The recent boom in online poker has seen poker companies listing on the stock exchange and everyone trying to get a piece of the action. There are now hundreds of online QQ sites on the web to choose from but at the end of the day they all offer the same thing – the opportunity to gamble some of our hard earned money against faceless opponents, sitting miles away in other parts of the world. In our clothes if we so desire.

The adrenaline rush of sweating it out at the turn of cards with small money at stake is now achieved without ever leaving the house. We didn’t have to travel, go out into the cold, worry about dress codes or taxis home. We can play any time of the day or night – there is no closing time. We don’t have to lose Corry or Enders. As long as there is money in the poker account we can play to our heart’s content.

But that’s not the problem – how do we keep money in our accounts. The first few times we played we felt our way in, learning the rules. But it seems so fast and furious. We’re always told to hurry up by the computer – “Wait I thought He might have an ace but I’m really not sure. Give me a second to think. Oh I fold then!.”

But as time went on, and we started to worry about how many Neteller transfers we seemed to be making, we gradually got the hang of it. We won several hands; we begin to work out our opponents; we actually came from the profit table!

We are addicted.

We up our stakes, we start playing the bigger tables – no limit even. We put in two games or – even got to the final table. can’t even win. But we don’t feed the sharks anymore. We haven’t made a deposit for today and we are still playing!

But it all depends on the winner – at least now and then. Poker is all well and good when we win, but when we have to keep clicking the ‘Deposit Funds’ button it becomes a bit tiring. If only there was some way to guarantee that funds were deposited into our account without the credit card taking a hit.

Well there actually is and it’s amazing how many people today playing poker (right at this moment even) don’t know about Rakeback. It seems to be a bit of a fact that many poker companies, fiercely competing for our business, actually offer cash back just for playing.

Now it’s time to spread the good news.

The profit that the poker company makes is called ‘The Rake’. They take a percentage of the pot each game played. We didn’t even notice it was missing. But building into quite a bit of a heap of profits for the company says. The term rakeback actually comes from a method used in casinos where the dealer would use his or her chip rake to drag some chips into the bucket… just to cover their costs. And make strange million.

Online poker companies do the same thing, albeit electronically. And as an incentive for us to register with their site, they offer referral incentives, in the form of Rakeback, through various online Rakeback sites. It’s exactly what it says on the tin – we get a bit of ‘The Rake’ given back to us. As such, for every single hand we play, the poker sites take their share and give us a little back through affiliated Rakeback sites. If you play enough poker this can add up to a neat little amount and come the end of the month, our poker accounts receive a nice little shot of cash.

It doesn’t matter if we’ve won or lost – we’ve played. And that’s all we need to do to get our Rakeback. If we play enough it can fund our poker for the whole month. We could even lose and still not be out of pocket. Imagine that.

All we have to do is ask Uncle Google to find us some “Rakeback Offers”, sign up for our new poker site via an affiliated Rakeback site, and hit the table. Now all of our wins increase with the Rakeback we generate while playing. Jubbly is beautiful!