PokerRakeComparison.com

August 27th, 2011 by admin

There is no dearth of online bingo sites in the market today. Statistics tell the same story – on an average, around two new UK bingo sites are launched every single week. Though the online bingo industry is choking full of bingo sites, not all of them merit a player’s time or cash.

For a site to be worth more than a mere cursory glance, it needs to score in a lot of departments. A lot of factors go into getting a site counted among the best bingo sites in the country. From the current lot of bingo sites, two have been making waves in the market. The first among them is XBingo.

Though a new entrant in the field; XBingo has already made its mark by bringing forth a host of wonderful offers and promotions. As a mark of welcome, a free sign up bonus of £5 is awarded to players as soon as they successfully register with the site. XBingo displays the first signs of its big-heartedness with the free sign up bonus. Here on, things only change for the better.

When players deposit real cash to this site for the first time, they win a massive 300% cash match bonus on it. So if players have deposited £10, they get to play with the grand total to £40! The Free Daily Play Games at XBingo also allow players the chance to win free gifts every day just for spinning the Megawheel that reveals the win of that particular day. Since the Megawheel jackpot is progressive, chances of winning big are even higher.

Both the major crowd-pulling variants of online bingo – 90 ball and 75 ball – can be enjoyed at XBingo. The Nightly Jackpot, which is played every day at 8PM, mixes things up a little every day, in order to keep them fresh. This jackpot amount throughout the week ranges from £250 to £1000.

There is a lot of Xtra Cash to be won too at XBingo for activities like referring friends etc. Among other good online bingo sites, 888 Ladies is a highly recommended one. Counted among the best bingo sites today, one look of the site is enough to tempt players to try the site out. There is no refuting the fact that all the best UK bingo sites come with free sign up bonuses and 888 Ladies makes no exception to the rule. A free bonus of £5 is immediately credited to a player’s account on successful registration.

This apart, there is a 200% cash back bonus on the 1st deposit between £10 to £200. Since, this lavish bonus can only be won once, the smart thing to do is to deposit more to make the best of the bonus at 888 Ladies. There is a redeposit bonus of 50% on every deposit between £10 and £100 that is ever made here.

Be it fashion, instant games, enticing monthly promotions, free bingo, special weekday and weekend schemes, or regular bingo games, whatever rocks your hate, you are likely to encounter it at 888 Ladies. Players can play free bingo every day, every hour for not even spending a penny. While they can earn a sweet £300 during the week, weekends will earn them £500 for the same!

Very few other online bingo sites can compete against 888 Ladies. Be it in the number of special promotions at the site or the amount that can be won in those, 888 Ladies gives everyone else a run for their jackpots.

August 4th, 2011 by admin

All poker players are familiar with rake – the money deducted from each pot by the poker room to cover their expenses. Traditionally this has been anything from a few cents to a few bucks, depending on the size of the pot and the stakes being played. However, as poker becomes much more popular and the poker industry a much more competitive market, poker rooms are having to work much harder to retain their players in the face of such massive competition. Although sign up bonuses and WSOP seat offers may entice new players, it is the existing players that the poker rooms need to retain. Therefore a new incentive is being offered to players – rakeback.

How Rakeback Works
Rakeback essentially refunds the poker player a percentage of the rake they have contributed. Each month the amount of rake contributed is calculated and a refund issued to a player. Each individual poker room offers different rates of rakeback – generally around 30-40% however at present at least one operator is offering a 100% refund on rake for a limited period.

Finding the best Rakeback Deals.
Poker rooms do not offer rakeback as standard. However there are many rakeback sites which have special deals with the poker rooms, and can negotiate special deals for their players. These rakeback sites partner with various poker rooms – some deal with poker rooms on only one network – i.e. Microgaming Poker Network – whilst others offer deals across multiple networks and poker rooms. When choosing a rakeback site, look for one which offers a wide range of rooms, offers good rakeback deals and is up to date with the latest offers and promotions. It is also important that they offer prompt and reliable payments, ensuring that your rakeback is credited to the appropriate account quickly and efficiently.

