If you already know what rakeback is, it’ll be extremely easy to get your mind around the concept of poker propping.  Square rakeback deals offer you around 30-50% of your rake back.  For most players, that represents a significant addition to their bankroll as it is, but there are always people who are hungry for more.

Poker Prop deals offer players rakeback percentages between 80-135%.  That’s right.  I know over 100% rakeback means you’re actually getting paid to play poker there, but these are real deals and they are responsible for turning many a losing online poker player into long-term winners.

There are some rakeback providers out there who have a nice selection of poker prop deals slapped to their offer.

Whenever people hear about such generous rakeback percentages, they immediately become suspicious that there may be a scam in the background.  After all, why would a poker room ever pay someone to play there?  If you know a thing or two about the online poker industry though, you’ll find the answer quite self explanatory:  Poker rooms pay certain players to play there simply because they desperately need to fill up their critical player liquidity.

To have your critical player liquidity in good shape means to have plenty of players on most of the popular limits playing at all times of the day.  It should be quite obvious why a poker room cannot function without its critical player liquidity.

Newly started poker rooms have few means to attain their critical liquidity and one of the most efficient ways is through offering poker prop deals and sometimes even square rakeback.

Now then, if you access a prop deal provider’s site, you’ll see that while regular rakeback deals are listed together with a review of the site that offers them, poker prop deals don’t reveal the name of the site which “hires” the props.

Some find this too suspicious.  Again, I have to tell you there’s nothing shady about it.  Here’s the reason why the provider withholds the data regarding the poker room: most online poker rooms are not exactly proud to resort to seemingly ‘desperate” methods such as prop deals.  Prop players are generally regarded as skillful sharks by the poker community (although that is hardly the case – most props are previously losing players who have found a way to turn the tables on the action through propping).  Nobody wants to play against such “sharks” and therefore the whole setup may end up providing unwanted negative publicity for the outfit.  That’s why you won’t ever get to know the name of the site till you sign up.

All sorts of details regarding the prop deals will be available though, and you will find out about the poker room too just as soon as you sign up. Whether or not such secrecy is efficient is debatable, however the poker rooms insist on it, and therefore the providers cannot disclose these details to the public.