It’s true, rakeback is the best friend you could ever have: never talks back, always there when you need it and puts money in your pocket. How many friends do you have that could claim that? If you sign up for a poker rakeback program, it will become a constant companion as you travel up the ranks—bigger bets, bigger tables—in online poker rooms. If you play often, you’ll know what to expect, and that's a significant amount of dough when the month is over.

The best thing about rakeback may be that it is calculated for you. It’s not necessary that you check your savings after each and every game. This can actually be kind of distracting. Rakeback is more effective when it’s working in the wings. Furthermore, the rakeback on one game is not going to amount to very much. Your rakeback earnings should be calculated over the week or month. Of course, you know that you’ll be making more every hour, which is helpful, but it does not need to be constantly monitored.

It might actually take a month or two for you to determine how helpful rakeback is to your bank account—it takes a little while for the friendship to grow, but don’t they all? Because you should measure rakeback over the course of several games, you won’t know how much you will be taking in, on average, every month due to for example Carbon Poker rakeback. After a few months you can average it out and determine that, yes, you’re making around $1500 every month in rakeback. You’ll then have a better window into your overall monthly earnings.

Of course this should hopefully improve over time. You’re not just looking to turn a profit every month but to have that profit grow from one month to the next. You’re apt to have worse months than others, which means your earnings should really measured over the very long haul—after a year, are you ahead or behind? This is what makes rakeback such an important friend to the poker player: it’s a long-term relationship that will factor into how you win or lose at online poker.

Because it’s such a long-term relationship, you’re going to want to find a good rakeback program up front. You likely won’t be able to change your rakeback program midstream, so make certain the program has good terms. If you sign up for, say, PlayersOnly rakeback – make sure you get the best deal. This is especially true if you plan on playing an hour or more a day for most days out of the year. The rakeback dollars are really going to build up, so much so that your monthly rakeback could be like earning a huge extra pot.