The Poker Rake

The Las Vegas casinos were built with money people had lost. Whether it was from serious gamblers or casual vacationers, millions of people have lost small fortunes. Online casinos are no different. If you play casino games the house always has an edge, even if it is a small one. Playing poker is even better for the house, the money won and lost is not there’s. The poker room makes their money from rake. Rake is the amount of money, taken as a flat rate or percentage, of the total pot that the house takes.

If you prefer playing in a live or online poker game, the internet poker room will always take its cut. Finding a poker room that takes the smallest amount of rake possible is a key part of making sure that when you play it is profitable. Playing in a live poker room can be very expensive, rates vary depending on where you play, but it is not uncommon to pay hourly rates for the privilege of playing poker. If you play small stakes such as $1/2, a large hourly rate will hurt your chances of playing profitable poker because the rake will not only eat into potential profit but exacerbate any losses.

Playing poker online is a little better as most poker rooms have capped the rake per pot. One of the major online poker rooms, Full Tilt Poker, for example only takes a maximum of $3 per pot. This does not sound like a large amount of money, and if you are playing in some bigger games in relation to the amount of money in each pot it is not. However for anyone playing in games smaller than $1/2, the rake is relatively very large. For example, if the pot is $2.70 the rake taken is $.25. When you are playing poker you are not only playing against opponents but the rake as well. That is why maximizing your winnings is so important. Squeezing more value out of every pot is essential to ensuring your bank roll grows instead of stagnates.

I took a look back at some of my stats recently. Over a small sample size of roughly 800 hands, I generated almost $34 in rake. However, my bankroll only grew by about $4.50. The limits I had been playing were $.05/.10 and $.10/.25. As you can see, the rake that was taken out was a significant portion of money that could have been profit. If you have some type of poker tracker software and play small stakes poker I am relatively sure you would see similar statistics. The bottom line here is that online casinos are no different from Las Vegas casinos; they will always make money from customers.