[mxrider]

All of us have heard how important it is to have rakeback at the micro levels as the rake percentage is quite high and makes it very difficult to beat the game. For the longest time, I played primarily at Pokerstars due to the vast amounts of games available and I really enjoy the interface/software. Since I started learning NL at the end of February, I've been playing strictly at Full Tilt where I receive a 27% rakeback. I know that Pokertrikz offers this as well so make sure that you check out his rakeback section.

Now, on to more of what this is about. I was reviewing over my pokertracker stats for March and decided to look a little closer at my rake and rakeback. What I found kind of astounded me. If we consider a consistent winner at <$50NL to earn 4pbBB/100 (very good earnrate I believe) we then must look at how much we are making in rakeback as well.

I have played ~45k hands on Tilt since my start and my numbers are as follows:

Level---------# hands-----------Rake----------Rakeback------ptBB/100 rakeback------Buyins/1k hands

$10nl----------13,421-----------$274.05--------$74--------------2.75 ptBB/100---------------.56
$25nl----------29,327-----------$688.74--------$185.76--------1.26 pbBB/100--------------.26

When we look at the "earnrate" of our rakeback, you can see that even if we were just a breakeven player, we would be making a descent "earnrate" for our level. If we consider 4 ptBB/100 to be a good earnrate, we are not far off from that just from our rakeback. Anywhere from 33%-60% of our expected earnrate can be earned in rakeback alone! For every 1k hands we play, we earn over a half buyin at $10nl and over a quarter buyin at $25NL from rakeback alone! This is huge!

So, as you are playing, make sure that you look very carefully at where you are playing and if you are not getting rakeback, look at the above numbers and see how much money you are throwing away from not having it.

Hope this helps.

MX