Rake Back is a rebate given to poker players. The rake is small table fee charged to players for each hand of poker. Rakes add up over time if player plays frequently and/or for high stakes games.

Online poker rooms, in general, do not offer rake back. They offer sign up bonuses instead. There are a lot of bonuses offered out there but there is only one poker room that sanctions rake back themselves.

So why buzz on poker forums and elsewhere about rake back offers? These offers for rake back are coming from affiliates that work for poker rooms. Party Poker, world's largest online poker room, does not allow their affiliates to offer rake backs. They've started to enforce a long standing no rake back policy that can lead to these affiliates being shut out of their program. At very least, Party Poker will make it impossible for them to track, and hence pay, rake back to players. So if a player is thinking of a good offer that's been made to them for rake back at Party Poker, they might want to think again.

If affiliate is caught doing this they will be shut down and rake back payments will stop. The affiliate will still keep getting paid commission on already signed up players though.

There are other risks involving rake backs. They have limits on them. It is really not worth affiliate's time to offer them to casual poker player as they are seen as never accumulating enough rake to be profitable, so they will go after frequent player instead. The limits involve player having to contribute so much rake per month before becoming eligible for a certain percentage of it back. Another risk is that affiliate will get player to sign up then stop paying. Most affiliates get paid commission for life time of player so if they conveniently decide they will no longer pay rake back player has no recourse other than not playing at their favorite poker room.