Average Rake Online Poker

4/13/2022

Rake is the commission that casinos and online poker rooms charge for playing cards. Rake is the main source of income for online poker sites. While poker tournaments usually charge a flat entry fee per player in addition to the buy-in, cash game players must pay a certain percentage. The size of the pot and participation in it influence the rake amount, and there is a rake cap limit. The less rake the poker room requires or the more attractive the rake structure is, the more profitable the poker game. Therefore, we compared the top 10 online poker providers for you and present you with the ten lowest rake poker sites.

Average Rake Online Poker Real Money
Average Rake Online Poker Deuces Wild

The raked game described above has an average cost of around $12 an hour per player in rake ($4 x 30 hands an hour = $120 total, divided among 10 players). A $5 per 30-minute time charge would cost. Much like the “vig” charged on a typical sports bet, the rake is the amount of commission deducted as a percentage of each pot played by the online poker room with a predetermined maximum cap amount that is set by the house. Tournament Format for Rake By contrast with both Sit & Go and Multi-Table Tournaments there is no rake.

Top 10 Low Rake Online Poker Providers

The following table provides an overview of the rake structure of the top poker sites for players:

The respective online poker providers are listed in the left column. We’ve already sorted them in ascending order according to the cheapest rake structure so you can find the poker site that works best for you at the top. Rake fees are divided into Fixed Limit and No Limit or Pot Limit Cash Games. In two columns, you will find the lowest and highest commission level. All information is in US dollars. For example, “0.01 per 0.20 to 0.50” means that there is 1 cent rake per 20 cents in the pot up to a maximum of 50 cents. Some poker rooms also show the casino share as a percentage.

The House Share: Why There Is Rake in Online Poker

In contrast to so-called casino poker, in which players compete against the bank, online poker is a game between individual players at the table. The poker room operator as the organizer does not participate in the game himself. By collecting a rake, the poker site still secures a source of income, so that not one hundred percent of all amounts that flow into a pot are paid back to games. Online poker has an advantage over live games in that the poker room costs less, which is why the fees are much lower. The exact amount of rake usually depends on the size of the pot and the limits or blinds being played. In exceptional cases, a fixed amount is set. There is usually also a cap limit per cap.

Rake in Sit & Go and Poker Tournaments

If you look closely at our table above, you will find that the rake structures of the individual poker sites are very close to one another. On average, cash game providers charge three to six percent of the pot as a rake, and the rake is often between four and five percent. The poker room also secures income from tournaments. For Sit & Go tables, a fixed percentage may be applied, which is slightly higher and ranges from six to ten percent, depending on the respective limits or blinds at the table. Rake is rarely talked about in tournaments: instead, the organizer or the online poker room charges a participation fee that ranges from five to ten percent of the buy-in but can also be higher.

Online Poker and Rake: What to Look for in the House Share

To successfully make money in online poker and cash games in the long run, you need to not only assert yourself against your tablemates but also include rake deduction. The “no flop, no drop” philosophy of poker providers means you will face a much more aggressive style of cash gameplay as many professional grinders try to push other players out of the pot preflop and profit without rake. You can of course also adopt this strategy, but it makes sense to use poker software to analyze where you are making a profit and where you are losing to adapt your game accordingly.

As we have seen above, poker room rake structures are less important when comparing providers. When choosing a suitable poker site, you should also consider the so-called Rakeback conditions. Depending on the rake you have accumulated, you can again receive bonus points or credits. The differences between individual providers can be more significant here, which is why we’ve dedicated ourselves to this subject in our own Rakeback comparison.

By Taylor Cuccia, Rakeback.com Contributor

As you move up game stakes, it makes sense that you’ll be paying more in absolute poker rake, since you’re playing bigger pots on average and thus more rake will be taken. However, because most poker sites cap the rake at a fixed dollar amount regardless of stakes, you actually pay less rake in terms of big blinds at higher stakes.

The more often the rake gets capped, the less rake you pay relative to lower stakes in terms of big blinds.

To illustrate, we have compiled the rake data of the top six traffic sites across all stakes and plotted a weighted average (based on traffic) of their rakes in big blinds per 100 hands (bb/100) in the graphs below. Check out the graph of your chosen game to see how your stakes played affects your rake paid.

