In order to understand about rakeback, it is important to know the meaning of rake. Rake is the commission fee taken by the casino where poker is played. The poker player plays poker against each other and the house in which poker is played does not wager against the player, so the casino does not make any money. In order to generate some money for the casino, the players are charged a fixed percentage of fees, which is called a rake. All the casinos that provide complete facility for players to play poker charge their commission fee. As popularity of poker increased, this can also be played online as well. These service providers need money to cover the costs of the entire operation. There are three prominent types of rake is applied. It depends on the type of poker is played. In ring games players wager the money and the rake is some percentage of the wagered money taken by the dealer. In online poker, the game software automatically takes the rake. Second type of rake is ‘time collection’ or ‘table charge’. Normally each player pays a predetermined fee after every half hour. For online site it could be monthly subscription. The third type of rake is when a player pays while entering a poker tournament.

Rakeback is normally used for online poker game and any one who has Internet connection can play poker online. There are various sites that host poker games and to enter these rooms the player has to pay entry fee. In order to entice people to visit their site and play poker the web sites offer some schemes as rakeback. In Brick and Mortar rooms they use rate cards to keep track of the money and pay their rakeback. The poker rooms pay affiliates to get them members for their sites and once a player agrees to play at a particular table, the amount of money the player generates, his rakeback is the percentage of that accumulated money. The commission is normally between 20-40%.