BrewBrain Sports Investing

Alright, so you want to get started playing poker on-line.  There is one thing you absolutely NEED to do.  You need to sign up through a rakeback affiliate. 

First, what is rakeback?  When you play poker on-line or live down at the casino, the house either takes money out of the pot or takes a “time drop”, a periodic charge to the players at the table.  On-line, the rake method is used.  The on-line card room will take a certain amount of each contested pot.  This rake, particularly at low limits, is a huge hurdle to overcome if your intent is to actually turn a profit.  As a percentage of the pot, it is very large.

When you play with a rakeback deal, you actually receive a percentage, generally around 25% - 30%, of the rake you pay back as a credit.  In other words, if you pay $100 worth of rake during a month of play, you will receive $30 back from your affiliate.

What is an affiliate?  An affiliate is a person or a business that advertises card rooms and attracts players to open accounts with those card rooms.  In exchange, the card rooms pay the affiliates a percentage of the rake collected from the poker players signed by the affiliates.  The affiliate, in turn, pays most of that rake back to you, the player, keeping a percentage for themselves.

How much are we talking about here?  Well, as an example, I am currently working on my bankroll at the NL25 level.  I’m playing no-limit Texas hold’em with a maximum buy-in of $25.  I have played fewer than 5,000 hands in the first six days of March (it adds up fast on-line because you can play more than one table at a time).  I have paid $128.16 in rake, and have a rakeback balance of $34.60 owed to me.  If we project this out for the entire month of March, I will pay about $520 of rake and will get back around $140 in rakeback. 

Just think, if I just manage to break even, I “earn” $140 for sitting in a chair and playing extremely low stakes poker in my spare time for a month.  That’s not bad pocket money.  And, as I progress upward to bigger and bigger games, the rakeback figure only grows.  Add that to the fact that it is not terribly difficult to become a significant winner at these smaller games, and I’ve got quite a deal going.  If you are just learning the game, think of how nice it is to have that cushion if you lose for a while.  It’s a great deal.

Now, can you see why it is so important to play with a rakeback deal?  You cannot get rakeback directly from the sites.  You must go through an affiliate.

As luck would have it, I chose an excellent affiliate when I signed up for my sites.  I continue to use them for any new sites I add.  I use RakeTheRake.  You can click on the banner I added at the top right of the screen to get started.  Click the link to go to their site and follow the instructions to open an account at the poker site(s) of your choosing.  There are several good ones to choose from.

I can recommend RakeTheRake for many different reasons.  First, they are reliable.  I’ve been with them for a couple years now, and have had precisely zero problems.  They are very responsive to email questions, etc.  They have always paid exactly when they say they will pay.  Plus, they run excellent promotions.  I play primarily at Full Tilt Poker.  Just for playing on that site as a RakeTheRake member, I become eligible for their promotions, which have included a free tournament with $20K+ prize pools for several months running.  I really just cannot say enough about that organization.     

So, in summary, Step 1 if you want to play on-line poker is to sign up through a rakeback affiliate.  I recommend RakeTheRake, because I have had excellent results with them.  There are others out there, but I have not seen a legitimate rakeback affiliate with better deals.  BE VERY AFRAID of getting caught up with a small, fly-by-night affiliate.  If you run with one of those, and they disappear, you are out of luck.  Your rakeback will disappear with them, and the sites will not generally allow you to open a second account with a new affiliate.

Click on the RakeTheRake banner in the top right corner of the screen to get started.  If you are asked, tell them you heard about them from RTR03938.  That’s my member number.

Finally, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am not part of RakeTheRake other than I have an account with them.  That said, if you sign up through the link on this page, I will get a small piece of what RakeTheRake earns from your play.  It comes out of their pocket, not yours.  Your rakeback percentage will be what RakeTheRake advertises.  

 Good luck!