Poker Basics: How Casinos Make Money on Poker

pokerHave you ever thought about the best way to make money at a casino? If yes, let’s talk on some poker basics and how to make money on poker. Making money is the basis of every casino’s success, whether it’s an online or offline casino. Every type of game that is popular among the gamblers all over the world definitely has some hidden or obvious advantages for the casino, it can be seen at the blackjack, baccarat, roulette, poker, and other popular games. These advantages are commonly known as the house edge. 

This term supposes some amount of percents given to the casino. It can vary according to the game you decide to play in. For instance, from the 1,000 USD wage casino makes about 30-40 USD according to the conditions. However, there is definitely one game that stands out from the crowd. What does your intuition tell you? Yes, it’s poker. 

It doesn’t matter, whether it’s live poker, or poker in a land-based casino, the main difference is related to the fact, that the players are playing not against the casino as it’s usually supposed to be, but against the likely-minded poker players. Therefore, winnings are received not from the casino as it’s meant to be, but from the other players! It’s one of the main differences. 

The main person who is responsible for the game process is a dealer (whether it’s a live dealer or a dealer in a land-based casino). However, there’s a question that is likely to appear in the readers’ minds. What’s the interest of a casino? What’s the profit and how do casinos make money? The answer is pretty simple and can be described as a poker rake. 

Rake can be fully compared to taxes, that are paid for the poker tournament entry or an every cash game pot. It’s a percentage of money. 

So let’s talk a bit about the poker basics and the ways casinos make money from poker. It will be useful for a wide range of players, even though you are not used to paying attention to it.

Cash Games’ Rakes

Cash games rakes are supposed to be taken from the most of the pots before they actually go to the winner. Mostly, the amount of rakes is different. However, the most popular is 3% to 5%. On the other hand, 2% up to 10% rakes also exists even it’s not so popular though. 

What about the option of an hourly rate?

It’s a completely different approach popular among the wide range of online and offline casinos. This model supposes you to pay some fixed amount of money for the opportunity to enjoy your favorite poker for one hour. Probably, it’s a convenient approach that makes the casino unnecessary to take some fee from the pots, making you pay for one hour only with a fixed price. 

poker combination

Don’t you forget about the poker tournaments?

Poker tournaments are a wonderful option for the casinos to significantly increase their budgets. This approach is applicable to online poker tournaments and land-based casino tournaments as well.  

Every tournament does have a buy-in option of approximately 10-20$. This sum is a rake taken from the players and doesn’t go to the prize pool. Mostly, considering the land-based tournaments, this money goes for coverage of the casino expenses for the organization of poker’s competition. 

However, the rakes on live tournament sand online tournaments are different, offering the higher ones than the competitor does have. It is related to the fact that the online platforms don’t have such an expensed that land-based poker tournaments have. 

What are the other ways for land-based casinos to make money?

Some additional income and profit can be easily received by land-based casinos by launching the poker tournament. Firstly, the bigger the tournaments, the bigger the promotional campaign for the casino. It attracts a significant amount of new and potential players to the room. Also, it’s a piece of good news for the casino owners, that not all of them are poker players. Cash game players’ fans are also a significant part of the tournament visitors. 

Online poker tournaments as a source of income

For online casinos, the rakes are the main source of the casino income. It’s related to the fact that they don’t have such expenses as the live casinos have. The one thing owners should pay attention to is the quality of servers to handle the traffic.