Rake Explained and Comparing Online Poker to Live Poker

The 'rake' can be defined as the fee the poker room charges players (from here on out 'poker room' or 'house' is referring to a casino, online poker room, local card club/poker room, or a game run by an individual(s)). There are generally two different methods that are used by the house to collect the rake. The first is when the card room will take a percentage of the pot up to a certain amount. For example, they could take 5% up to $3 before they 'push' the winner their chips. How much the house takes and what requirements must be met before they 'rake' the pot will differ between online poker rooms and 'live' (not online).

The second method, and the one that will not be discussed in too much depth here, is what is known as a 'time charge'. The house will collect a certain amount of money every half hour or hour from all the players playing. The time charge method is usually not used for the lower limit games, and even in the mid to high limit games, it is not always employed. From here on out 'the rake' is only going to refer to the rake that is collected from individual pots. This is the standard method that most poker players are used to and will be the focus of the rest of the article.

Live poker rooms can have different requirements of when they rake the pot and at what percentage. For live poker rooms the percentage is usually 10% and, depending on the poker room, can have a maximum of $3-$5. Some poker rooms also have a minimum rake that they take from each pot, regardless of the size. For example, if there is a 1/2 NL game and the blinds are $1 and $2, they might take up to $3 from the pot on the flop. This means that if everybody folds to the small blind, he/she calls the big blind, and the big blind checks, the house will collect up to $3 (depending on their policies), even though they are heads up and the pot only has $4. The house will then take another dollar once the pot reaches $40 (10% of $40 is $4, but they have already taken $3) and, if there maximum is $5, they will then take another dollar at $50.

Because most players realize that contributing $2 in order to win $1 is a tough proposition, most poker rooms will allow the small blind and big blind to 'chop'. This means that they can both receive their blinds back if they both agree that it is acceptable. This has to be done before the flop and no other players can be in the hand. Poker rooms that do collect rake no matter how many players there are if there is a flop, usually have a 'no flop, no drop' policy. This means that if there is no flop, no matter how many raises or how big the pot, the house will not collect any money from the flop. It needs to be remembered that not all live poker rooms collect rake if there is a flop. This is sometimes regional, but can also vary from poker room to poker room in the same region.

Online poker rake differs in several ways. The first is that the percent of rake that is usually taken is 5% and this is almost always capped at $3. Not only is there usually a maximum $3 collection, but there is almost always no minimums. In some games the pot will need to be as large as $30 before the house collects their percentage. In games where the house collects 5%, because of simplicity, they can divide the amount they collect into 'cents'. This means on a $20 pot there can be a rake of $0.50. For online games, there is not an option to chop if the small blind and big blind are in the hand before the flop.

The above descriptions of how live poker rooms and online poker rooms calculate and collect rake are the most common methods employed. As was mentioned, the rules will vary, but a majority of poker rooms use the above rules and using them as guidelines can help the poker player (whether a novice or beginner) decide which version offers the highest return. There are many other factors that determine the profitability of a poker game and it would be foolish to base game selection solely on the rake collected.

It is fairly obvious that the maximum rake that the house collects in live games is a significant amount higher than online. Even if it was assumed that they only charged a maximum of $3 the minimums are much higher than online poker rooms. Seeing a flop with three people and $9 in the pot ($6 after the rake is taken), for example, creates a negative expected value that is fairly tough to overcome. It is also safe to deduce that one pays more per hand in rake in a live setting as opposed to online.

Even though more is raked per hand in a live poker game, the amount that is paid per hour is comparable. In a live game, if the average rake per hand is $3, but there is only 30 hands an hour, the house will collect $90/hr. When playing online there is an average of 70 hands an hour. If the average rake collected per hand is $1.50, the hourly collection from the table is $105.

Using the above as guidelines (based off of 2/4 limit games) the table as a whole will pay more per hand in live games, but more per hour in online games. This is due to the amount of hands that are possible per hour per table online as opposed to live.

Shannon Gilchrist is the lead editor of Rake Tracker, a site dedicated to online poker rake tracking and rakeback.

On-line Poker Security (Part 1 of 2): Security Measures Implemented by the Poker Room Explained

When discussing on-line poker with poker players who have never played on-line poker before it seems the most common reason, or objection they give for not playing is that they fear the game is unfair in someway. The most common activities mentioned, that are included 'unfair', are 'The poker room can rig the deck', 'Players will work in teams in order to gain an edge (known as 'collusion'), and/or 'A player or the poker room can see my cards'. These types of ideas, which can be summed up with the word 'cheating', are something to be fearful of, because nobody wants to be cheated out of money. But, just because they are something to be concerned with, is the concern justified in regards to on-line poker? This first article aims to not only show that the poker rooms do not cheat, but actually, even if for self-serving reasons, have an incentive to not cheat and to prevent others from cheating.

