27% RakeBack at Full Tilt...

[de-coder]

OK is this for real? There is some combination of action/inaction that can wind up having the rakeback come in as a negative amount - and you have to pay that back to FT?

Do you know what causes this so I can avoid it? I didn't play much in April, as you can probably tell from the RB amount, but I certainly don't want you to wind up in the hole if I take a month off or something.

[Talking Poker]

Yes, this is for real, and yes, Full Tilt reduces the amount of money they pay me when people are negative. In other words, if they owe me me $1000 for pshabi and melioris shows up as a $50 loss, they pay me a total of $950. It happens all the time, but it's usually small amounts, so I don't worry about it. There are also usually a couple of people who earn less than the $5 minimum per month, so I figure it's usually a wash in the end.

And yes, it is completely under each player's control. Your RB is calculated as follows:

Player Rake + Player Juice - Player Bonus - Player Added - Used Points - Player Fees = Total. This Total is then multiplied by 27%, which gives us your rakeback number.

So, to maximize the amount of rake you get, you want to make the first two numbers (cash game rake and tourney juice) as high as possible and minimize the deductions, which are:

Player Bonus - Bonuses are good for you in the long run but come off of your rakeback, which makes sense. In other words, if you earn a $100 bonus, this will reduce your RB by $27, but in order to earn that $100 bonus, you surely generated way more than $27 in rake anyway.

Player Added - I'm honestly not sure what this is. I think deposits go under Player Fees, and this is usually $0 for most people. Maybe this is like if you win a freeroll or something like that. FWIW, yours, de-coder, was 21 cents in April. Does that number ring a bell? shabi had a very high number here this month.

Used Points - I believe I once calculated that they value points at 200 points = $1. So a 3600 point hat, for example, is going to cost you 3600/200 = $18 * .27 = $4.86. melioris' 25k shopping spree should cost him $33.75.

Player Fees - I think this is where they put the fees for when you deposit.... or maybe it's only for when you withdraw. I'm not sure. sjay had a huge number in here this month (it wiped out all of his RB), so maybe he can tell us.

I think that's it. Make sense?

[Robbr25]

So if I used players points to enter tourneys that would be negative, I would assume.
That is probably why I was negative the one month.
No worries though, I don't have many FTPs left.

[PShabi]

It's probably just registering for a freeroll. I qualified for the Ironman, which is a decent amount of equity. I registered but wasn't home to play and cost myself some loot. Lame. I haven't made a deposit or bought anything in the store in ages.

[Talking Poker]

I'll bet that's it. Rather than charge people for the prizes they earn, they just charge you for your equity in the freeroll. So, for example, today's Iron Man tourney has $30k of prize money and 234 entrants. That's $128.20 of equity per player, which is going to come off of their MGR (the total rake number before the 27%). That means this freeroll is really costing me $34.61 of real money to play in. Still a good deal...

[de-coder]

I played in a 50 point freeroll last month - that's all I can think of though.

[Talking Poker]

That sounds about right. I would have expected it to be 25 cents (if 200 points = $1), but close enough.

[stormswa]

I have a friend that is just starting to get into online poker, he has not signed up for full tilt poker yet and trying to bounce around Ideas for him to play. At 1st I was going to do the refer a friend thing but that wont work with that, 1st of all he will not be making a deposit because I most likely will be backing him at 1st because he is new to online poker and isnt real comfortable putting his own money on right now. He will most likely be putting money on himself eventually but not right now. Plus I want to try to dictate what levels he plays right now.

so I got to thinking (yes I do that sometimes) that this rakeback thing might be perfect for him. I will get him to sign up for the forum sometime this week, is this offer still valid?


a second thing, there is no way for me to get this offer since I have had a full tilt account for long time right?

[Talking Poker]

Yes, this offer is still valid.

And no, it's not valid for existing accounts. But your "wife" could certainly open an account and get RB, for example.

[stormswa]

so it wouldn't matter that my "wife" would be using same IP address?

I will have him and my "wife" sign up today.