The fee is taken before anyone is paid
Every pot that is dealt costs something, and the room is paid for dealing it. The schedule is published, the cap is stated, and the arithmetic that follows is not an opinion: the money available to players as a group is already less than the money they put in.
Hand 01What the rake actually is
In a cash game the room usually takes a percentage of each pot, often with a maximum it will take from any one pot — the cap. Some rooms charge by time instead, collecting a fixed amount from each seated player per half hour, which makes the cost per hand depend on how many hands are dealt rather than on how large they are.
In a tournament the equivalent is a share of each buy-in, kept before the prize pool is set. The two structures look different and are identical in principle: the room is paid for dealing the game, its revenue does not depend on who wins, and the aggregate money returned to players is less than they contributed.
Hand 02Why the cap is the number that matters
A percentage alone does not tell you what a hand costs, because the cap decides whether the percentage ever finishes. In a small pot the fee is taken in full and is a large share of what was won. In a large pot the fee hits the cap and stops, so the same cap is a much smaller share of the money on the table.
The consequence is that the effective cost of playing falls as stakes rise, in percentage terms, even when the nominal rake is unchanged. That is the whole reason stake selection matters more than most players treat it as: a player paying the maximum fee on every pot at low stakes is paying proportionally several times what a player at higher stakes pays for the same service.
| Pot size | Fee behaviour | Fee as a share | What it means for a player |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | Full percentage | Large | The fee is a meaningful fraction of every pot won. |
| Medium | Reaches the cap | Medium | Part of the pot is now fee-free; the share starts falling. |
| Large | Fully capped | Small | The cap blunts the percentage, so bigger games are cheaper to play proportionally. |
Time charges change the question
Where a room charges by time instead of per pot, the cost falls on the seat rather than on the pot. A player who folds a lot pays the same as one who plays every hand, which changes which styles are viable at that table without changing the total the room collects.
Hand 03The fee inside a buy-in
A tournament publishes a buy-in that usually has two parts: the amount that goes into the prize pool and the amount the room keeps. Sometimes they are shown separately and sometimes the fee is embedded, but the arithmetic is the same — the pool paid out is smaller than the money collected, by exactly that share.
Because a tournament is often played over many hours with a single entry, the fee can look small next to the time invested. It is not small relative to the pool: if the room keeps a tenth of buy-ins, a tenth of the field's money is gone before the first hand, and the paid places share what remains. See tournament structures for how the payout curve distributes that remainder.
Hand 04Reading a fee schedule without being misled
A fee schedule is a piece of ordinary product documentation, and it is worth reading the way you would read any other: slowly, before you commit, and with attention to the words that limit it. Percentage, cap, when the fee is taken, whether it applies to uncalled bets, whether there is a time charge, and how a split pot is handled are all decided in advance and all published.
What no schedule can tell you is whether the game is beatable for you. That depends on the fee, the field and your own play together, and only two of those are in the schedule. What the schedule can do is tell you how much has to be won before you are playing for anything other than the room's share.
- Percentage What share of a pot is taken, and whether it applies to the whole pot or only the called portion.
- Cap The maximum taken from one pot — the number that decides how the fee scales with stakes.
- When it is taken Whether it comes out of every pot that sees a flop, or only pots that reach a showdown.
- Time charge Whether the room charges by the seat instead of by the pot, and how often.
- Tournament fee The share of the buy-in kept, and whether any additional charge is stated separately.
Know what the table costs per orbit
Blinds are paid to other players; the fee is paid to the room. Both are published, both recur, and the second one is the number that decides how much of the field can be ahead.
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