What is Rake?

Rake is the commission a poker room takes from the game in return for hosting it. In cash games it is usually a small percentage of each pot, commonly in the region of 3 to 5%, subject to a maximum cap such as a few units per hand. The room removes the rake before the winner collects, so the chips that reach the victor are already net of the house's cut. The effect on profitability is easy to underestimate. Suppose a room takes 5% of the Pot capped at 5. A 60 pot is raked 3; a 200 pot is raked the full 5 because 5% would be 10 but the cap intervenes. Over a long session of many small and medium pots, those deductions accumulate into a meaningful drag, which is why a player who breaks even before rake is in fact a losing player after it. Rake structures differ sharply by venue. Online rooms generally rake less than live casinos and often run promotions such as rakeback, which returns a portion of the rake you generate. Tournaments express the same idea differently, as a separate entry fee on top of the prize-pool buy-in, for example a 100 + 10 event where the 10 is the house's take. The common mistake is judging a game purely by the quality of opponents while ignoring how much rake the format extracts. At low stakes especially, the rake can be the single largest cost a player faces, larger than the edge a good player holds over a weak field. Beating the rake is the minimum bar for a winning player, so factoring it into game selection is as important as reading the table.