If you’re playing online poker for real money, then you should be taking advantage of rakeback. Our family of Play Poker Network sites, which includes ThisIsTheNuts.com and PocketFives.com, offers 33% rakeback on Cake Poker. In April, one player made mincemeat of the site’s competition, Prescott “Ingenol” Murphy. The Pennsylvania poker player piled up a five-figure rakeback payout in April and took down an exclusive $60,000 rake race that’s only open to members of the Play Poker Network group. Check out his interview with PocketFives.com.
Murphy is a member of PocketFives.com and banked $5,000 for taking down the exclusive $60,000 rake race in April. In May, the promotion returns and, not surprisingly, Murphy sits in fifth place on the leaderboard at the time of writing. If that standing holds, he’d be in line for a $1,300 payout come the end of the month. The top 300 racers on the leaderboard, which is ordered by MGR, will take home cash and the top eight will earn four-figure paydays.
When Murphy’s poker journey began, he was a chemistry graduate student. He told Poker News Daily, “I was studying organic chemistry and didn’t like it, so I needed something to do. I had never played poker at all and decided to learn it. I was always good at games, which is probably why I’m good at multi-tabling. I bought a book and a hand ranking chart and went from there.”
Chris Moneymaker’s win in the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event over Sammy Farha piqued Murphy’s interest, like many of today’s live and online poker superstars. He explained, “I remember watching it when Moneymaker won, but I didn’t start playing online until 2005 to 2006 on PartyPoker and PokerStars. If I had a time machine, I would have started the very first day you could.” Most sites on the Cake Poker Network accept players from the United States. Lee Jones serves as the Card Room Manager of its flagship site.
Murphy told PocketFives.com that he was running well below expectations in all-in situations, but rakeback and other incentives from the Cake Poker Network helped boost his bankroll anyway. Cake Poker ran a $150,000 points race in April that featured four weekly races along with a $50,000 monthly leaderboard. Murphy finished in first place for the first three weeks of April and took third during the fourth and final period. He also won the monthly race for $3,500. Murphy is now setting sail for the Bahamas on a cruise ship, although the trip was planned well in advance of his wildly successful month.
Rake races have become a phenomenon across the world’s largest online poker sites in recent years due in part to the growing popularity of rakeback. Murphy explained their appeal to PocketFives.com: “Rake races encourage people to play more and are good for the site. Some people say it encourages mass multi-tabling and people nitting it up, but No Limit Hold’em is a pretty nitty game these days.”
Being a successful rake racer requires playing on a bustling online poker network. The Cake Poker Network is the 11th largest worldwide according to PokerScout.com, boasting a seven-day running average of 1,260 real money ring game players. The family of sites includes Cake Poker, DoylesRoom, Intertops, Power Poker, Red Star Poker, and Phil Laak’s Unabomber Poker.