Rakeback Percentages vary from Site to Site – Many rakeback deals differ in how much money you receive from them. For example, if you sign up at Americas Cardroom through RakeTheRake, you can get a 27% rakeback deal; assuming you sign up for Minted Poker’s 40% rakeback offer. Obviously the goal here is to get the top rakeback deals possible, but you should also consider other factors when signing up such as the VIP program benefits, player traffic, player competition and promotions.

Rakeback is a Refund on the Rake you pay – Those who aren’t entirely clear on how rakeback is paid out should note that it’s a refund on the rake they’re charged by online poker sites. For example, if you pay $100 in rake throughout the week via cash games and poker tournaments, you’d be owed $40 under a 40% rakeback deal.

Poker Affiliates pay the Rakeback – One common misconception among poker beginners is that the online poker sites themselves pay rakeback. However, it’s actually affiliate sites like RakeTheRake that pay rakeback out of the commissions they receive. So if you want to receive rakeback, you need to go through an affiliate site, and then sign up at an online poker room.

Rakeback Pay Dates differ – The exact date when you’ll be paid your rakeback money varies between poker sites. In most cases, rakeback payments are either made every two weeks or each month, but there’s no uniform timetable.

There is no Limit to how much you can earn through Rakeback – One nice thing about rakeback is that there’s no limit to how much money you can earn through this deal. In other words, poker sites don’t cut you off after $1,000 in rakeback earnings or anything like that. However, keep in mind that rake is usually capped at $3 per hand, so the amount of rakeback you can get in an individual hand will be limited. But only people who play higher stakes need to worry about this.

Many Online Poker Players make their Living through Rakeback – While many people think professional online poker players earn all of their money through the games, the reality is that plenty of players count on rakeback to make a living. Some of the pros break even on the tables (or even lose a little money), but play so many poker hands that they make big profits through rakeback. So take note of this if you’ve ever been interested in playing online poker for a job.

This is essentially a $5k freeroll event that runs every Sunday at 14:30 ET. All new players can immediately get into the Bankroll Booster by making a deposit and using the “BOOSTER” code. As a new real money player, you’ll also have access to the Free Daily Qualifiers for the following 30 days. The Free Daily Qualifiers run every day at 13:45 and 19:45 ET, and the top 50 players will all win a spot in the next Bankroll Booster.

Once you’ve exhausted the new player deals, you can still get into the Bankroll Booster free poker tournament just by earning WPT points. Just a single WPT point gets you into the One-Point Daily Qualifiers, and these run at 09:45, 14:45 and 20:45. The top 25 players in each One-Point Daily Qualifier will win a spot in the next Bankroll Booster.

But you can skip the qualifiers altogether by earning 5 WPT Points in a given week. Seeing as how 2 WPT points are awarded for every $1 in cash game or tournament rake contributed, you’d only have to contribute $2.50 to get into the Bankroll Booster each week.

In addition to getting into the weekly $5,000 Bankroll Booster, you can also use your WPT points to enter poker tournaments for free, or to buy merchandise from the WPT Store. And what’s nice is that you can get more value out of free tournament buy-ins or store merchandise based on what “Key level” you’re at in the WPT club. The five Key levels are Bronze (0 monthly points required), Silver (400 monthly points required), Gold (1,000 monthly points required), Palladium (9,000 quarterly points required) and Palladium Elite (40,000 quarterly points required).

Tip #1: Don’t just look at the size of the rakeback deal – The first of the rakeback tips worth mentioning is that you’ll benefit a lot more from a deal when poker rooms offer lots of other bonuses too. When you combine rakeback with freerolls, an excellent VIP program and frequent promotions, you’ll get even more bonus money in your pocket at the end of the month.

Tip #2: Table selection is important when earning rakeback – One thing that many people overlook when going for rakeback is poker table selection. And in this matter, the looser a table is, the more profitable you’ll be in regards to rakeback. To find out if your table is loose, you should look in the lobby to see how high the average pots are (comparative to stakes); if the pots are high, then you have a loose table.

Tip #3: Multi-tabling helps you earn a lot more – If you’re a cash game player, multi-tabling (playing more than one table at once) will earn you a lot more rakeback money. Of course, the key thing to realize here is that you should avoid multi-tabling until you’re a winning player with one table.

