How do Internet poker sites make money?

Question

I was wondering how exactly internet poker sites make money. I know FullTilt.com has no advertising on its site or fees to play so how exactly are they making money from the users?

Answer 1

Poker sites make money from "rake". The house collects a small percentage of every pot. For example if two people are in a hand and each invest 50 dollars. The winner would only receive somewhere between 90- 96 dollars of the 100 dollars in the pot. you may think that this invokes indignation in some playes, however, in the heat of the moment, no one cares. Plus, Full Tilt has recently started a policy known as "rake back" in which players receive a portion of the money that was raked from them based on the amount they play in a certain interval of time.

Answer 2

Online sites take a certain percentage of pots (rake) the same way that land based poker rooms do, although the rake tends to be less online due to lower operating costs.  Not every hand is raked as a general rule, for instance most sites offer a no flop, no drop rule.  Each level has a certain rake formula and the higher the stakes and the bigger the pots the higher the rake.  This is similar to a casino's edge in their games, and it's quite small in comparison to the pot sizes, but over millions and even billions of hands for the bigger sites it adds up to some real bread for them believe me.

Now with poker, in comparison to casino games, players are playing against each other and not just the house so although everyone pays a percentage of money won to the house, you can win money from other players to more than offset what you're paying the poker room, and this is how YOU make money as well.

King Cobra Poker

http://kingcobrapoker.com/lessons.html

Answer 3

As others have said, with rake and tournament fees.  The same way a brick and mortar casino would make money from a poker table.

Answer 4

its called rake. Every pot you win the poker sites take around .04-.10 of the pot you win. Fult tilt poker and other poker sites do points though so that when you win a pot they give you points for how much rake they took and you can use those for other tournaments and miscellaneous supplies. BA?