How poker rake works, and what it costs you

The room takes a percentage of each pot, up to a cap, once the hand reaches the flop. Many rooms take nothing from a pot that ends before the flop, which is called no flop, no drop. A typical cash game rake is around 5% of the pot with a cap of a few big blinds; the exact figures are in each room's own table rules. The cap is what matters at larger stakes, because once a pot passes the cap the rake stops growing.

An example: at $0.05/$0.10 with 5% rake and a cap of $0.50, a $4 pot pays $0.20 and a $20 pot pays $0.50, the cap. Over 100 hands at a full table you might win 12 pots of varying size and pay $2 to $4 in rake, which at this stake is 20 to 40 big blinds per 100 hands shared across the table, or a few big blinds per 100 hands for you. At the smallest stakes the rake is a larger share of the pots, because the cap is high compared with the pot.

A tournament's price is written as two numbers: the part that goes into the prize pool and the fee that goes to the room. A $10 tournament often costs $11, where $1 is the fee, about 10% on top. WePlay's Daily Grind at $16.50 and Bounty Blitz at $22 are the totals you pay, prize pool part and fee together. The fee is the whole cost of a tournament: there is no rake from the pots during play.

A good small-stakes player wins perhaps 5 big blinds per 100 hands after rake. The rake they paid to get there was often more than that. Put another way, at the small stakes the room earns more from the table than the best player at it does. That is why rakeback is not a bonus to shrug at: a player paying 7 big blinds per 100 hands in rake and getting 30% back adds about 2 big blinds per 100 hands to their result, which for many players is the difference between losing a little and winning a little.

Rooms show your rake in the account pages or in the hand histories, and Basepoker's Rewards page shows what your play has earned. If you cannot find it, estimate: hands played, divided by 100, times a figure between 4 and 12 big blinds depending on the stake, times the big blind in dollars. The rakeback calculator does that arithmetic and turns it into rakeback per month.

Basepoker pays 32% of your poker rake back, credited as you play and claimed from the Rewards page, and its ranks pay more as you play more, up to 80%. WePlay pays 30% of your rake into your balance every Monday. Neither needs an opt-in. The rakeback page has the details for each room.

• Pots that end before the flop often pay no rake. Raising rather than limping before the flop wins more of them.
• At the smallest stakes the cap is high compared with the pot, so the rake takes a larger share. Moving up one stake, when the bankroll allows, often cuts the rake as a share of your winnings.
• Rakeback is paid on rake, not on winning. A player who multi-tables cash games pays more rake per hour and gets more back than a tournament player with the same hours.