Good post, but there are a few slight inaccuracies:
> you only qualify for return of the rake that you "contributed" by winning a pot. So for example, you win a pot of 1000$ and the casino takes 100$ in rake from that. After rakeback you receive 30$ of that original rake.
1. Sites typically cap their rake at $3 per pot, so $100 is very unrealistic.
2. You qualify for return of the rake that you contributed by playing a pot, not by winning it. So if it folds to you in the blinds and you shove all-in and the big blind calls, that's two players who have put money in the pot. If they take $3 rake from that pot, you each get $1.50 contributed rake.
3. Not all sites use contributed rake. Some sites just equally divide the rake by all the players who received a hand, without regard to how much money they put in the pot.
As far as folding to profit from rakeback, let's look at a 1/2 game. If 40% of hands see a flop, and the average postflop pot is $20, we're looking at $1 rake per postflop pot for 40% of hands, so $0.40 rake per hand. Divide that 9 ways and you have about $0.045 rake paid per hand. Get 30% back, and you're only looking at 1.5 cents per hand, or 13 cents per orbit. You pay $3 per orbit in blinds, so clearly folding is not going to work to make any money.
"Rakeback pros" (a derogatory term) make money by playing near-breakeven poker for a huge volume, let's say 250,000 hands per month (200 hours per month, 1250 hands per hour (a low estimate)). Using my numbers, that comes to $3,750 each month from rakeback.
> you only qualify for return of the rake that you "contributed" by winning a pot. So for example, you win a pot of 1000$ and the casino takes 100$ in rake from that. After rakeback you receive 30$ of that original rake.
1. Sites typically cap their rake at $3 per pot, so $100 is very unrealistic.
2. You qualify for return of the rake that you contributed by playing a pot, not by winning it. So if it folds to you in the blinds and you shove all-in and the big blind calls, that's two players who have put money in the pot. If they take $3 rake from that pot, you each get $1.50 contributed rake.
3. Not all sites use contributed rake. Some sites just equally divide the rake by all the players who received a hand, without regard to how much money they put in the pot.
As far as folding to profit from rakeback, let's look at a 1/2 game. If 40% of hands see a flop, and the average postflop pot is $20, we're looking at $1 rake per postflop pot for 40% of hands, so $0.40 rake per hand. Divide that 9 ways and you have about $0.045 rake paid per hand. Get 30% back, and you're only looking at 1.5 cents per hand, or 13 cents per orbit. You pay $3 per orbit in blinds, so clearly folding is not going to work to make any money.
"Rakeback pros" (a derogatory term) make money by playing near-breakeven poker for a huge volume, let's say 250,000 hands per month (200 hours per month, 1250 hands per hour (a low estimate)). Using my numbers, that comes to $3,750 each month from rakeback.