Every time the player plays at real money tables at an online poker room, the gaming operator take a certain percentage from every pot. This fee is known as Rake and is typically 3-5% of the pot. The precise amount of rake charged will be found on the rake schedule at each poker site.

Rake is the way the poker rooms make their money to keep their operation going.

The players leave behind serious amounts of rake every single month. Some sites offer special incentives to their players to play on their site. One of the incentives is known as rakeback or rake return.

Rakeback is when poker players receive a percentage of the fees they brought as rake into the poker operator back. Rakeback has been introduced to online poker, and is where players who are playing get a portion of the rake they have contributed back into their account. Depending on the online poker site, the rakeback which players can receive are usually around twenty - thirty five percent.

Solid players earn a significant amount just in rakeback. For example: in the instance that the player receives 29 percent rakeback, and rake 500 dollars one month, he will receive 145 dollars back. It doesn’t matter if the players win or lose; the more the players rake, the more they get back.

There are basically two types of rakeback that are provided at poker sites nowadays: automated rakeback and third-party rakeback.

Automated rakeback is the easiest type of rakeback, and is preferred by most online players. In automated rakeback, the player signs up through an affiliate, and after this the actual poker room handles everything from there.

A rakeback affiliate is a site that helps promote poker rooms. In return they are paid a portion of the fees taken from players that sign up through these affiliate. In this case the player controls the daily rake, and receives his refund directly into his poker account. The advantage of these deals is automatic.

Another form of rakeback is third-party rakeback. In this form players register via a third party site, and after this that site controls everything regarding the rakeback. Even though the player plays at the poker room, the third party site keeps track of his daily rake and pays him out at the end of the current month.