Rakeback sites are basically loyalty sites – operating in the same way as shopper’s loyalty programs. When you sign up for a rakeback deal through the site – the amount of rake you pay is tracked and you will receive a refund of your rake – usually once a month, although some networks offer rakeback credits twice a month.

July 19th, 2011 by admin

For all of you potential online poker players out there know this, if you want to play this game for a living you need to be playing with a rake back deal. All of the current pro players play with rake back, and if you don’t know what rakeback is, I suggest you keep reading.

With no vested interest in the outcome of a hand of poker, the online poker sites make their money by charging a fee each hand – known as the rake. The fee is miniscule, and many players aren’t even aware of it, but in the long-run these small amounts add up to a substantial amount of profit for the online poker sites. Rake back is a percentage of this small percentage that you can receive as a refund, so long as you sign-up through the proper channels -i.e. a rakeback site.

This is the secret to becoming a winning online hold’em NL player: cashback! Sure, you can still be a winning hold’em NL player without cashback, relying solely on your skills at the tables, but why would you, when you can receive a rake back deal simply by signing up through an affiliate?

Affiliates receive a certain percentage of your rake if you sign-up at an online poker site through them; in turn they offer the players the majority of the rake back they receive in order to get players to sign-up through their website -better to make 2% rakeback than 0%, and better to make 2% cash back on 1,000 players than 35% on 1 or 2 players.

The question then becomes how much can a rakeback deal be worth? Well the answer depends on exactly how much rake you generate for the online poker site: High volume professional players generate upwards of $25,000 a month in rake -yes people play that much online poker-so with a 33% rake back deal they are pulling in over $8,000 every month just in rakeback! Imagine that, a break-even hold’em NL player could make $100,000 a year just in cash back!

Of course most of us won’t be able to generate that amount of rake, so imagine you are a mere mortal who plays 1,000 hands of hold’em 5 days a week -this equates to about a 2-hour session playing 4 tables at a time– where the average pot is raked $3. If you are receiving a 33% rake back deal you’ll make about $100/week in rakeback.

Obviously not enough to quit your day job, or is it? Think about it, if you quit your day job and played poker eight hours a day instead of two, you’d make $400 a day in rakeback!

And the best part about rake back is unlike poker itself there is no variance; you are paid per hand whether you win or lose, all you have to do is play.

Make money online playing poker!

July 8th, 2011 by admin

Many poker players can become confused when trying to calculate the amount of rakeback they have earned. Even when not trying to manually figure this out, they might not understand how their rakeback is calculated. There are currently three different methods that a particular poker room will use to calculate rakeback. The following is an explanation of all three of these methods, with examples, that should make a poker player’s understanding of rakeback much clearer.

Before explaining the three methods individually understanding what ‘monthly gross rake (MGR)’ is very important. In a nutshell, MGR is the gross profit a poker room earns from a poker player. Rakeback is based on this amount. If a poker room’s method of calculating MGR shows a player has earned them $1000 and the player receives 35% rakeback, then the player will receive $350. In a sense, then, this article is not really about how rakeback is calculated, but how MGR is calculated, since the poker player receives this rakeback based on their MGR.

The first method that a poker room might use to calculate MGR is the ‘dealt’ method. This is the most simple of the three to understand. If there is rake taken from the pot and a player was dealt in the hand, they will earn MGR, and hence rakeback, on that hand. This is calculated using the following forumula: ($amount raked from pot) / (amount of players dealt in) = MGR. The player will then receive X% (‘X’ being their rakeback percentage) in rakeback.

If, for example, there is a poker hand where 10 players are dealt in and the pot is raked $3, then for that hand the MGR will be $0.30. It is important to remember that as long as the player received cards, under this method, the player will earn MGR, and hence rakeback, on this hand.

