Hey everyone,

For the past week, I've been shopping for a site that offers rakeback and came across the two methods of calculating Rakeback. Most will state that shared rakeback is better, but after running the numbers, I'm not sure this correct. For this reason, I'm posting my calculations openly in this forum and if I made any mistakes, I hope it could be pointed out so that we could all learn together.

First of all, for those who don't know....

Shared Rakeback: You are paid a % of the rake at each table you play even if you are not in the hand. As long as you don't click "sit out" you will collect rakeback.

Contributed Rakeback: You are paid a % of the Rake, but only if you contributed to the pot. If you folded pre-flop and were not in the blinds, you will not get paid.

Assumptions

Here are the assumptions I'm using in order to make the calculation...

1. Site A and Site B are both FR 9 player max tables.
2. Site A and Site B both offer 30% Rakeback (RBO).
3. You are not clearing a bonus.

If you are comparing a site that uses 27% to a site that uses 30% while one is FR 9 Players and the other is FR 10 players, you will have to make the appropiate adjustments in you're calculations....

Procedure

1. I used my Poker Office stats for NL25 while multi-tabling at Poker Stars for the past five days. I know, Poker Stars does not have Rakeback.
2. Sample is relatively small, but it gives a good bench mark for this analysis.

A. Shared RakeBack

Stats

Total Hands Played (HP): 3685
Rake paid by all players (RPAP): $632.22
Avg. Num. of players at table (ANPT): 7.97
Average Hands per Hour (AHH): 72

The above stats are sufficient to calculate the RakeBack per hour of play at a site that offers Shared Rakeback.

(RPAP/ANPT) * Rakeback offer (RBO) = RakeBack (RB)

(632.55/7.97) * .30 = $23.81

(RB/HP) * AHH = RakeBack per Hour

(23.81/3685) * 72 = $0.46


B. Contributed RakeBack

Ok, this one is a bit more complex to figure out, but again if you use Poker Office or Poker Tracker and do the proper filtering, you should be able to come out with sound number.

First of all, there is no Stat in Poker Office that gives you the number of hands you contributed to the rake while excluding the hands you folded pre-flop outside of the blinds. What I had to do is make a filter that only gave me the raked hands that I did not contribute too. THis gave me a value of $353.20 (NRH). So to find out which raked hands I contributed too, I did the following...

RPAP - NRH = Contributed Raked Hands (CRH)

$632.22 - $353.20 = $279.35

Next step is to find out how much rake I get back. The only difference here is that you cannot use the ANPT as the divider, but you must now use the Average Percentage of players in the pot (APPP), which in my case it was 23.3% or an average of 2.33 players per raked pot. I did the following.

(CRH/APPP) * .30 = $35.97

This comes out to be $0.71 per hour. This is considerable increase...

So in conclusion, based on what I did, and assuming I got this right, Contributed RakeBack is better than Shared....

If you pay less rake than the other players at your tables then you would want their rake to count too.
If you pay more rake than the average player you would rather your rake considered than that of the table.
I made over 100% from 'shared rakeback' bonuses.
Surely there is a way to see how much rake you paid and the total rake paid over a given sample? (Don't use PO I'm afraid) May look at your calcs later.

EDIT
Contrib: total personal rake/0.3
Shared: (table rake/ave num players) * 0.3
over same sample size
What am I missing?

That being Tight on a Shared Rakeback is the way to go, you're rakeback in the shared system will be a better ROI over the loose canon that also plays shared Rackback... but I don't thin a tight player will be ahead by player shared over contributed... my VPIP for that sample is 19%... that is pretty standard Tight play.

Yes, I know how much rake I pay, it's in PO... what PO does not tell you is how much Rake I pay for only the hands I contributed in... That's why I had to use filters to figure it out.

Not sure what you were asking in the Edit... but if I get what you are asking...

For Contributed, it is the total rake paid by everyone for the duration of those hands. But it's only the hands I contributed money towards. Then you divide that by the average number of players that VP$IP. That number was 2.33, not 0.3. THis number gives the total rake per person and you multiply by 30% to see what my personal rakeback is...

For shared, you use the total rake paid by everyone... a number Poker Office spits out and you divide it equally by the Average players I have at my table. You multiply that by 30% and you get Rakeback for shared...

OK misread OP.
Try here or maybe here