How to calculate rakeback for each player in a ClubGG club

Almost every club promises rakeback: 40%, 50%, "paid out without delays". Promising is easy. The hard part is working out exactly how much each player is owed when the club has dozens of people, different tables and different deals. ClubGG shows the owner the rake, but it does not give a ready rakeback amount for each player. You have to put it together yourself.

The formula itself is simple

An example. A player played two hold'em tables with 40 and 25 in rake and one Omaha table with 60 in rake. The club rate is 40%, and on Omaha the club pays 50%.

If a referral partner brought this player in and gets 10% of their rake, that is another 12.50. The club keeps 56.50.

Why it is harder in practice

With five players you can do this on a calculator. After that, things pile up and turn the spreadsheet into a headache:

• Everyone has a different rate: the club rate, a separate one for Omaha, personal deals, referral partners and agents with their own percentage.
• One person plays a dozen tables in a period, and the rake has to be collected from each of them.
• Rates change: you agree on a new percentage with a player, and it is no longer clear from which table it applies.
• Rakeback is paid in chips, while the player may owe the club money, and you must not lose track of what was set off against what.

A mistake in any of these places does not show up in the total. It shows up only when a player comes and says they were underpaid. Or when they do not come, because they were overpaid.

Signs that rakeback is being calculated wrong

• Players dispute the amount, and you have no quick way to show where it came from.
• On one game type the club pays out more in rakeback and referral cuts than it collected in rake.
• A month later you cannot say what a player's rate was on a given day.
• A player's debt and the rakeback paid to them live in different places and do not match each other.