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.

The direct buy-in for the $75k Guaranteed is $100 + $9, and satellites are currently running for this poker tournament too. Considering the fact that some of the satellites are as cheap as $2 + $0.20, pretty much everybody has a chance to play their way into this tourney.

Assuming you decide to play in any of the satellites, or even pay the direct buy-in, keep in mind that you can sign up for 27% rakeback at Americas Cardroom through RakeTheRake. The 27% Americas Cardroom rakeback is quite a deal, and if you paid the $100 + $9 entry fee for the $75k Guaranteed, you’d receive $2.43 in rakeback. Even if you decide to stick with the smaller satellites, you’ll still be earning a lot of extra money with the rakeback deal.

Other big events going on at Americas Cardroom right now include their weekly guaranteed poker tournaments, bad beat jackpot and Bankroll Builder tournaments. As for the guaranteed weekly events, there are $4k, $6k, $7.5k and $15k guaranteed tournaments running each week. The bad beat jackpot is always among the biggest in the online poker industry, and currently, it’s quickly approaching $350,000! As for the Bankroll Builder tourneys, these are great for beginning players who want to increase their roll since the buy-in is only $1 + $0.10 and the prize pool is $200.

As you can see, there are plenty of great deals and promotions going on at Americas Cardroom, which definitely makes this room worth checking out.

It seems as if the Merge Gaming bad beat jackpot is on the rise again since it’s at $570k, and rapidly increasing. In order to unlock this bad beat prize, you need to play at one of the Merge Gaming sites like Aced, Carbon Poker, Poker Nordica and/or RPM Poker. If you’re a member of one of these sites, the next step is to hop on a designated bad beat table and play for the jackpot.

When you play on a bad beat table, $0.50 is taken from each pot to contribute to the big prize. In order to unleash the bad beat jackpot, one player at the table needs to lose with quad sevens or better while using both of their hole cards. Assuming this happens, the hand loser receives 35% of the jackpot, the hand winner gets 17.5%, remaining players who were dealt into the hand split 17.5% of the money, 10% goes to Merge as payment for running this promotion, and the last 20% goes to reseeding the next bad beat jackpot.

Also keep in mind that when you play poker hands at Merge Gaming sites, you’ll receive VIP points. And Merge rooms basically share the same VIP system where frequent players get poker cashback, enter poker tournaments for free, receive birthday gifts, play in special freerolls, and get a host of other benefits that can help you make a lot of extra money. So if you’re looking to get rich instantly through a bad beat jackpot, and receive rewards on the side, check out a Merge Gaming site.

Reload Bonus – If you deposit before January 15th, 2012 (23:59 server time), you can get a 10% up to $30 reload bonus. The only stipulation is that you have to be an existing Carbon Poker member, and use the “FRESHSTART” bonus code when making a deposit. Those who aren’t a member of this site should sign up to get a 150% bonus, up to $750, through RakeTheRake with the “RTR750” code .

Quad Pyramid – Regulars of Carbon may recognize Quad Pyramid because this promotion has ran in the past many times. The way Quad Pyramid works is that, if you get a specific hand, you receive a cash bonus based on your VIP level. This time around, you need to flop quad 5’s while using both of your hole cards to earn the bonus, and you must be playing holdem poker. Once you meet these requirements, the next step is to email your hand ID to Carbon Poker so they can verify it. The following bonuses will be paid to each VIP class: Regular ($5), Earth ($10), Wind ($15), Fire ($20), Water ($25) and Ether ($30).

Speaking of VIP’s, the loyalty program at Carbon is loaded with benefits for players. The best thing about the program is that players can get poker cashback by exchanging their VIP points for cash. For example, those at the first level, Earth, get 6% cashback on rake paid; at the highest level of the program, Ether, players will receive 35% cashback. In addition to the cashback, players will also be able to use points to enter poker tournaments for free, get a birthday gift, receive sidegame rebates, and even get free poker training.

The tournament in question was the PokerStars 10th Anniversary Sunday Million, and 62,116 players paid the $215 buy-in to create a record $12,423,200 prize pool. Weir managed to navigate his way through the massive field of players, and on towards a $1,146,574 payday.

