Playing Heads-Up For Rakeback
Online poker rakeback is a great promotion that every real money poker player can take advantage of. Rakeback will increase your bankroll, no matter what type of real money poker player you are, but by implementing certain strategies, you can make the most of your online poker rakeback deal.
In this section, we’ll be discussing a rakeback strategy that involves playing heads-up poker tables.
Heads-up refers to a one-on-one poker game. When you look through the poker lobby, you should see different max table sizes. These include 2-player tables, 6-max tables and full-table of 9 or 10. You’re looking for the 2-player tables.
How Does Heads-Up Increase Rakeback?
Playing heads-up increases your rakeback in two ways. First of all, you’re playing a lot more hands per hour. With only two players at the table, the games go much faster, often as high as 120 hands per hour, if not more. Simply put, the more hands that are played, the more rakeback you’ll earn in a shorter period of time.
The second benefit of playing heads-up for rakeback is that you are dividing the total rake by only two players, not an entire table of opponents. No matter what online poker rakeback deal you are getting, your rakeback will come from the average rake.
Shared Rakeback and Dealt Rakeback methods both use an average rake to calculate your rakeback. A Contributed Rakeback method will divvy up the rake according to exactly how much you’ve put towards the rake. If your opponent pays more into a pot than you do, your rakeback will come from less than the average rake.
By playing heads-up, competing against only one player, the contribution should be even every time. A bet that is not called (i.e. the other player folds) will not count towards the pot, or the rake. So every hand that sees a flop will involve even rake contributions from both players.
Max Rake at Heads-Up Tables
Be sure to take note of the max rake taken at heads-up tables by the poker site you are earning online poker rakeback from. Each site’s rake schedule may be different from the next. It’s important to know what the maximum rake is for 2-player tables, according to the stakes.
For example, Full Tilt Poker caps the rake on heads-up games at $0.50, whether you’re playing Fixed Limit or No Limit, micro-limit stakes or ultra high stakes. The only way to increase the max rake to $1 is to “Deal It Twice” in the higher stakes heads-up games. The Cake Poker Network is much the same, capping the heads-up rake at $0.50.
Absolute Poker caps the rake for heads-up tables at 5% up to $0.75 to $1 at most stakes. However, FL $0.02/$0.04 takes a 10% unlimited rake, which is a very high amount and can detract from your actual poker winnings.
Conclusion
If you’re a decent poker player, you should at least be able to keep from losing chips in heads-up poker games, whether you’re actually winning or not. Winning is best, of course, but so long as you’re at least breaking even, playing heads-up for rakeback will turn a nice profit over time.
