Rolled On The River

Please note this article mostly covers the Rakeback’s inner workings. To find out more about signing up for Rakeback, vist: http://rakeback.cardrunners.com

As you may already be aware, online poker rooms take a small portion of each pot to finance their operations. This is referred to as the ‘rake’. Rakeback is a portion of this that you, as a consumer, can claim back through an affiliate. Essentially, the affiliate receives a portion of the rake for referring you to the poker room, and then affiliates that offer rakeback push a generous portion of this to you, the consumer.

Unfortunately, because rakeback is managed through affiliates, it is only open to new accounts (existing accounts cannot be tied to a new affiliate, since that would prevent your original affiliate from receiving the income it already does from your play).

To figure out how much rake you have paid and, in turn, how much rakeback you will receive, poker sites use a formula called Monthly Gross Revenue (commonly referred to as MGR). MGR is your rake paid, minus any deductions. Deductions vary from site to site: Some sites deduct bonuses, others deduct a portion for store purchases (FTP), and others deduct payment processing fees (FTP, Cake, and AP/UB for US based players).

Poker rooms fall into two categories for calculating MGR: Dealt and Contributed.

The ‘Dealt’ Method

When a poker site uses the dealt method, they are splitting the rake earned from each pot amongst each player that was dealt into the hand. Because of this, the amount of MGR earned from any particular hand can be calculated quite simply, using:

(AmountRaked) / (PlayersInHand)

So, for example, in a hand where $10 was raked, and six players were dealt in, this formula would be:

10/6 = ~1.66

Assuming that this hand played out on Full Tilt, where the typical (and maximum) amount of rakeback a player is entitled to is 27% of the calculated amount, then the return is worked out using the following:

(AmountRaked) / (PlayersInHand) * .27

So our previous example becomes:

10/6 * .27 = 0.45

The ‘Average Contributed’ Method

The contributed method, as you may have already figured out, only credits us if we actually contributed money to the pot (and, therefore, the rake). Essentially, the MGR is split evenly amongst each player that contributed to the pot. From this information we derive a new formula:

(AmountRaked) / (PlayersWhoContributedRake)

As an example, let’s assume we were in a hand where we folded in the small blind. The rake for the pot came to a total of $10, and there were three people that contributed. Our MGR for the hand would be:

10/3 = ~3.33

and based on this, our rakeback for the hand (at a rate of 27%) would be:

10/3 * .27 =0.9

The ‘Weighted Contributed’ Method

Although this is by far the least popular way of calculating MGR, it does exist, so I felt it should be included. This method of calculating MGR is not favorable for tight players because they’re not involved in enough hands to make it work for them.

With the weighted contributed method, each player receives a portion of the rake that is proportional to how much they contributed. A player who folds pre flop (and who wasn’t in the blinds) gets nothing, while the player(s) that put in the most money get the largest percentage of the rake.

Should I choose a site using the dealt or contributed method?

Whether a site offers dealt or contributed rakeback shouldn’t influence your decision too much (you should focus more attention on the quality of play, software, etc); however, if you were to use this as a deciding factor, then as a basic guide dealt rakebacks favour tight play (the typical tight-aggressive player), and contributed rakebacks favour those playing lots of hands (heads up play, for example).

A summary of sites / networks and the method they use for calculating MGR is shown below.

Deductions

Full Tilt

Typical deductions from Full Tilt include bonuses, Full Tilt store purchases, allocated values of freerolls, and Ironman store purchases.

Spending Full Tilt Points (FTP’s)

Every 200 Full Tilt points spent incurs a $1 deduction (or $0.005 per point) from our MGR. If we purchased an item from the store for 7000FTP’s, the deduction from our MGR would be:

7000 / 200 = 35

This should not be confused with rakeback, which is the direct cost to us, the consumer. To work out how much rakeback we would lose on this purchase we need to multiply this value by 27% (in this case the actual amount of rakeback you would lose is $9.45).

The Ironman Promotion and Ironman Store

Everything in the Ironman store incurs a MGR deduction of some kind, except for the purchase of $26 and $75 tokens. Using Ironman medals to purchase Full Tilt points will not affect MGR or rakeback; however, our MGR will be affected when we use those Full Tilt Points.

The mid-year Ironman bonus awarded by Full Tilt is not deducted from our MGR, and purchasing a bonus from the store will not incur an immediate deduction. However, as we clear the bonus purchased from the store, the cleared bonus money is deducted from our MGR.

Boss Media

Boss media, another popular network, uses the contributed method for calculating MGR. They don’t deduct bonuses, and tournament/SnG fees are added onto MGR. However, spending FPP’s will incur a deduction of 0.25 per FPP from our MGR.

In addition to this, a player must clear €100 in MGR to be eligible for rakeback in any given month. So if a player has cleared €100 in rake, but had spent 1FPP within the month, then they might fall below the €100 MGR requirement and not receive any rakeback for that month. It is also worth noting that this total does not carry over to the following month, and will be lost if you don’t clear the minimum requirement in any given month.

Cake Poker

As a relatively new policy, Cake Poker uses the dealt method , and doesn’t make any deductions from MGR. It should be noted; however, that Cake Poker does not allow the use of a heads up display, which may discourage some users from playing this room.

It’s also worth noting that I have a deal with Cake Poker that will allow you to get 33% rakeback. Just use the sign-up code ‘Skelm’ upon registering and your rakeback will be automatically paid into your account daily.

Microgaming / Prima

The 30% offer currently on offer from Microgaming/Prima is based on gross rake, without any deductions. Prima uses the dealt method.

Credits

Many thanks to the following people for helping to ensure that my information is accurate and up to date:

Lee Jones of Cake Poker
Stian Enger Pettersen of Microgaming / Prima
Linda Donovan of Celebpoker
Jennie Khan of Fortune Poker

I intend to write further guides to rakeback, which will address any members’ questions and also cover the deductions from other networks. If you have anything you would like to know, or a network you’d like me to comment on, please leave mention of it in the comments.