What is a Poker Rake?
by Jason Green of Predictem.com
A poker rake is a fee of scaled commission that is taken by the online poker room. Generally the rake is 5% to 10% of the pot for every hand, up to a certain amount. However, the rake cannot only be a percentage, as there are other ways that poker rooms can take a rake. There are some poker rooms online that will not take a rake percentage in a community poker game for a hand that does not go to the flop.
Poker is a game where players will compete against each other and the house does not bet against players, which happens in games such as Blackjack. Therefore the rake is the way that the online poker room makes money. The rake is mainly put in place by a poker room that supplies the poker games. In an online poker room the rake will cover costs of the poker room, such as customer support, software, loyalty programs rewards, bonuses and the personnel.
To be successful when playing poker, where the house will take a cut, a poker player has to not only beat other players, but also the financial cut of the rake.
There are three main types of rake that are used, which will depend on the poker game formats that are used.
1. In poker ring games the rake percentage is taken by the poker dealer and based on the money amount that is bet by the players in the game. In a land-based casino the dealer will take chips from the pot when the hand is live and then put them aside and dropped into a box after the hand is completed. With online poker the software will automatically take the rake. There are some poker rooms that have software that will show the amount of the rake in a graph and the virtual dealer will take the rake in increments between betting rounds. Other poker room software will wait until the end of the hand and then will take the rake from the pot before the pot is given to the player that won the hand.
2. Another type of rake is called a time collection or table charge. This is when each poker player will pay a set fee from playing in a poker ring game, generally every half an hour. However, another payment method of the rake may be a subscription fee each month at an online poker room.
3. The last type of rake is the one that is the fee for entering a poker tournament.
There are some poker rooms online that do not have a rake. These types of poker rooms will make their money by increased traffic to other business ventures of the company, such as sports betting.
A good way to combat rake, is to play poker at rooms offering generous sign up bonuses.