Rake is the amount the house takes out of every hand of poker played at the table. It is the primary manner in which establishments earn money on ring games.

Collection

Every establishment has their own specific rules for collecting rake though there are a few common scenarios.

Rake is collected only on the called bets. This means that should a player make a large bet, and everybody folds, the bet will be returned to the player before the calculation of the rake.

Calculation is is done in an incremental amount, such as $0.50 for every dollar in the pot. This can either be explicitly incremental or simply a side-effect of using only the minimum chip size to collect the Rake.

A rake of 5% is very common in online poker rooms.