How I get paid.

Last updated 22 August 2026

The short version

If you sign up to a poker room through a link on this site, the room pays me a share of the rake you generate while you play there. It costs you nothing extra and it does not reduce your rate. The commission comes out of the room's margin, not out of your deal.

That is the entire business model. The free tools are paid for by this, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall because of it.

Why the deal is better than the public one

Poker rooms would rather acquire a player through an affiliate than through advertising, so they are willing to share more with an affiliate who brings volume than they advertise publicly. I pass a large part of that back to you as the deal. You get better terms than the room's front door, the room gets a player, and I get a cut of the rake in the middle.

The terms of most of those arrangements say I may not advertise the rate publicly, which is why almost every room on this site says Private rather than showing a number. That is a condition of the deal existing, not a sales tactic. Ask me and I will tell you exactly what it is.

What this means for reading my site

I have an obvious financial interest in you signing up. You should factor that in, and there are two practical ways to do it:

• Judge a deal on its numbers, not on my enthusiasm. Ask me the rate, ask when it pays, and compare it against what you would get walking in the front door yourself.
• Ask what the catch is. Every room has one — thin traffic at some stakes, slow withdrawals, software that only works properly on one platform. If I will not name one for a room, be suspicious.

I would rather tell you a room is wrong for your stakes and keep you around than put you somewhere unsuitable for one signup. That is not generosity, it is arithmetic — commission is a share of rake over time, so a player who quits in a month is worth very little to me.

Which links are affiliate links

All of them, wherever a poker room is named. There are no exceptions and no unmarked ones. Technically they all carry rel="sponsored nofollow", which is how you tell a search engine a link is commercial, and they route through a /go/ address on this domain so the destination can be updated when a room changes it.

Links to anything that is not a poker room — a help organisation, Discord, a rule I am citing — are never affiliate links and I get nothing from them.

Rooms I work with

I have arrangements with 42+ rooms. Eight of them are listed individually on thepoker deals page and the rest are named there too. If a room is not on that list, I have no arrangement with it and nothing to gain from telling you about it either way.

The support option

Some people want to send something my way without needing a deal arranged first. Where a room allows a straightforward signup link, that option is offered on its row — clearly marked as standard terms withno deal applied. It is genuinely appreciated, but do not take that path expecting a deal: on most rooms a deal cannot be attached after the account exists.

What I will not do

• Invent a rakeback figure, or quote one I have not checked
• Publish star ratings or scores out of ten. Nobody measures those, they are decoration
• Claim a deal is available in a country where the room is not licensed
• Tell you rakeback will make you a winning player. It will not — it reduces a cost, nothing more

Questions

Ask me on Discord, including about this page. If you think something here is misleading, I would rather hear it and fix it.