I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve struck up with poker players and when the subject turns to rakeback they say something like “well, I heard about that but I only play tournaments so I didn’t really look into it.”
The fact of the matter is that rakeback is just as valuable to tournament players as it is to cash game players. While pots in tournaments are not raked the way that cash game pots are, it doesn’t mean that rakeback isn’t essential for tournament players.
Tournament players simply pay their rake a different way. For MTTs and SNGs, the rake is taken in the form of the entry fee, which is generally right around 10% of the buy in (it tends to decrease as a percentage as the buy in increases in cost). That’s right – 10% – so if you get 35% rakeback at a room like Carbon Poker, you’re going to pay over a third less in tournament fees over the course of your career – a pretty big number when you look at the larger picture.