Obviously the money is impressive here, but what’s especially interesting about Weir’s win is the fact that the Toronto, Canada native was previously unemployed. The little money he did make came from playing internet poker as he said, “I’ve always played cards to scrape together money.”

Unfortunately, scraping money together wasn’t quite cutting it because the 24-year-old owed thousands of dollars in student loans. But luckily for Weir, he’ll finally have the loans taken care of as he said, “I plan on paying off some loans I have built up over the years paying for college. It’s a huge weight off my shoulders getting rid of those.” In addition to paying his student loans off, Weir also talked about sending his parents on vacation, and possibly branching out into casino poker in the future.

He mentioned competing in some of the PokerStars leaderboard races too by adding, “Tournament leaderboards are still out there. Why stop after such a great run? I just hope it continues. I would love a chance to play some live events soon. We’ll just see where the next few months take me.”

One more thing worth mentioning about Kyle Weir is that he started out as a simple home games player. And just a few years later, he’s won the largest online poker tournament in history!

For those unfamiliar with University Challenge, the TV show pits two universities against each other in a first-on-the-buzzer quiz show format. As teams correctly answer questions, they earn points, and move closer towards defeating their opponent and advancing to the next round. However, these questions are by no means easy – especially for an online poker pro like Boeree who hasn’t studied for several years. And there were no questions about poker rakeback featured on the show, which would have helped her out immensely! Here is a look at some of the questions that Liv Boeree had to contemplate while on the show:

Q: In which opera by Verdi is the title character a hunchbacked court jester cursed by the Count of Monterone? (A: Rigoletto)

Q: Shared by 12 Popes between 140 and 1958 what name is the Latin form of an English name meaning dutiful, religious or devout? (A: Pius)

Q: Thought to be the first of its kind in the world, the surcharge on foods that are high in saturated fat was introduced in October, 2011 in which EU member state? (A: Denmark)

Despite being faced with some very difficult questions, Boeree managed to get a few right, and help her team achieve a narrow 5-point victory. After finishing the show, she told her sponsor site PokerStars, “I was mildly terrified at the prospect of University Challenge, mostly because my once-good knowledge of academia had, until recently, left my brain in place of poker.” She also added, “Fortunately, it turned out my fear was shared by every other famous graduate contestant as we met in the green room prior to filming.”

This is just the latest media appearance for Boeree, who was discussed in a recent BBC news feature entitled “Poker’s Faces: Are the British about to invade?” She also appeared on the ITV show Golden Balls, where she won £6500. As for her poker career, Boeree is best known for winning the 2010 EPT San Remo Main Event (€1,250,000), and she has over €1.6 million in career live tournament winnings.

The Team PokerStars member also knows plenty about online poker, and has earned several hundred thousands dollars playing in online poker tournaments.

This being said, players from abroad like the US’s Samer Khoury have moved to Lebanon in an effort to play online poker and earn rakeback; Khoury was quoted as saying, “I’m here to study Arabic, and exercise my freedom to play online poker.” There are a few casinos throughout the country such as Casino du Liban where pros like Khoury can find soft competition in live poker. Sure players won’t be fooled into thinking that the Lebanese casino poker scene is on par with Las Vegas, London or Macau, but with easy money floating around, who cares?

Moving to the downside of playing online poker in Lebanon, many sections of this country experience power outages and/or internet connection disruptions. For a serious grinder who plays hours of internet poker every day, this can be a huge problem. Moving away from the potential playing stoppages, most foreigners don’t speak Arabic like Khoury, which makes it hard to communicate with Lebanese residents. Add in the cultural differences for most foreigners, and this is enough to think twice about bolting for greener online poker pastures.

However, it should still be noted that Lebanon is certainly an interesting destination for professional online poker players who are looking to play at the biggest sites like Party Poker, where RakeTheRake players can get up to 50% rakeback deal. This is one of the top rakeback deals in the internet poker world, and if you were to play in a $100 + $10 poker tournament, you’d receive $5 back with the high end of this deal.

