Rakeback is a refund of poker room rake that has been charged from a player. Rake is how poker rooms earn money.
To know what is rakeback, you must first learn how poker rooms make profit by charging rake from all real money players. Rake will be the only way for poker rooms to earn money, since unlike with other great casino online games, in poker the players are wagering money against other players and not against the house. Think of rake as a small entry fee taken through the poker room for organizing the games.
Poker players do not directly lose any money to the poker site, however the site is steadily raking in micro payments from every cash game pot and tournament entry. The proportion of rake taken online is roughly the same 5% of pot size as in local casinos, and depending from stakes it can be from one cent to five dollars.
Some online poker sites display the total amount of rake provided by a pot, but none show what your individual rake contribution has been. For accounting purposes however your personal rake is recorded in the poker site backend, and rakeback is based upon these rake reports. There are actually two main ways that poker sites use to calculate your individual rake contribution: shared and contributed.
In the shared method, rake is divided evenly among all players that were dealt cards. For example if you will discover ten players sitting at the table and total rake is $1, each player could be assigned 10 cents of rake.
In the contributed method, players must contribute money to the pot to get assigned rake. The rake a player gets credited with is proportionate to the amount of his/her pot contribution. If you were to contribute $50 to a pot of $150 and the total rake taken was $3, you would be assigned $1 rake.
If you play poker, Rakeback is free money so make sure you sign up for it today.
Rakeback is a way for you to save on poker rake costs. By creating your new online poker room accounts through Rakeback provider you will save typically 30% of the rake you pay. Once your poker account is registered you may keep track of all rake you pay to the poker site. And based on revenue share agreement made between the poker site and your Rakeback provider they are going to credit your poker account with rakeback payments of your rake. Rakeback is usually paid once per calendar month, directly back to your poker account.