ClubGG rakeback deals: what clubs give players and agents

The first thing a player asks when choosing a club is how much you give back. The first thing an agent asks is how much he'll get from his people's action. Get the answer wrong, and the player goes to the club next door, and the agent takes his people there too.

There is no single standard. ClubGG itself doesn't pay rakeback, clubs and agents do, each on their own terms. But looking at what's on offer, the picture is fairly clear.

How much players get back

If you look at what clubs and agents offer, the range is huge: from 20% to 70% of the rake. Most sit somewhere in the middle, around 40–60%.

Why so wide:

• volume. A club is ready to give more to someone who plays a lot: every percent of his rake matters, and losing that player is expensive;
• game type. Some clubs pay more on Omaha than on hold'em to fill those tables;
• who pays. Sometimes rakeback goes to the player straight from the club, sometimes through an agent who keeps part of it.

How deals are usually set up

One rate for everyone. The simplest option: all players get, say, 40%. Easy to explain and easy to calculate, but it may not be enough for big players.

Tiers by volume. The more rake a player generates in a week, the higher his percentage. For example, 30% up to a certain rake, 40% above that, 50% higher still. The player knows what to aim for, and the club pays more only to those who earn it back.

Personal deals. Strong players and those who bring friends get their own terms. Every club has them, but personal rates are exactly what gets mixed up most often later.

A separate rate for Omaha or other games. A separate percentage for the games the club wants to grow.

What agents get

An agent gets a percentage of his players' rake. There are two common setups.

The club pays players itself and the agent separately. For example, 40% to the player and another 20% of his action to the agent. The club sees who got what, and the agent can't cut the player's share.

The club pays everything to the agent. The agent gets a total percentage and decides himself how much to pass on to his players and how much to keep. Simpler for the club, but it no longer sees what actually reaches the player.

Progression for agents also works well: the more active players an agent has, the higher his percentage. The agent has his own reason to bring people in.

The main limit: the total

All the percentages have to be looked at together. If you give the player 50% and the agent another 20%, the club keeps 30% of the rake. Out of that 30% you pay the managers and the fees and cover the debts that never got repaid.

An example. A player's rake for the week is $1,000:

We wrote more about where else the rake goes in How much does it cost to run a ClubGG club.

Where mistakes happen most

• rates get changed, and later nobody remembers from which day the new one applies;
• a player has one rate on hold'em and another on Omaha, but it's counted as one number;
• a player moved to another agent, but the old agent keeps getting the percentage;
• rakeback was paid out in chips while the player had a debt, and one amount gets counted twice.

Each of these mistakes is invisible in the total. You only see it when a player or an agent comes to argue, and you have nothing to show where the number came from. We covered how to calculate rakeback for each player separately.