Full Ring NLHE Rake Measured in bb/100 per Differing Game Stakes

As expected, players at the mircro stakes pay the highest relative rake. Players at 2nl really get hammered at an average of just over 8 bb/100. Things dip a bit at 5nl and decrease only slightly from stake to stake up to 50nl. At these stakes most pots are still not capping the rake so the difference from one level to the next isn’t huge.

At 100nl is when things start to drop more significantly, as we see significant drops between nearly every stake from then on.

Moving Up Stakes

To see the effect moving up stakes has on rake, lets look at an example. Lets say a player at full ring 100nl is winning at 3bb/100 after rake. That means he’s beating the game for 8.15bb/100 because of the 5.15bb/100 rake he must pay. Even with a relatively high winrate, rake is eating up 5.15/8.15 = 63.2% of this player’s profit.

If this player moves up to 200nl, where the rake is only 3.77bb/100, he pays significantly less rake than at 100nl. If he is able to maintain the same 8.15bb/100 pre-rake winrate, the rake only eats up 3.77/8.15 = 46.3% of his profit. However, because the game is tougher, its not realistic that his winrate will stay the same.

If he can keep the same post-rake winrate of 3bb/100, then his pre-rake winrate is 6.77bb/100 and rake eats up 3.77/6.77 = 55.7% of his profit.

Even this may be ambitious, so lets say he only wins at 2.25bb/100 after rake at 200nl. Now rake eats up 3.77/6.02 = 62.6% of his profit. This is still a lower percentage than when this player was winning at 3bb/100 before rake at 100nl. Whats more is that despite having a lower post-rake winrate in terms of bb/100, this player actually wins 50% more money because he is now playing higher stakes. At 200nl he earns $4.50/100 whereas at 100nl he was winning $3/100.

This is all despite his pre-rake winrate going from 8.15bb/100 to 6.02bb/100, a 26.1% decrease. Therefore, it is often advantageous to move up in stakes even if your bb/100 is lower at the higher stakes.

6-Max Poker Rake Measured in bb/100 per Differing Game Stakes

6-Max tells a similar story to full ring, only with slightly higher numbers at each stake. 2nl players are once again hammered at 10.4 bb/100 on average. Once again we mostly see small decreases up through the small stakes. Rake actually increases from 5nl to 10nl, though this is likely an anomoly in the data.

The bigger drops begin once again at 100nl and continue from there as with full ring, dropping fairly significantly up through the higher stakes.

The Importance of Rakeback

To see how important having rakeback is for a player’s profits, lets look at an example player playing 6-max 200nl. Lets say he wins a respectable 2.5bb/100 after rake but has no rakeback deal.

Now this player hears about rakeback and gets a 27% rakeback deal on his site. He’s paying 4.57bb/100 in rake, and now he gets .27*4.57 = 1.23bb/100 of that back. Now his winrate jumps to 3.73bb/100, a 49.2% increase, just from signing up for rakeback. Clearly, getting a good rakeback deal can be huge for increasing your winrate.

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Tournament Rake

Similar to cash games, tournament rakes drop on a relative basis when moving up stakes as sites generally take a smaller percentage fee for bigger buy-in levels. Lower rake at these levels mean that the ROI required to beat the rake is actually lower. However, high buy-ins tend to attract tougher competition, so this may be harder than it sounds.

Depending on site and buy-in level, tournament fees range from 5% up to 17%. Traditional ROI takes rake into account, making a break-even ROI equal to 0%. However, to discuss rake levels we need to use what we are calling return on buy-in (ROBi). This is the same as ROI, but discludes the tournament fees from the investment portion of the equation. This allows us to better compare different stake levels.

A good rule of thumb is that your ROBi needs to be equal to the rake percentage just to break even. For example, if you play a $100 tournament with a 9% fee, you’ll pay a total of $109 to enter the tournament. That means that you need to cash for $109 on average to break even, which equtes to a 9% ROBi using the following equation:

ROBi= (return/investment)-1 = (109/100)-1 = 0.09 = 9%

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How Much Cash Back Will I Earn?

Rakeback increases your winnings from online poker as you continually earn money back from every raked hand or tournament you play.

Many players earn a living wage from rakeback alone. Use the calculator below to estimate the size of payments you’ll get over a given period of time. The calculator will compute your expected daily, weekly, and monthly cash back depending on the stakes and tables you input.

Tables

Rakeback $125
Hourly $998
Daily $17,472
Monthly $174,720
Yearly

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