Online poker rooms charge a fee after each hand you play at the cash game tables and after each tournament you enter. This fee is called rake.

Sometimes poker rooms or even a whole poker network decides to run races amongst their most loyal players and whoever pays the most rake, plays the most raked hands or collects the most player points in a given period wins extra money. Sometimes these amounts can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars and winners can go home with tens of thousands.

There are the following rake race types:

• rake race: most paid rake wins (better for medium and high stakes players)
• raked hands race: most played raked hands win (better for lower stakes players)
• points race: most collected player points win (it depends on the poker room's point system for whom it is more advantegous)

The scope of a rake race can be:

• poker room: these are rake races run by one online poker room
• poker network: a whole network can run rake races, eg. Microgaming network or iPoker network. you can participate in these races through any poker room in that network but you need to play the whole race in the same poker room
• affiliate website: races run by one poker affiliate website - only those players can participate who register for the poker room through that website

Rake races usually start at midnight by the poker room's server time. Payouts happen automatically within a couple of days of the end of the tournament.