The beauty of playing poker is that you are playing against another real person who is, much like you, sitting in front of their computer. It is also true that rooms have no interest in who wins a game as the money wagered is between you and your opponents. So how to poker rooms make their money?

Poker rooms online have small charges that they charge to host the games. If you are playing ring games (cash games), the house take a small amount out of every pot, known as the rake. The amount between rooms differs, however it is generally between 3-4%. So if the pot is at $10, the house would take between 30-40 cents. This is not a massive amount but as the number of players at a room increases, so does the amount of money made by the room.

If you are playing a poker tournament, there is also a charge that is made, usually 10% of the buy in. To give you an example, if you buy in to a tournament for $10, the total buy-in would be $11. Similarly if you buy in for $100, the total buy-in would be $110 – displayed on the site as $100+$10. This applies for guaranteed tournaments and Sit’N’Go’s where the same logic applies, in terms of pricing. Of course, the concept of tournament play, in particular, is that you have the opportunity to earn a significant amount of money for a relatively small buy in.

Are the charges Poker Rooms make fair?

The charges are fairly standard and don’t differ too much from room to room. The rake charges per room does vary a touch but generally you won’t see anything over 5%. In terms of charges for tournaments, the norm is pretty much set at 10% and you won’t see anything that varies from this too much. That said, there are exceptions to the rule, for instance the PokerStars Million hosted every Sunday is $200+$15. It certainly won’t be over 10%, if in fact there is any variation from 10%.

Does it really matter?

Yes, it absolutely does. To put it into context, let’s assume that you play 10 games of Heads Up Hold’em with a buy-in of $50+$5 each. You have to factor in that breaking even in terms of the number of games played, puts you on a loss. If you won five and lost five, you would be running at a $50 loss. This is important when taking into consideration how many games you need to play to make a profit.

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