Editor
Rake races were a common feature of boom-era online poker but largely fell out of fashion in the industry over a decade ago, which makes it strange to see BetRivers poker offering one to its US players.
BetRivers is the newest kid on the block in the regulated US online poker industry. It launched its first site in Pennsylvania last year and went multistate with simultaneous Delaware, Michigan, and West Virginia launches earlier this month. Playing catch-up with the likes of PokerStars, WSOP, and BetMGM may be why it’s offering a promotion that will be most enticing to high-volume and probably net-winning players.
The rake race takes the form of cash game leaderboards and started earlier this week. BetRivers is distributing about $11,000 weekly across six races, covering low, medium, and high stakes at No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha cash games. Only the highest-raking 20 players on each leaderboard receive anything, so this isn’t a promotion with much to offer casual players. It’s a play for site traffic, targeting the most serious segment of players.
The rake race promotion is on top of BetRivers’ regular rakeback program, which also incentivizes volume. Players can earn up to a 250% increase in iRush Bonus Store points, based on their iRush Loyalty level. The site offers Gold, Platinum, and Black levels, with the latter being the highest tier.
Phil Galfond’s Influence Continues to Show
BetRivers launched a few months ago, but it’s built on the Run It Once Poker platform originally trialed in Europe by the well-known pro Phil Galfond.
Galfond was instrumental in designing BetRivers Poker’s rake structure and rakeback programs. In November 2024, he posted about his idea of “Net Rake.” He said, “As rake-aware players, we learn to think in terms of Net Rake: The amount of rake we pay after deducting our rewards. In other words, Zero-sum, minus some, plus a little!”
That’s been the basic driving force behind Galfond’s RunItOnce strategy for over a decade. Speaking to PokerScout he said:
The approach of aiming to give away our rake was something I came up with and have pushed very hard for. It benefits everyone who plays, from the grinders to the casual player, as it leads to us giving big rakeback to even low-volume players, along with overlays and freeroll tournaments they can play.
“Positively impacting the online poker world has been my goal with this for nearly a decade now,” he added.
The Industry’s Shift Away From Volume-Oriented Promotions
Longtime poker players will remember when programs like Galfond is espousing were the rule, rather than the exception.
PokerStars had their Supernova Elite program, and Full Tilt had the Iron Man program. According to an old Poker News article, PokerStars had 371 players qualify for Supernova Elite in 2013, which required producing six figures in rake each year. That program’s discontinuation in 2016 marked a turning point for the industry.
Back in that time, third-party affiliates often had revenue-sharing deals with the poker sites and would offer their own rakeback programs on top of the sites’. It was in that world of third-party incentives that the most intense rake races often emerged.
Is BetRivers’ throwback to the golden era part of something bigger? Maybe. PokerStars also announced last year that it was reintroducing a rakeback program for international player that offered some fairly generous rewards for players raking over $50,000 annually (originally $100,000). However, in the years since the end of the Supernova Elite program, PokerStars has lowered its table cap from 20 to four simultaneous tables, which dramatically changes the logistics of achieving that status.
Perhaps BetRivers’ play for volume is an attempt to draw American players away from PokerStars? The industry giant is rapidly losing its footing stateside. It saw a small drop in poker with BetRivers launched, but a much larger one when Pennsylvania went multistate. BetRivers capitalized on that opportunity immediately, while PokerStars is still the only operator not to have added Pennsylvania to its network. Pressing that advantage may explain the timing of the rake race leaderboard promotion.
BetRivers Poker is expected to launch in New Jersey later in 2025 and could become a real headache for WSOP and BetMGM, which still hold the majority US poker traffic for now.