Another method of MGR/rakeback calculation is the ‘average contributed’ method. Not only does a player have to be dealt in, but they also have to contribute to the pot in some way (even if they fold the small blind). This method, along with the final method, is much easier to explain with an example.

If 10 players are dealt in a hand, but only 6 contribute to the pot and the pot is raked $3.00, each player will earn $3.00/6 players ($.0.50). The formula the poker room uses for this method is ($amount raked) / (amount of players contributed to the pot) =MGR.

The final method is very similar to the ‘average contributed’ method above. This method, ‘weighted contributed’, differs in that MGR is figured in direct proportion to the amount of money a player puts in the pot. For example, 10 people are dealt in the hand and 8 of them contribute to the pot, but Player A folds on the flop, after he contributed $20 to the pot. If at the end of the hand there is $300 in the pot, then Player A has contributed 6.67% of the $300 pot. If $3 was raked from the pot, Player A’s MGR is (.067) * ($3.00) = $0.20. The formula is then (amount contributed to the pot / $ amount of pot ) * ($ amount raked) = MGR.

Each method has its benefits as well as its drawbacks, but these benefits and drawbacks are somewhat subjective and is not the purpose here. It also needs to be mentioned that a poker room always uses the same method to how they calculate rakeback. The only time it has changed in the past is when a poker room is bought by another company.

Once a player knows the formula used for each method, they will find that calculating their rakeback manually is quite simple. At the same time, this will most likely not even be necessary to do, but knowing how to do this can create a deeper understanding of how much the rake affects their bottom line and why rakeback is.

June 24th, 2011 by admin

A poker rake race is a competition organized by a poker room, over a predefined period of time where a prize pool is given to the players who generate the more rake. The more a player rakes, the more he gets from the prize pool. This type of competition is all about playing as much as possible to get more money, a lot of considerations need to be taken into account in order to optimize the value you get from it. Before starting such a poker competition, you’ll obviously have to chose one that corresponds to your objectives. In order to be informed about the current and future poker races, check regularly the relevant websites and/or subscribe to their newsletter. They can be announced from 1 month to only 1 day in advance, so stay tuned !

Timing considerations
When you decide to participate, you’ll very likely have to play a lot to finish in the prize pool. That’s why it is important to choose a period of time where you know you will be available to play poker as much as you want. Of course, the availability you need depends on the length of the competition. If it is lasts one day, you might need to play twelve hours in that day to get a good prize. If it lasts more than six months, you might not need to play everyday. The most important thing here is to plan carefully.

Money considerations
The main motivation to participate in a rake race is to win more money. Before starting a such a race, it is important to consider not only the prize pool and its distribution but also you objectives and your plans: how much you want to win, which rank you can target, how large is the competition, results of the past same kind of events,… You have to choose a race that matches your objectives. Some prize pools will give a lot of money to the first few ones who will heavily multi-table during 16 hours a day, some other ones will have smoother distribution of the prize pool. Also, it is important to consider the money you’d make with the other promotions offered by the poker room (bonuses, rakeback, VIP status,…).

Terms and conditions
To ensure that you will play the poker race that corresponds to your profile and you get the most of it, read carefully the terms and conditions of the competition you plan to play. There are many different ones with a lot of different conditions.

Game considerations
Rake races must be seen as additional money you’d not make otherwise. It means that you have to avoid loosing money by trying to get more from the rake race: don’t play higher limits, don’t play more than you can. You’ll have to multitable, but don’t play more tables than you can handle,… In general, it is easier to play a TAG style (Tight Aggressive). You’ll play less hands, you’ll make less mistakes and will have less difficult decisions.

Starting a poker race
If possible, try to start the race as from the 1st hour it begins and play multi-tabling hard (within your comfort zone and your limits). In this way, you’ll very likely be among the 1st ones or maybe the first one on the first update of the leaderboard to be published and it gives you two advantages: it might discourage some competitors and you have some control on the race as you had a better start than your competitors.