As online poker keeps gaining in popularity against all odds (it was recently declared a sport in Russia) more and more beginners hit the online tables every day.

While there are tens and possibly hundreds of internet websites dealing with pretty much every aspect of poker strategy quite a few of them let players in on one of the most important strategic improvements they could ever make: rakeback.

In order to understand how rakeback works you need to first know what the poker rake is.

Online poker rooms are developed by teams of software professionals and operators. Designing, building and maintaining such an operation is by no means child’s play, and it obviously costs money. On top of this, you do realize that people who operate these rooms need to make a living too. This is why rake is taken after every real money hand that you play. It is a small percentage of the pot that goes to the house.

Industry standard on this is 5% to a max of $3, but exactly how much and how it is taken depends on the poker room you play at.

Rakeback is just what it sounds like. You get a certain percentage of the rake you generate back. Contrary to popular belief, rake is not takes solely from the winner of a hand. pretty much every active player contributes to the rake, and all contributors are eligible for rakeback.

Rakeback is usually 30% (if you pay $1000/month in rake you will get $300 of that back) but this percentage too can vary from poker-room to poker-room.

Anyway, as you can well see from the above example, even if you break even at the end of the month you’ll end up a winner thanks to rakeback.

You do what you want to, I know I don’t play a single online poker hand without it.