Ring Game or Tournament Player? You may know that rakeback is a great way of increasing your win rate in online poker just by signing up through a certain site. If you understand how rakeback works and is calculated, you may worry about the advantages of rakeback to a tournament player. If this is the case, or you’re not sure how a rakeback deal works, read on.

How Does Rakeback Work?
Each time you play a pot in an online poker site, the software automatically removes a percentage of the pot for the casino. This is called the rake. The amount of the rake usually doesn’t add up to more than $4, but after awhile, that money can add up. When you sign up with a particular online poker site through a rakeback affiliate, some of that rake is returned to you. The percentage will vary from online poker site to online poker site and rakeback affiliate to rakeback affiliate, but it is generally between 20 percent and 30 percent. Absolute Poker rakeback might be higher than UB rakeback and so on.

How Does Rakeback Help Tournament Players?
As you can see, this provides an interesting question to tournament players. If rakeback is a percentage of cash game rake, how do tournament players benefit? The answer is that they may not. Certain rakeback sites award rake credit for tournaments and others do not. You will notice that most tournament fees are listed with two numbers, for example $100 + $9. The $100 is the buy-in and the $9 is the entry fee, the tournament version of rake. It is a percentage of this amount that is returned to you if your rakeback site accepts tournament play.

Taking Advantage of Rakeback for Tournament Players
If you are a tournament player, take the time to make sure that tournament fees are included before signing up with a site through a rakeback affiliate. Once you’ve signed up you cannot sign up again, so if you sign up with the wrong site, you’re stuck and will have to play cash games on that site to earn rakeback. On a positive note, Full Tilt rakeback includes tournament fees.