Tip #4: Higher stakes means more rakeback – While it goes without saying to experienced players, your rakeback cash will increase substantially as the stakes get higher. Much like multi-tabling though, you don’t want to move up in stakes until you’re ready.

Tip #5: Don’t use rakeback as a crutch – Rakeback is an excellent way to make extra money, but you can’t rely solely on it. This being said, it’s extremely important to continue studying poker strategy and other rakeback tips.

In regards to how rakeback gives people free poker funds, the best place to start is with the rake that online poker rooms charge. On average, poker rooms take a 5% cut out of every cash game pot, and they take 10% of the poker money generated for tournaments. So unless you’ve found some magical free poker site that runs real money games, you’re going to be paying these fees in online poker.

Fortunately, you can get the aforementioned rakeback deals through certain sites, which essentially cuts down on the amount of poker money fees you have to pay. For example, if you played online poker at a site that offered a 30% rakeback deal, the cash game rake you pay would be cut down by 1.5%, and the tournament fees would be reduced by 3%. As you can see, rakeback doesn’t offer free poker, but it does give you a big advantage over the average player who’s paying higher rake fees.

If you’re interested in getting a rakeback deal and cutting down on the amount of poker money you pay, the best place to start is at an affiliate site like RakeTheRake. Affiliate sites are given permission to offer these deals to players, so when you sign up at a poker site this way, you’ll be able to get all of that extra poker money in your account at the end of the month.

The InterPoker rakeback offer is especially important because it enables you to save money on the slightly increased rake you’d be paying at their bad beat jackpot tables. Now that we’ve covered the InterPoker rakeback deal, let’s move on to the basics of how you can unlock the biggest bad beat jackpot ever!

To guarantee your chance at the €1.2 million jackpot, you need to play poker at a marked bad beat table, and ensure that at least four players are involved in each hand; if any less than four players are dealt into the hand, you’re ineligible for the bad beat InterPoker deals. The final requirements are that a qualifying losing hand needs to be a four-of-a-kind jacks or better, and both hole cards from the winning and losing hand must be used.

So if a person lost with Js-Jh on a board of Jc-Jd-Ks-Kc-3h to a winning hand of Kd-Kh, this would qualify for the €1.2 million prize. Assuming you are involved in winning one of the biggest InterPoker deals of all-time, here is a breakdown of the jackpot:

- Losing hand gets 35%

- Winning hand gets 17.5%

- Other players who were dealt in the hand share 17.5%

- Boss network gets 10%

- The remaining 20% goes to reseeding the next jackpot.

Remember that in addition to the bad beat jackpot and other InterPoker deals, you can get the aforementioned 30% rakeback offer as long as you sign up through RaketheRake.

What’s nice is that the 2011 Borgata Poker Open satellites are fairly cheap since they start at $2.20. But if you’re looking to start at higher level in these WPT satellites, you can also play poker in the $11 and $60 satellites that they’re offering too. Here is a look at what you can expect in the 2011 Borgata Poker Open satellites at BlackChip:

- 3 X $2.20 daily satellites; top players move on to $11 satellites

- 3 X $11 daily satellites; top players win $60 satellite seats

- 3 X $60 daily satellites; highest finishers move on to Grand Final

- Grand Finals run on July 30th and August 27th; two $6,000 WPT Borgata Open prize packages are guaranteed in each Final, and extra packages are given out depending on the prize pool.

Moving away from the WPT satellites and on to the actual event, this tournament takes place at the luxurious Borgata Resort in Atlantic City. The Main Event runs from September 18th-22nd, and people are expecting yet another huge prize pool this year. In 2010, Dwyte Pilgrim earned $733,802 for taking first place, and the overall prize pool was worth $3.1 million.

If you were to win a $6k prize package through one of the 2011 Borgata Poker Open satellites, you would have your $3,300 Main Event buy-in paid, and have an additional $2,700 left over for hotel and travel expenses. Seeing as how the prize pool eclipsed $3 million last year, it’s definitely worth jumping into the WPT satellites at BlackChip Poker and trying to win a prize package.

Poker Cashback

As the name implies, cashback puts money back in online poker players’ pockets based on the rake they pay. The amount of poker cashback that a player receives depends on the online poker room that they’re playing at, and usually the VIP status they hold. For example, at Carbon Poker, players will receive anywhere from 6% to 35% cashback based on their VIP ranking.

