Conventional poker wisdom says that the best players are the ones who win all the money.  For the most part that's true,  but it isn't only because of those players' skill.  Anyone who believes it is has forgotten to figure in the biggest hidden cost in poker:  the rake.  The rake prevents poker from being a zero-sum game  --  one in which the winners all win and the losers all lose.  That set percentage of each pot being taken off the table means that decent players can go through long stretches making little or no money even if they win a few pots here and there.  In low-limit games,  the rake can be high enough in comparison to the stakes to make the game almost unbeatable over the long term.  This is one reason

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It's no overstatement to say that rakeback is one of the greatest creations of the online poker boom.  In essence,  it's a deal between you and the house to recover a portion of the rake you pay and return it to your bankroll.  Rake back deals are possible with online poker rooms because the costs of running such rooms are dramatically lower than running a brick-and-mortar poker room.  These rooms still take a rake like a B&M casino would,  but they can afford to pay some of it back in exchange for player loyalty without losing any of their profit margin.  While a handful of small online card rooms pay rakeback directly to players,  the majority of rakeback deals are done through sites affiliated with card rooms.

To get a rakeback deal,  you must sign up for a new player account at a participating poker room by clicking through a link from the affiliate site  (an affiliate who offers rakeback).  This means that if you already have an account with Absolute Poker,  for instance,  you cannot get a rakeback deal there through any affiliate site.  Once you've signed up through the affiliate site's link,  the poker room tracks your play and pays back a certain percentage of the rake you generate to the affiliate.  Then,  according to the terms of the rakeback deal you agreed to when signing up for your account,  the affiliate returns part of that money to you.  If that sounds complicated,  just think of it like your money is taking a roundtrip flight to Las Vegas and has to connect at another airport before it returns home.

High-limit players can certainly benefit,  but it's the low-limit players who have the most to gain from rakeback.  Consider that most online poker rooms take a rake of 5% up to a maximum amount,  usually around $3-4.  If a $2/$4 limit holdem player wins an $80 pot,  he's actually paying the house a full 5% of his winnings.  If a $100/$200 limit holdem player wins a $2000 pot,  he's paying the house less than 1% of his winnings.  The low-limit player's rakeback can be the difference between being a break-even player and a winning player;  the high-limit player's rakeback is more likely to simply provide spending cash.  If you're trying to build a bankroll by playing anything below $5/$10,  it's to your advantage to find a rakeback deal.

The percentage of rake that is returned to you when you sign up for a deal varies greatly.  Some sites'

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