The Affect of Rake, No Rake, and Rakeback on Preflop Strategy

[Benjamin]

It is commonly accepted knowledge that the presence of rake on a game causes some marginally profitable hands to become unprofitable as compared to an unraked game, so that a player should adjust his starting hand selection somewhat tighter.

But what about rakeback? More specifically, consider the case of 100% rakeback, distributed on a dealt-hands basis, so that the rake is taken from each pot, and distributed equally to each of the players dealt into a given hand, with payment once a week, a la WPEX.

Now, whether you play a hand, or fold it, you receive a share of the rake from that hand.

How does this affect strategy as compared to the raked model?

Since you get paid rakeback on every hand regardless of whether you play it or not, that payment does not dictate any change in strategy at all, compared to a raked game. The cards in your hand and whether you play them, are unrelated to the weekly rakeback payment.

To put it another way, the pots you are chasing are the same size as in the raked model, nothing else about gameplay has changed, so your strategy should not change.

So, while you should loosen up in an unraked game, you should not do so in a dealt-hands method 100% rakeback game.

Conversely, if a site wants to promote looser games, then they should avoid awarding rakeback using the dealt-hands method. Instead, they should adopt a rakeback method that rewards looseness. Either return the rake to the winner of a the pot, to recreate a rakefree dynamic, divide it equally among those who see a flop, or divide it according to contribution to the pot.

I'm not sure how big the tightening effect of dealt-hands rakeback is, compared to rakefree, but I'm sure the effect is real.

Benjamin