Coren’s first thought was the supposed tried-and-true “duplicate poker” game, which sees players at the same position on different hands dealt the exact same poker hands. Whoever plays their hand the best will be awarded the most points, and this cuts out the luck factor. Or does it? As Vicky Coren writes regarding duplicate poker, “Of course, this still has its flaws. Your opponent might shove with an underpair and a rival opponent might not; doesn’t mean you’ve played better. If he hits a set, you’ve still got unlucky; if he doesn’t, you’ve still got lucky.”

She continued giving her view on the age-old debate about how to find the best poker player by writing the flaw behind every major method used today:

- For all-time poker tournament winnings, she writes that players’ losses aren’t recorded.
- For most final poker table appearances, she says that a player could’ve just played more tournaments than everybody else.
- As for the best online poker player, Coren writes that it’s a totally different game than casino poker.

In short, there is no easy way to label somebody the “best poker player.” You might as well claim that whoever earns the highest rakeback is the top player since you can come up with a flaw for pretty much any method. Getting back to the point, which is Coren’s article last month, you can read all of her thoughts on the matter here.

As for the details of how you can play in these huge poker tournaments, Cake Poker will assign a card suit to each week in December, and you use the appropriate suited Gold Card to buy into a Daily Gold Card Satellite. Once in the satellite poker tournament, you’ll be able to win your way into the weekly final (freeroll).

In addition to making it into the final through satellite poker tournaments, you can also win a ticket through the Match & Win board; keep in mind that the Match & Win board changes each month to keep up with the changing weekly suits. One more way to get into the big weekly free poker tournaments is by purchasing the correct Gold Cards through “The Exchange.”

Also don’t forget that when you play poker games in search of Gold Cards, you can sign up at Cake Poker for 33% rakeback through RakeTheRake. Now that we’ve covered all of the basics in the $50k Gold Card Wrap-Up Tournament Series, here is a look at each poker tournament along with the starting date:

$5,000 Gold Card Wrap Up CLUBS Final @ 3pm ET, Dec 10 – Satellites and Match & Win board run from December 3-10.

$10,000 Gold Card Wrap Up DIAMONDS Final @ 3pm ET, Dec 17 – Satellites and Match & Win board run from December 10-17.

$15,000 Gold Card Wrap Up HEARTS Final @ 3pm ET, Dec 24 – Satellites and Match & Win board run from December 18-24.

$20,000 Gold Card Wrap Up SPADES Final     @ 1pm ET, Jan 1 – Satellites and Match & Win board run from December 25-31.

Nesson believes that poker strategy concepts like bankroll management can be applied to all walks of life so people properly manage their money. He even thinks that grade school children should be taught poker games so they develop these skills as he said, “Absolutely. I mean…it’ll get me in trouble for it because people say, ‘Oh my god, the kids being taught gambling.’ But, yes, absolutely.”

One of Nesson’s students who has really embraced this unique teaching perspective is Brian Koch. The first year law student was a professional online poker player before entering Harvard Law School, and has also played in the WSOP*. He was quoted as saying, “Sometimes you’re gonna have bad outcomes. If you keep taking the 51% chance over the 49% chance over a large enough sample, over a long enough time, that’s going to come out in your favor, and you’re going to end up better off.”

Of course, not everybody in Nesson’s law program was a professional poker player. Such is the case with Hector Ramos, who had only played poker a handful of times before enrolling in Nesson’s class. He stated, “All of us have a little fighter in us, but we have to know when it is time to fight, and when it is time to back away. Whether you’re a lawyer litigating or a businessman trying to find a deal, these skills apply to everything you do in life.”

Hopefully one more skill that Charles Nesson is teaching his students involves taking advantage of online poker rakeback deals. After all, rakeback lowers the amount of rake that you pay online poker rooms significantly, thus increasing your chance for long-term profits!

* World Series of Poker and WSOP are trademarks of Harrah’s License Company, LLC (“Harrah’s”). Harrah’s does not sponsor or endorse, and is not associated or affiliated with RakeTheRake or its partners, products, services promotions or tournaments.