Questions about rake

Hi all,

while I understand why poker sites keep rake and how it is calculated there are a few questions which remain:

1. when do I get credited for a raked hand, certainly I don't have to win the hand, but do I have to see the flop, the turn, river call the BB or even if I fold pre-flop?

2. when do the sites deduct the rake, right after the hand or after the session. My concern here is this: lets say I win a few $5 pots of 50c rake each, if then I go on full tilt and loose my entire bankroll, and they want rake later I would need to deposit money in order to pay for it.

3. as I understand there is no rake in tournaments, do I get credit for having played in one in another way.

Reason I ask, I got free money from some Poker site and am playing freerolls, which hopefully at one point will make it into the prizes. But you have to play a certain amount of raked hands before you cash out.

Hi,
I hope I can help answer your questions.
1. On most if not all sites all you have to do is be sitting in the hand to be credited for a raked hand. You can't be sitting out otherwise you dont get credit. You don't have to contribute any amount to the pot.

2. Rake is deducted right after the hand. You'll notice if you Mouse-over the pot value on sites like ultimatebet it will give your the rake taken. Party poker shows the amount of rake taken as the pot grows larger by showing the rake portion near the top of the screen by the rack of chips.

3. There is no rake in tournaments but they make up for that by usually charging a 10percent fee of the buy in. For example if the buy in for the tourney was $10 they would charge a fee of 1dollar that would goto the house.
You don't receive raked hand credit for tourneys but there is another way on some sites like pokerstars in which they give your Frequent Player Points (FPP). Accumulating these either through raked hands or tournaments will help unlock bonuses.
I hope this answers your questions.

Most sites don't credit you for playing tournaments as far as getting bonuses.

They make far more money off the ring games than they do the tournaments so if they can get you playing the ring games instead, well do the maths ;]

The pot also usually has to hit a certain size before its raked as well. I am at the moment trying to get 1050 raked hands in a week on party poker for a bonus of $150. I am playing no the 3/6 limit holdem tables and the pot has to hit $20 before it counts as a raked hand. The amount of hands that kept on being between $10 and 19 on some tables was a pain.

Had to keep moving to looser ones, but you can make more money on them anyway so its not all bad ;]

I am currently on partypoker 4 tabling the 25nl tables. Working towards the 1050 raked hands for $150bonus. Pot only has to hit like 2 bucks for it to be raked and counted. There are many others playing for bonuses so sometimes the action is non existent. A good player can take advantage of this though.

Knaufi each site has their own specific definition as to what a raked hand is. Believe me nobody seems to have the same definition! Give me the name of the specific site and I will try and clarify what that site considers a raked hand. Raked hand informations is SITE specific remember that nobody is the same when it comes to a raked hand!

Most of my time I spent at Absolute Poker for the freerolls and I won some money there now, so that's site 1.
I got some money at Empire and at PokerHost. These latter two are going to be the more important sites in the future I guess, especially Empire.