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You often hear it said within the online poker community that rakeback can turn a break even poker player into a winning one or a losing player into either a break even or a winning player depending on how much they were losing and how much they are getting from the poker rakeback. This is a general statement, but one that is true.
Consider, for example, an online poker rakeback deal that is worth 25% of the rake that you contribute to pots that you play in cash games at a particular website. If you are playing hundreds and hundreds of hands at that particular site on a weekly basis, chances are good that you are contributing rake amounts in the hundreds as well. With a 25% rakeback deal, you will get $25 back for every $100 that you contribute in rake to the poker site.
Now, just consider for the moment a limit stakes game with $1/$2 bets. With a big bet of $2, you are generally going to want to sit down at the table with at least $50 in order to be able to play the hand properly. When you sit down with that amount of money, it is not uncommon to have pots that generate 20 cents a hand in rake from you when you are actually playing in the pot.
Suppose then that every hand you actually bet in you were to receive 5 cents as a bonus. That means that if you played in 100 hands a day (requiring playing around 300 hands or 3 hours of poker a day). That would equate to you earning around $20.00 in rake a day or $140.00 in rake a week. What could that do to your bankroll? If you are like most $1/$2 players, you could easily fill in all of your losses with that kind of money.
The 20 cent estimate is actually not a great one, since poker players have different playing styles. If you bet more, you’ll earn more in rakeback so rakeback naturally tends to favor the players that can break even with more aggressive styles. Poker players that are more conservative will earn less as a result.
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