In poker you play against your opponents, but the party you pay for a seat is a third one: the room. The cost is called rake, and it is taken whoever wins. To understand who takes the money off a table, you have to know how that deduction works first.
At cash tables: rake and the cap
At cash tables the rake is a percentage of the pot with an upper limit. A common structure is 5% per pot, capped at a few big blinds. The cap means the deduction shrinks proportionally on large pots — so it weighs heaviest on small ones.
| Pot | Rake at 5% | Cap of 3 big blinds (blind ₺1) | Actually taken |
|---|---|---|---|
| ₺20 | ₺1 | ₺3 | ₺1 |
| ₺60 | ₺3 | ₺3 | ₺3 |
| ₺120 | ₺6 | ₺3 | ₺3 |
| ₺400 | ₺20 | ₺3 | ₺3 |
The table shows the structure rather than any particular rates: the percentage and the cap vary by room and are printed on screen when a table opens. Those are the two numbers to read; the rest stays the same.
In tournaments: the fee and the prize pool are separate
A tournament entry has two parts: the share that goes into the prize pool and the room’s fee. An entry written as "100 + 10" means ₺100 goes to the pool and ₺10 to the room — an effective deduction of roughly 9%. That rate is not visible inside the advertised entry price; it is written separately, in the tournament rules.
Re-entries and add-ons make you pay that fee again. A player who enters three times has paid the fee three times; the prize pool growing does not offset it, because the pool grows with every entry including everyone else’s.
Why this table is not zero-sum
Because players play against each other, a poker table looks zero-sum from the inside. The rake breaks that: money leaves the table continuously. Over time the average player at the table loses even when skill is equal all round — the source of the loss is not the opponent but the deduction. That is why "playing profitably" in poker means winning enough from opponents to clear the rake.
The Patekbahis lobby lists casino tournaments as a separate section, and on 5 October 2026 three were running, with their prize pools shown. Those are slot tournaments, structured differently from a poker tournament — but the line to read is the same: how many parts the entry is made of.
Running a gambling house and organising unlicensed gambling are criminal offences in Turkey; an "underground table" is not a romantic scene but a matter for criminal law. Knowing where the cost sits online is, for that reason, the more useful thing to know.
The same cost question in other forms: at card tables the house edge comes out of the rules, and at roulette the type of wheel decides it. Attempts to beat those numbers by reordering stakes are collected in betting systems and the house edge.
For a comparison of rake structures, the Wikipedia entry on poker rake gives a compact summary.
Frequently asked questions
What is rake and who pays it?
It is the room’s deduction from the pot, taken out of the pot won by the winning player. So money leaves the table whoever wins; a common structure is 5% per pot capped at a few big blinds.
How much of a tournament entry reaches the prize pool?
In an entry written as "100 + 10", 100 goes to the pool and 10 to the room — a deduction of roughly 9%. Using a re-entry means paying that fee again.
Isn’t poker a game of skill?
Skill affects the result, but it does not remove the rake. Because money leaves the table continuously, the average player loses over time; playing profitably means winning enough from opponents to clear the deduction.