- I was correcting grandparents comment, that said up to 1/3 of rake generated goes back to the affiliate that signed up the player, and that is called "rake back". This is not correct. Only 1-3% goes back to the affiliate. Rakeback refers to the money that goes back to the player, either via the affiliate or directly. I'm not sure what part you are correcting me on?

- The lowest tier VIP level at pokerstars (that you can achieve from a few hands of poker play) amounts to 8.8% rakeback and more with stellar rewards, freerolls etc. It would be very hard to be a real money player and not achieve bronze star.

- You say stars "didn't pay dime" like pokerstars no longer exists. I can assure you they are still alive and well, and they are actually larger than 1 year ago despite the events of Black Friday.

I think you're unfamiliar with the online poker affiliate marketing industry. Full Tilt is paying affiliates 20-30% life time commission on net earnings less fees, in addition to allowing for a small (2-3%) cut from sub-affiliates you refer. As an affiliate, you can incentivze the sign-ups however you'd like.

The way most affiliates incentivize you to use their affiliate link is by giving you a cut of the revenue.

How did you think it worked? Full Tilt giving rake back direct to players just because they signed-up thru some 3rd party link? Why would they do that?

The reason why some people who sign-up can't get rakeback and are told that "their affiliate doesn't support rakeback" is that some affiliates chose to get paid a flat CPA fee of $75-100 rather than a lifetime percentage. This is also how PokerStars, etc, runs their programs.

I'm not going to get in to this further because I don't think it really pertains to the topic. But I'm quite familiar with the poker affiliate market, as I've been involved in it for the last 4 years. Most of your paragraph 1 is accurate, although the last part is not (affiliates cannot 'incentivize' how they like. FT caps all RB that can be proffered to 27%; pokerstars does not permit any cash incentives at all, etc). Most networks these days offer RB in-house or what can be offered is fixed; FT will put players on to one specific RB provider if they request it (and don't have a prior arrangement with another affiliate). The margins these days for affiliates is very thin, normally taking 1-3% with the rest kicked back to the player.

but we are getting way off-topic. I was correcting the original comment above about what the definition of rakeback was.