The lure of 100% rakeback

Barry Carter looks at the new promotion from GGPoker and asks whether a 100% rakeback prize is a good idea in 2023.

This week GGPoker launched a new SuperRanking leaderboard for their high roller Super MILLION$ events. The most profitable three players at the end of 2023 will win 100% rakeback for all of 2024.

You don’t really hear that much about high rakeback deals these days. The industry has changed considerably since the era of SuperNova Elite. High rakeback deals are associated with making the games too tough and too nitty, because they encourage good players to play lots of tables. There have also been measures to reduce high volume play, like restricting of how many tables one player can run at once and the banning of HUDs.

So it is a curious thing to see a challenge for a player to win 100% rakeback now. It’s a genius move in a way, because it technically doesn’t cost GGPoker anything to award it, but the potential value of a 100% rakeback account is tremendous.

The wrong players are targetted?

My only issue with this particular promotion is how out of reach it is for most players. It is certainly not targeted at the players who would covet a 100% rakeback account the most.

This promotion is aimed at tournament players for whom rakeback is not quite as big a deal as it is for cash players. However, with the games getting tougher all the time, the chance to play in rake free MTTs in 2024 is still massive for most tournament players.

The only people who could win this promo are high stakes players, again for whom rakeback is less of a consideration. There are probably only 20 players in the world with a legitimate shot at this promotion and for them rakeback is probably just a small bonus.

The people who would really benefit from this promotion are midstakes cash game or Spin & Gold grinders. The players for whom volume is perhaps the biggest determinant of their success.

Back in the day it was possible for a grinder with a good rakeback deal to break even at the tables and make a living on the rakeback alone. The Holy Grail of this period was SuperNova Elite at PokerStars, which was worth six-figures in benefits if you could rake $200,000. There was also the much coveted Red Pro sponsorship deal at Full Tilt which was 100% rakeback and $30 an hour.

Was high rakeback bad for the game?

There is so much uncertainty in poker that these rare guaranteed ways to make a very nice living were part of the poker dream in the glory days of online poker. You could plan your year and, if you just stuck to your own schedule and didn’t go bust at the tables, you could make a healthy six-figures guaranteed.

If GGPoker really want to use 100% rakeback as a marketing tool, in my opinion it is much better to open it up the general player pool. They already have monthly leaderboards for every game format at GGPoker, there could be some sort of annual incentive for the top grinders.

These are tricky waters to navigate, however. Such promotions based purely on volume encourage bad behaviour. Shared accounting is a common issue in rake race leaderboards and this also happened with one of the former Red Pros at Full Tilt Poker. In that respect maybe there is a middle ground where midstakes grinders can win 100% rakeback without it being a strictly volume based promotion?

One big thing I have learned working in poker is that sometimes certainty is more appealing than the potential for a big prize. That is why a promise of 100% rakeback is so appealing for some compared to the chance to play in events with life-changing prizes like the PSPC.

Would you grind hard for a chance to win 100% rakeback? Let us know in the comments: