Poker Rake Calculator
Calculate how much rake you pay per pot at any cash game or tournament. See your hourly, monthly, and yearly rake bill at your current volume.
Volume Projection
Winrate Reality Check
At a solid 5BB/100 winrate at a $0.5 big blind, you earn about $1.88/hour while paying an estimated $46.88/hour in personally attributed rake. Your net is -$45/hour. This estimate depends heavily on your contribution share and the room's rake attribution model, but it gives a grounded view of how much rake is coming out of your own winrate.
Math Breakdown
- Uncapped rake = $50 x 5.0% = $2.5
- Table rake per hand = min($2.5, $3) = $2.5 (uncapped)
- Your rake per hand = $2.5 x 25.0% = $0.63
- Personal rake per hour = $0.63 x 75 hands = $46.88
- Personal rake per month = $46.88 x 40 hours = $1,875
- Personal rake per year = $1,875 x 12 = $22,500
How Poker Rake Works
Cash game rake is a percentage (typically 3-5%) taken from each pot, capped at a maximum amount per hand (usually $1-$5 depending on stakes). The rake only applies once a flop is dealt (no flop, no drop). Higher stakes games often have a higher cap but a lower effective percentage because pots are larger relative to the cap.
Tournament rake is the fee portion of a buy-in. When you see a tournament listed as $20+$2, the $20 goes into the prize pool and the $2 is the house fee - a 10% rake. Online crypto poker rooms usually charge 5-10% on tournaments, while live venues often charge 10-20% or more on smaller buy-ins.
Why rake matters more than you think: Rake is the house's unavoidable edge. Unlike a bad beat that evens out over time, every dollar paid in rake is gone forever. For a grinder playing 40 hours a month, even a modest $3 per hour in rake adds up to over $1,400 a year - money that comes straight off your winrate.
This is why serious players hunt for rooms with low rake structures, generous rakeback, and strong loyalty programs. Many crypto poker rooms offer 20-60% effective rakeback through weekly missions, cashback, or leaderboards, which can turn a break-even player into a winner.
Note: This calculator uses a simplified flat rake model. Real rake structures can vary by stake, table size, and room. "No flop, no drop" rules and weighted contributed rake methods can reduce your effective rake below what this shows.
The silent winrate killer that nobody talks about until it is too late
A 5BB/100 winrate sounds great until you do the math on what the room is taking. Most players obsess over their bb/100 number, post graphs in Discord, debate variance with strangers, and never once add up how much rake they paid that month. The amount is usually larger than they expect and explains why their bankroll never seems to grow despite the wins.
Online cash games typically take 5% of the pot up to a cap. The cap matters more than the percentage because most pots at micro and small stakes are small enough that the full 5% is taken. A $5 pot at NL10 with a $0.50 cap means the room is taking 10% effectively. Across 25,000 hands a month, this adds up fast. We are talking real money — sometimes more than your monthly winnings.
Tournament players think they have it easier because there is no rake on individual pots. Wrong. The rake is baked into the buy-in. A "$22 tournament" is really $20 going to the prize pool plus $2 to the room. That is roughly 9% gone before the cards are even dealt. Play 100 of those a month, you have donated $200 to the room regardless of how you ran. Across a year, that is more than most players spend on rent for a single week.
The calculator shows you the per-year number on purpose. It is supposed to be uncomfortable. Most players have never seen the total written out, and seeing it tends to change behavior. Suddenly the rakeback offer that seemed like a small bonus looks like a meaningful chunk of money. The "free" tournaments hosted by your room are actually paid for by your accumulated fees. The decision to play at one room over another stops being about software preferences and starts being about which one returns more of what they take.
Crypto poker rooms vary widely in rake structure. Some take aggressive 5% with low caps. Others use a weighted contributed model where you only pay rake proportional to how much you put in the pot. A few advertise "low rake" without disclosing their tournament fee structure, which is often where they make up for it. Reading the rake page on a poker room before you deposit is the single most undervalued piece of due diligence in online poker.
The fix is not necessarily playing less. It is playing where the rake structure favors your style. Cash game grinders should look for low cap, high cap relative to stake, or weighted contributed rake. Tournament players should hunt for sites with lower fee percentages — anything under 8% is good, under 6% is excellent. Multi-table grinders should chase rakeback aggressively because it scales linearly with volume.
Run your own numbers. The annual figure is the wake-up call.
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