Rakeback or bonuses

The question of whether one should go for rakeback  or rather for a hefty bonus deal forever lingers in the back of savvy poker players’ minds. Apparently, the question is not that easy to answer at all. Under certain circumstances, rakeback is the way to go, under different ones though, a sign-up bonus deal may provide a bigger edge.

Let’s first see what poker rakeback is though (as I’m quite sure many players still don’t know what it’s about).

A rakeback deal is a rebate on the rake players generate through real money play. The poker room rakes every single real money pot that is taken down, pocketing around 5% of it, up to a maximum of $3.

This is how the poker room makes its money and this is how players lose a lot of money without ever noticing. The funny thing about the rake is that because it’s a tiny leak in the system, players tend neglect it completely. If you do the math though, you’ll realize that you’re dropping quite a serious amount of cash. A rakeback deal  would recover some of that lost money for you, thus plugging up a significant long term leak in your game.

Because rakeback never expires (once you sign up for a deal, you earn rakeback at the given room for the rest of your life), it is generally considered superior to sign-up bonus deals, which are either released or they just expire after a while.

 Generally speaking, bonus hunters agree that if you’re a low to micro limit player, a bonus delivers better value than rakeback. Of course, bonus hunters or bonus whores have ways of jumping from one room to another to make sure that they’re always working towards the redemption of a bonus. On higher limits, even bonus hunters agree that a rakeback deal provides a much better edge.

 If you’re a truly well informed customer though, you may not have to choose at all between rakeback and the bonus. I mean, why choose when you can have them both? Several online poker rooms offer bonuses on top of the rakeback deals they feature. All you have to do is to make sure that the room does not subtract your bonuses from your rake back and for a while there you’ll be able to play with double rake rebate. Read around and find yourself a nice deal now.

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