To illustrate how cashback works, assume that you paid $50 in rake one day, and had a 35% cashback deal. At the end of the day, you would receive $17.50 back based on the rake you paid.

Rakeback

Just like cashback, rakeback gives players back money based on the amount of rake paid. However, one notable difference about this offer is that most online poker players receive the same deal regardless of what their VIP status is. So even if you’re a totally new player, you’ll receive the same offer as somebody who plays hundreds of poker hands a day.

Of course, some online poker sites offer frequent players more rakeback, but normally, everybody gets the same deal. If you’d like to know more about rakeback deals, check this out.

Which Deal is Superior?

While you’ll benefit greatly by getting either cashback or rakeback, most people prefer the latter because it offers more value to the average player. After all, if you’re getting a solid flat rate as a poker beginner, it only makes sense to take advantage of rakeback, rather than start at the bottom of the totem pole with poker cashback.

For example, if you played in a $100 buy-in multi-table tournament, you would need to spend an additional $10 in rake. However, with the rake free poker tournaments, you can kiss the extra $10 fee goodbye. So even if you’re only slightly better than the average online poker player, you would still be showing profits.

The single downside to the rake free poker tournaments is that they’re only being offered for a limited time. And there’s no definite date on when Party Poker will begin charging rake again, so it’s strongly advised that you hurry to take advantage of this unprecedented promotion.

Now you may be wondering what in the world you’re supposed to do at this online poker room once the rake free offer ends. Well if you sign up through RakeTheRake, you’ll still be able to reduce the tournament rake you pay by up to 50%. The reason why is because anybody who signs up through RTR can recieve up to a 50% return at Party Poker.

The return also works if you’re looking to play in Party Poker’s biggest events such as the Summer Million, which offers a $1 million prize pool. To get into this massive poker tournament, you can either pay the $640 buy-in, or enter through one of the many satellites currently being offered.

Once you are registered for the free poker tourney, you’ll be competing for these prizes:

- 1st place wins iPad 2

- 2nd place wins iPod nano 6th generation 16Gb

- 3rd place wins iPod nano 6th generation 16Gb

- 4th – 9th places win 10,000 Reward Points voucher in 888 Store

- 10th – 14th places win free seat in the $100,000 First Depositors’ Challenge

Speaking of the $100k First Depositors’ Challenge at 888 Poker, you’ll qualify for the online poker promotion immediately after making a deposit. The way that this free poker promotion works is that you get a ticket for the $100k First Depositors’ Challenge, which happens every Friday at 18:00 GMT. To find this online poker tournament, you need to look for the “Challenges” tab in the 888 Poker software.

The top 10 players in this tournament will be able to win a seat in the $100,000 Sunday Challenge. Normally you’d have to pay an $82 + $8 buy-in to compete for this massive prize pool; however, the $100k First Depositors Challenge gives you a shot at getting into the Sunday Challenge for free.

In regards to the $100k Sunday Challenge, this is one of the biggest weekly tournaments in online poker. And if you’re interested in playing in it, just sign up at 888 Poker through RakeTheRake so you also get a 100% up to $600 bonus.

But as you may have guessed, free poker training isn’t exactly in abundance since people don’t spend hours creating these sites as a hobby. However, that doesn’t mean you should jump right into anything, and pay some enormous fee to learn poker through these sites. Instead, a better option is to try out some free poker training courtesy of RakeTheRake.

To take advantage of this free poker training and learn poker from online pros, you simply need to create an account at RakeTheRake, and look for the “Free Training” button in your account. By clicking this button, you will receive a 14-day membership to DragTheBar without having to spend a penny. If you find this free poker training helpful and want to continue using it to learn poker, you can opt for a full membership afterward.

In addition to the poker training, another thing you can do through your RakeTheRake account is sign up for online poker rooms, and take advantage of the rakeback deals they offer. RTR has an extensive list of online poker sites that offer rakeback, and you can take a full look at each site through this section too.

Now if you’re sketchy as to exactly what is rakeback, you can look at this section to find out what the benefits of this deal are. But as a short synopsis, these deals enable you to get money back on the rake you pay at online poker sites.

So if you’re looking to get free poker training, and earn money back on the online poker rake you pay, create a RakeTheRake account and get started.