Rakeback unfortunately attracts a lot of unscrupulous individuals who claim to offer great percentages or rakeback for sites nobody else can, but either end up not paying or pay you less rakeback than what you are entitled to.

Poker rooms do not tell you how much rake you pay; you only see the total amount of rake taken out from each pot. For bookkeeping purposes your individual rake payment is however recorded, and rakeback is based on these calculations. There are two main ways that poker rooms use to calculate your individual rake payment: shared and contributed.

In the shared method, rake is alienated evenly among all players that were dealt cards. For example if there are five players and the rake is $1, each player would be assigned 5 cents of rake. Player does not have to put money to the pot to get assigned rake, and it does not matter if you crease pre-flop.

In the contributed method, players must donate money to the pot to get assigned rake. The rake a player gets credited with is in proportion to the amount of his pot payment. If you were to contribute $50 to a pot of $100 and the rake taken from that pot was $2, you would get accredited with $1 rake.

In a rigid percent-rake game it is comparatively easy to tell how much the house earns on every one pot. That is why the victor takes only $97 of a $100 pot, the enduring $3 clearly going to the house. How much rake you pay is comparatively simple to calculate too. Just add up the entire rake taken from the pots you've won, and you'll get the total sum of rake you paid. That is right, simple as that. The fact that you had equity in pots taken by others, and ultimately paid some of the other guys' rakes as well, doesn't count. Even if there had been no such thing as a rake, you would've lost that money anyhow.

This is one way to look at things, - from the player's point of view - however, in actuality, things are much more complex. From the point of view of the house, the money that you throw in to the diverse pots throughout the game, and particularly the actions that you take and which directly persuade the amount of rake at the end of the hand, is both very significant.