Rake: Why it Matters

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In traditional live poker, rake is a fee taken by the casino to cover operational costs, dealers, tables, real estate, and staffing. Casinos don’t profit from selling chips; chips are simply proxies for real money that players can cash out. Rake is how the house stays in business.

Now consider an online system like WSOP Online, where Playtika does sell chips—at rates ranging from $1 to $4 per billion, depending on the package and promotion. This is their core revenue model. Additional income streams include side games, “card collections,” video poker, and seasonal events—all optional but designed to monetize engagement.

So, if revenue already comes from selling chips, why is there also a rake at all?

That question becomes more serious when you realize:

📌 Playtika’s rake isn’t clearly disclosed.
📌 Our investigation couldn’t find it in the app or their public documentation.
📌 When contacted, support first denied there was a rake. On follow-up, they claimed it varies     between 0% and 3%. (See the response from WSOP Support)

We tested that claim. By tracking pots and payouts across multiple stakes and tables, we calculated the actual rake—using simple math:
 

Rake % = 1 - (Payout ÷ Total Pot)

🔍 What we found:

• Regardless if in the hand or not, the rake was the same debunking the WSOP support claim of not counting the initial bet.
• Rake ranged from 13% to over 17%, never lower than 13%.
• That’s at least 10 percentage points higher than their claimed maximum. (See the response from WSOP Support on your left)
• Predatory rake percentage.

🚨 Why Is This Predatory?

In a closed system like WSOP Online, chips can only be purchased—not withdrawn. That means the entire economy flows one way: toward the house. A 13%–17% rake ensures that over time, every player—regardless of skill—loses. Even a highly skilled player who wins 14 out of every 100 hands will see their profit margin being erased by a rake this high. In contrast, Las Vegas live poker rooms cap rake at around 10% with a $4–$5 max per hand, and players can cash out at any time. Even this rake structure is questioned as it drains the total chip pool at a table if not replenished. Given enough time and no new infusion of chips the table with dry up.

At 15% rake, if a billion chips are bet in aggregate150 million chips are instantly removed by the house—and cannot be recovered. Multiply this by thousands of players, hundreds of tables, and nonstop play, and you get tens, of trillions of chips drained daily. The result? A system designed not for fair play, but for engineered, perpetual chip depletion. That’s not poker—it’s a high-volume digital trap disguised as a game.