money in a poker room. Rakeback is something that you receive frequently every month. Then there is also a bonus that never stops, but those have in principle the same function as rakeback, just that they are called bonus because the word rake back is starting more and more becoming a forbidden name in the poker industry.

Q: Since awhile back some networks have begun to prohibited rakeback, like iPoker and Ongame to new customers, why?
S: During the spring/summer of 2007 a big rake back war broke out on these networks. Some poker rooms offering such a high rake back to recruit players that they didn’t even manage to break even. These problems where the biggest at Microgaming, iPoker and Ongame networks. The networks then decided that they needed to do something about it, that’s why they banned rakeback totally on both iPoker and Ongame. They have become more restricted, you can’t even as an operator on these networks, advertise on websites with the word “rake” in the URL, or a website that is classified as a “rakeback” page.

Q: What have those consequences been?
S: The results has been that many poker rooms have in secret tried to offer rakeback through rakeback sites to poker players, but that has often ended with poker rooms getting high fines or that they have been shut down. For us that operates rakeback sites, it has of course affected us in a negative way, when iPoker and Ongame was the two most popular networks that offered rake back. Nowadays they have loyalty bonuses to their players, when they play on the sites.

Q: What networks offers rakeback?
S: The biggest network today that offers rakeback is [url= http://www.cardlovers.com/news/poker-room-reviews/full-tilt-poker//]Full Tilt Poker. Then there is also the following network that is offering rakeback, Betfair, Cryptologic, Cake network, Entraction, Poker Nexus, Boss Media, Merge, Poker Liberation, Microgaming, PKR, Absolute Poker, Ultimatebet and Action Poker.

Q: What is the advantage and disadvantage by offering rakeback in poker in whole?
S: The advantages with rakeback are of course that poker players get more money when they play poker, or more correctly they save more money through rakeback. But also it’s important to understand that if the poker rooms are offering higher and higher rake back it will end with them not earning any profits. It will also mess things up when they can’t afford to make any commercial. Through commercial arrive more new players and also fish. And we who plays poker today, would rather want to see the poker industry grow and more new players arriving, then to earn a few extra percentages rakeback.

Q: How will the future of rakeback look like?
S: I think that the hysteria is beginning to fade more and more. Soon all the big poker room will realize that there is no point to give out enormous rakeback deals. But instead try to stabilize the rakeback on a good level and later on begin to venture on more TV- and newspaper commercial on new markets. There will always be sites that will aggressively provide high rakeback when they are new, but when they well have settle down in the industry, they will have better insight that this isn’t a working strategy in the long run.


Q: How would you like it to look like in the future when it comes to rakeback and online poker?
S: Of course we would always like to offer our poker players the best rakeback deals, and be able to offer as high rakeback deal as possible. But I think it’s bad for online poker in the long run. I think it’s the wrong way to prohibit rakeback, but instead control it. Also I think that loyal poker players to the poker rooms always should be able to get good VIP-offers. That means get more money instead of standard.

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Facts about rake and rakeback
Every time you play at a casino online or offline, you are almost always paying a rake. The exception would be so called free roll tournaments and on play money tables, where you play for free to compete.
When you play online on the Internet, you will always pay a rake. Don’t matter if you play sit n go, tournaments or cash games, in hold´em, Omaha, 7-stud etc. There will almost always be a fee in the pots you are contending in and bringing in to your stack. Rake is by definition a fee which is taken from you, when you play.

Rake and Cash games
In most cases the standard rake is between 3-5% when you play cash games, and are capped at $3. That means if you play a pot and win, let say $10, the poker site will take 50 cent (5% out of $10) in rake out of that pot, and leaving you with $9.50. If you play higher limits and perhaps winning a pot at $1000, the rake that is taken will not exceed more than $3. If you play in other currencies like € (euro), the unit 3 will often apply as the cap. In these day, it means that you pay more rake because of the € has higher rate value then $

Rake, Tournaments and Sit n Go
When it comes to Tournaments and Sit n Go, the standard rake in proportion to the buy-in is 10% out of the buy in, but in some cases even as high as 20%. That would mean if you are e.g. paying a buy in for a tournament for $50 and is paying a rake that is 10%, you will be forced to pay $5 in rake (10% out of $50), that will go to the poker site. That means $50 + $ 5 = $55 in total for every participant, $50 goes to the tournament pot, and $5 to the poker site

Where does the rake go, and why do we pay it?
The rake that you are paying is going to the maintenance of the online poker site, support, promotions and to generate income for the owners. The poker rooms on the internet usually takes a lot less rake then an ordinary brick and mortar room. But online poker rooms also have less cost than a regular casino and better turnover. That is why we have seen a dramatically increase of online poker room that has been popping up these recent years. The competition for the players has getting harder, and the poker companies are investing a lot on marketing towards the customer. Except for attractive offers and bonuses for players to sign up, the online poker site has to offer lucrative games and ways to make the players stay on the poker site. One way that has growing popular since 2005 to maintain the customers, has been to offer refund of the rake. The so called rakeback.

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Rakeback offers:

Full Tilt Poker Rakeback
Ultimatebet Rakeback
PowerPoker Rakeback
Absolute Poker Rakeback
PKR Rakeback
Diamondbet Rakeback
Betfair Rakeback
Mintedpoker Rakeback
Betsson rakeback
Red Star Poker Rakeback
Cake Poker Rakeback
NoiQ Poker Rakeback
PayNoRake Rakeback
Poker Nordica Rakeback
Betsafe rakeback

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