GGPoker rake explained: cash game caps, preflop rake and tournament fees

GGPoker rake in cash games is 5% of the pot, up to a cap that depends on two things: the stakes and how many players are in the hand. At $0.25/$0.50 No-Limit Hold’em, for example, a pot with five or more players pays at most $4, while a heads-up pot at the same table pays at most $1. Before the flop GG only rakes pots that reached a 3-bet; a raise that wins the blinds is free. In tournaments and Sit & Go games there is no pot rake at all: the fee is a fixed part of the buy-in, usually between 5% and 8%.

The figures below come from the official rake tables of the GG network (GGPoker and its sister sites run the same software and the same structure), checked against the help centre. Local sites in licensed markets can differ slightly, and the table in your client always has the final word.

GGPoker cash game rake at a glance

The table shows No-Limit Hold’em 6-max, the most played GG game, for pots with five or more players. The third column turns the cap into big blinds, which is how you compare stakes; the fourth shows how big the pot has to be before the cap starts working. Below that size, you pay a full 5%.

The pattern is easier to see as a chart. The cap shrinks from 10 big blinds at the lowest stakes to under one big blind at the top.

What this means at the table: on NL2 to NL10 the cap only bites once the pot passes 200 big blinds, which is basically a stacked pot. Almost every pot you play at those stakes pays the full 5%. At NL200 the cap arrives at 60 big blinds, so most decent-sized pots pay less than 5%. If you want the general mechanics of rake caps, our guide to rake in poker covers them; this page sticks to GGPoker.

Rake caps by number of players

GG lowers the cap when fewer players are in the hand. With four players the cap is three-quarters of the full one, with three it is half, and heads-up a quarter. GG’s tables list the caps by “number of players” without saying whether that means players dealt in or players still in at the end, so read the columns as players in the hand.

Here is what the lower cap does to a typical hand. At NL50 you raise, the big blind calls, and the two of you build a $60 pot by the river. Five percent of $60 is $3, but with only two players in the hand the cap is $1, so $1 is all GG takes. The same $60 pot with five players in it would pay the full $3.

Full ring (9-max)

GG’s 9-max Hold’em tables play with an ante, and their caps are higher at the lowest stakes: $0.30 at NL2 instead of $0.20, $1.50 at NL10 instead of $1, $2.50 at NL25 instead of $2. From NL50 up the caps are the same as at 6-max ($4 at NL50, $6 at NL200). The ante makes pots bigger before anyone acts, so more of them reach the cap.

PLO, PLO5 and PLO6

All Omaha tables on GG are 6-max, and PLO, PLO5 and PLO6 share one set of caps. Up to $1/$2 they are lower than the Hold’em caps at the same stakes. The rules of the game itself are in our guide to Omaha poker.

At micro and low stakes Omaha is clearly cheaper per pot: $1 at $0.25/$0.50 against $4 in Hold’em. At $5/$10 it flips, because the Omaha cap is 1.5 big blinds and the Hold’em cap is one.

When GGPoker rakes a pot before the flop

GG’s help centre puts the preflop rule in three lines, for both Hold’em and Omaha:

• A single raised pot that everyone folds to before the flop is not raked.
• A pot that reached a 3-bet is raked, even if it ends before the flop.
• Any pot that sees a flop is raked.

The second line catches players who never notice it. To see how much it costs, take a common spot at NL50: the cutoff opens to $1.25, you 3-bet to $4.50 on the button, and everyone folds.

Nobody called the last $3.25 of your 3-bet, so it comes straight back. What stays in the middle is the small blind ($0.25), the big blind ($0.50), the cutoff’s $1.25 and the matching $1.25 of yours: $3.25. Five percent of that is about $0.16, well under the $4 cap. The same hand on a site that only rakes pots with a flop would cost nothing.

Sixteen cents looks harmless, but an aggressive regular can win dozens of 3-bet pots preflop per session. None of them shows up as a big rake hit, and none is visible in the cap table. If you 3-bet and 4-bet a lot, your real rake is higher than the table suggests.

This is not a reason to 3-bet less in good spots. It is a reason to count these pots when you compare sites or work out your real cost. Sizing and ranges are covered in our guides to 3-bet sizing and 3-bet ranges by position.

