With online sites now offering rakeback in ever increasing numbers, there has been an increase in the ability of players to be able to make money. This doesn’t always happen of course but it has to be advantageous for a player to be able to get back a large percentage of the cost of doing business.
These payments that go back into your account periodically really mount up over the space of a year and I know numerous people who are making several thousand dollars a month from rakeback. This obviously has an impact on not only the ability of players to be able to make money but also on how they play online poker.
What exactly does this mean? Well in my experience, most players (especially at the lower limits) who have rakeback deals tend to play tighter as a result of having them. This doesn’t always apply of course but it certainly does apply to one class of online poker player…… “The Rakeback Pro”.
This is a player who sits and plays as many tables as they possibly can and accumulates the most rakeback that they can manage. Of course, when you play so many tables at once then using tracking software can be difficult. Poker Crusher can highlight and then classify each and every player for you so that you don’t have to read HUD layouts.
But whichever way you go about this, in order to be like the “rakeback pro” then you will have to tighten your game considerably. It is amazing how the effect of rakeback impacts on not only your game but also your entire mindset as well. To know that just by careful solid play that you will be a certain amount of dollars up by the end of the month can be very comforting to many players.
Suddenly you don’t even have to be a great player to make money. Let us say that you are no more than a break even player. You don’t take the time to watch the games and you don’t use software of any kind. If your style is a break even style without watching the games then it will make little difference if you play more tables.
You can utilise the time that you spend doing other things to play and concentrate on making decisions on more poker tables. Now you will multiplying the amount of rake that you make. But also, imagine if you had a small earn rate of $1/hour playing one table but not focusing on it. If you could play ten tables then you would now have a theoretical earn rate of $10/hour plus ten times the amount of rakeback.
