If you want to run your poker as a business then no business wastes money. However this is what the overwhelming majority of people do when they play poker online. Let us look at one classic way that player’s waste money……they do not take advantage of rakeback. Let us look at two identical players who play their hands in the same way and sit in the same games against the same opponents. Both players play 30 hours a week online and both break even on the tables. So at the end of the year they are both around the break even mark. The fact that no one would probably play poker for so many hours per week without making money should not detract from the example.
However one player avails themselves of rakeback and makes around $10/hr in rakeback at the end of every week. This means that he is making $300/week and that $10/hr then becomes an earn rate. So by the year end he is ahead by $15,000 while the other player in exactly the same situation has broken even for the year. Clearly this is a huge difference but both of these players have contributed the same amount of money to the pots that they have won.
However clearly one player has tried very hard to get a percentage of that money back! But here comes the real kicker because any player who then makes that much money for any poker site becomes a serious commodity and they then enter a whole new situation where they can basically sell themselves to the highest bidder. So with a better rake deal then our hero could up that to a whole new level. Suddenly by playing a full 40 hours per week and more tables then he can make even more money.
Then a site may offer him a vastly increased rake deal and suddenly he is making $40/hr in rakeback and this is $1600/week and $80,000 per year. Now he is in the category of being able to turn professional at poker and all this is despite not actually earning anything from the games themselves except for rakeback.