Rush & Cash rake

Rush & Cash, GG’s fast-fold format, has a simpler structure: 5% with a cap of three big blinds at every stake, for both Hold’em and PLO. The tables are 6-max, and if a table is not full, no rake is taken at all.

At NL50 a capped Rush & Cash pot costs $1.50 against $4 on a regular table. The gap disappears at $1/$2, where both caps are $6. Small pots still pay 5% on both, so the saving comes from the bigger pots.

Short Deck and All-in or Fold

Short Deck Hold’em tables use 5% with their own caps. At low stakes they are small ($0.30 at the $0.10 level, $2 at the $1 level), and from the $2 level up the cap is 1.5 times the blind. Rake only starts once the pot grows past the forced bets already in it. The game is explained in our guide to Short Deck Hold’em.

All-in or Fold works differently from regular cash games: GG takes a fixed rake measured in big blinds rather than a share of the pot, and adds a separate jackpot fee. The figures in GG’s help centre during our check (November 2026):

Most stakes also carry a small bingo fee for the AoF side game, and all of these fees come out of the pot you win.

Tournament and Sit & Go fees

In tournaments, the rake is the fee you see in the buy-in. The lobby lists a $150 tournament as $138 + $12: $138 goes to the prize pool and $12 to GG. Bounty events split the buy-in three ways. The table shows the main formats with an example of each:

Fees on big MTTs vary by buy-in, so check the split in the lobby before you register. If a tournament misses its guarantee, GG covers the difference (the overlay), which hands part of the fees back to the field. More on the formats: GGPoker tournaments and Spin & Gold. For how fees eat into tournament results, see our guide to ROI in poker.

What GGPoker rake costs you in practice

Caps matter less than the pots you actually play. The table shows the rake on the same pots, measured in big blinds, at three stakes (6-max, five or more players in the hand).

At NL10 every pot in the table pays the full 5%. At NL50 the cap only helps in pots of 160 big blinds or more. Only at NL200 do ordinary pots of 100 big blinds start paying a smaller share. The chart below shows the NL50 curve: a flat 5% up to an $80 pot, then a falling share.

For a benchmark on the same page, take ACR Poker: 5% with a cap of $3 for five or more players at every stake, and no rake on pots that end before the flop (details in our ACR Poker review). A capped pot at NL200 costs $3 there and $6 on GG; at NL50 it is $3 against $4. At NL10 GG’s $1 cap is lower than ACR’s $3, but at that level few pots reach either cap. To turn rake into a win rate figure, use our guide to calculating your poker win rate.

Getting part of it back with Ocean Rewards

Every dollar of rake or tournament fees you pay earns 100 Tide Points in GG’s Ocean Rewards programme. Points move you up eight tiers, and the return in GEMs works out at roughly 16% at the bottom to about 80% at the very top. Freerolls earn nothing, because there is no fee to count.

In numbers: a player who pays $100 in rake at the first tier gets back around $16, so the real cost of that rake is about $84. The full breakdown of tiers and GEM values is in our guide to GGPoker rakeback.

Rake also releases the welcome bonus. The 100% first-deposit match pays out $1 for every $5 of rake or fees within its time limit, so the bonus is worth more to players who would generate that rake anyway. Terms are on our GGPoker bonus page.

Ways to pay less rake on GGPoker

None of these is a rule that fits everyone; each depends on how and where you play.

• Play full Rush & Cash tables if you play NL25 to NL100. The 3 bb cap is well below the regular one in that range, as long as the table is full.
• Know where your cap sits in big blinds. Moving from NL50 (8 bb) to NL100 (5 bb) lowers your rake per big blind, but only if your bankroll and skill match the new stake.
• Count your preflop 3-bet pots. If you win many of them without a flop, factor that cost in when you compare GG with sites that do not rake preflop.
• Compare tournament fees. A 5% Flip & Go and an 8% MTT cost very different amounts over a year at the same buy-in.
• Look at Omaha at low stakes. Up to $0.25/$0.50, PLO caps are well under half of the Hold’em ones.

GGPoker rake FAQ