All card rooms, whether land based or on-line make money from the rake. The rake is the amount of money collected as a fee from each pot or paid directly by the players on a temporal basis (All on-line poker rooms use the former method). The standard maximum rake per hand on-line is $3. For purposes here it will be assumed that the average taken per hand at most poker rooms is $1.50. On-line poker software is much faster than a live dealer and one table can play, on average, 60 hands an hour. This means that from one table the card room will make $96 an hour in gross profit. Using reports distributed by various on-line groups, the average amount of active tables at the medium to larger poker sites is anywhere between 200-1000 (real money only included). To make our point clearer, we can assume 200-300 tables per average. This means that every hour a poker room turns a gross profit of $19,200 - $28800. What reasons would an established company have to NOT protect $460,800-$691,200? Let's assume for a second that a poker room could manage to cheat its players out of $460,000 in a 24 hour period, how many times would they be able to get away with this before word got out that half a million dollars was missing from players? Even if the site was grossing 10% of this amount per day, they would still make more money, even after paying expenses, than they could from cheating their players. As long as the site is of medium size or larger and has a decent (not even great is necessary) reputation a players risk of being cheated in anyway by the poker room is negligible. In fact, it is safe to say, because of the card room's large profit, even if the poker player's best interests did not matter at all to them, that they actually want to protect their players from being cheated in anyway. If a site cheats or allows their players to cheat, they will lose all their current and potential profits, because their reputation will rapidly spread (by 'rapidly' we mean within a day or two) to the poker community via the media and on-line poker communities.

The idea of poker rooms actually protecting their players from being cheated and providing them with a secure place to play poker has been mentioned numerous times here, but none of the methods have actually been mentioned. As has been mentioned, the other fear for potential on-line poker players is other on-line poker players cheating in someway. The most common method mentioned is collusion. When players collude one player will be on his computer and via the phone or some messaging program, can let another player, who isn't't't even in the same city, state, etc... know his cards. The second player would then let the first player know his cards. They would then use this information to their advantage by raising the other players at the table (usually one or two others) in order to build a larger pot. Those who perpetuate this idea (myth) realize that one of the colluders will lose the pot and the other will win. Since they are partners, they will still profit off of the unknowing cheated players. This seems like it would be fairly easy to do, but it is probably safe to say that learning to play poker would be easier and less risky than colluding. All reputable poker rooms usually have a policy that players using the same IP cannot play together at the same table. It is pretty easy to get around this though and luckily the poker sites know this.

The poker rooms have software that watches the betting patterns of players. This software is made even easier to use because of the hand history poker rooms offer. When players collude, one person will usually have a good to great hand and the other player will have rags. Because of the software that the on-line poker room uses, they can easily see that these two players play at the same table together quite a bit (even if from separate IPs, states, etc...) and they are always raising and folding when one has a great hand and the other has a really bad hand. It won't take long for the poker room's software to find out if they are colluding or not. But, the fact that other players quickly report any type of strange behavior in order to alert the poker room, the time this pair of colluders has to cheat other players out of money is drastically decreased. Even if there is a huge team of colluders, lets say 20 people, the bankroll necessary to make this effective, the amount of planning that would need to go into this, and having to play high enough limit games in order to make it worth their time, greatly decreases anybody even trying it.

The poker room not only relies on other players and one type of software to track a player's history, cashout requests, and history, but they also have software and manual checks that take place when a withdrawal is requested. This software and security representative check for inconsistencies in a player's betting, to check for chip dumping, and any other 'shady' or illegal behavior. Even if the colluders were successful at the table, they still need to be able to withdraw their funds. Being that it will need to be a large amount in order for the colluders to make enough money for their time and risk, the withdrawal will be analyzed much closer and if it is proven that collusion had taken place, the funds will most likely be returned to the cheated players in someway.

There are other methods that the poker rooms use for detecting cheating, but because of the need for secrecy, they are not as public as the above mentioned methods. The purpose here was not to show all the methods used, but to help rid the fears of the sites cheating and/or allowing cheats. The large sums of money that poker rooms make is more than they could ever make from cheating. In order to protect this profit, they also implement methods to prevent others from cheating their players. These methods are usually sufficient, but there is always risk that is out of the poker rooms control, but is in the player's control. The second part of this article will discuss ways a poker player can protect their computer and spend more time learning to play poker and enjoying themselves while learning.

Shannon Gilchrist is the lead editor of Rake Tracker, a site dedicated to online poker rake tracking and rakeback.