Rakeback

1. Money returned by a poker affiliate to the poker player who generated the rake in the first place.

How Rakeback Works

Virtually every poker room employs affiliates who help to market the poker room on websites, in magazines, and elsewhere. One payment option for affiliates is known as MGR, or Monthly Gross Revenue. Essentially, MGR gives the affiliate a percentage interest in the rake generated by players who sign up with the affiliate's tracking code. Rakeback emerged from competing affiliates who were being paid by the MGR method. Those affiliates decided to return a sizable percentage of the money they were being paid back to players. Thus, the rakeback industry was born.

Which Affiliate Can I Trust?

PokerTerms has a close working relationship with the rakeback affiliates at This Is The Nuts (TITN). TITN has been around for years, they know the industry, they pay quickly, and they run great promotions. In fact, TITN runs over $100k in monthly promotions. Add that to features like daily stat updates, a MyTITN page, 24/7 phone/chat/email support and much more, TITN is our #1 choice for poker rakeback.

That being said, any of the big rakeback affiliates are generally trustworthy enough to pay you your rakeback. The differentiating factor in today's rakeback environment is generally factors not related to trust (ie, promotions, support, etc).

Rooms That Allow Rakeback

The most popular room that openly allows rakeback is Full Tilt Poker. Other top poker sites that allow rakeback are Absolute Poker/UB.com (both part of the CEREUS network) and Cake Poker. A whole host of other rooms also allow players to sign up with rakeback.

Some rooms, such as Bodog Poker, allow rakeback, but prefer to avoid wide-scale promotion of their program. You can find Bodog rakeback at most of the top rakeback providers if you simply create a free account and login.

Rooms That Don't Allow Rakeback

The largest poker room in the world, PokerStars, is strictly against offering rakeback to players. Instead, PokerStars offers a lucrative and well-run VIP program. Within the confines of the PokerStars VIP program, top raking players can earn upwards of 50% of their rake back in various players rewards. To many, the PokerStars VIP program is effectively the same as rakeback, although in a different form. Top PokerStars players can also opt to turn their Frequent Player Points (FPPs) into cash, which makes the PokerStars VIP program even more similar to rakeback.

In addition to PokerStars, top non-US rooms such as Party Poker, OnGame (PokerRoom, bwin) and iPoker (Titan Poker, CDPoker) do not allow rakeback to be offered to players.

Here is more info about poker loyalty programs.

Rakeback Percentages

At all of the major poker rooms offering rakeback, affiliates must agree to a certain capped percentage that is allowed to be returned to the player. Some poker room rakeback percentages include:

Full Tilt Poker: 27%.
Cake Poker: 33%.
Absolute Poker/UB.com: 30%.
Action Poker: 35%.
Carbon Poker: 30%.
Sun Poker: 30%.

As you can see, the maximum allowed rakeback percentages are typically in the upper 20s to mid 30s. However, at some smaller rooms, it is possible to receive over 50% rakeback. Most online poker players consider Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker to be the best poker rooms that offer rakeback due to the combination of good action and generous promotions.

Related Terms

Rake, Poker Loyalty Programs