What is a Raked Hand?

Someone asked me today what a "raked hand" was. Since only raked hands count when working on clearing bonuses, I thought I should explain for those who don't know. Here's the definition from Mike Caro University on Poker1.com; the first definition applies to raked hands:

Rake

1. (v) Take a percentage of the pot, usually by the house as its means of making money on the game. Sometimes called snatch. 2. Get someone out of a game; so called because the signal is often a finger run up the person's spine. This is sometimes used by a floor person to unobtrusively request a thief to cash in. 3. (n) The money taken as described in definition 1, or the house's cut taken in some other form (as, for example, time). In a nonrake game, you might hear a loser sarcastically say, "Hurry up and deal; you're slowing down the rake." Sometimes called take or takeoff, juice, vig. 4. The percentage of a pot represented by the rake. A Vegas casino might advertise, "Lowest rake in town." If a new player asks, "What's the rake?," he wants to know what percentage is taken by the house from each pot.

The rake varies by casino. For the hand to count for your bonus clearing, you have to contribute some money to the pot that is eventually raked. If you're playing tight (as you should in these games), you may have to see a couple hundred hands to get a hundred raked hands.

posted by Kent @ 9:05 PM