Guides · Running the game
Somebody always suggests it, usually kindly: take a dollar out of each pot to cover the pizza. It sounds reasonable and it is the single change most likely to turn your game into something you did not intend to run.
What a rake actually is
A rake is money removed from the pot and kept by the house rather than won by a player. It is how card rooms make money, and it is the thing that distinguishes a business from a game among friends.
It changes what your game is
In many places the line between a lawful social game and an unlawful gambling operation is drawn precisely here: whether anyone profits from running it, as opposed to from playing in it. A host who takes a cut has, in the eyes of a lot of rules, stopped being a player and started being an operator.
This is not legal advice and the law varies enormously by country and by state. If anyone at your table is seriously proposing a rake, that is the point to check what your own jurisdiction actually says — not to take a stranger's word for it, including this page's.
What it costs the table
Set the law aside for a moment; the arithmetic alone is discouraging. A dollar a pot across thirty pots an hour is $30 an hour leaving the table. Over a four-hour night that is $120 removed from a game where the total buy-ins might be $160.
In a home game the money is meant to move between friends and roughly even out over a season. A rake means it does not even out — it drains, slowly, from everyone. The players who notice first are the regulars, and they are the ones you least want to lose.
Fairer ways to cover the costs
The underlying problem is real: hosting costs money, and it is usually the same person paying it.
- Split the costs directly. Five pounds each for food, collected alongside the buy-in and recorded separately from the game. Everyone can see exactly what it is.
- The host does not pay. The other players cover the host's share of food and drink. Simple, transparent, and it survives the host changing.
- Rotate the hosting. The cost evens out across the season without anyone tracking anything.
- Everyone brings something. Least accounting of all.
If your group still wants a contribution
Make it a flat, fixed amount agreed in advance and collected with the buy-in — never a share of pots. A fixed contribution is visible, the same for everyone, and does not scale with how well the game runs.
Record it separately from the ledger. Money that covers pizza is not money in the game, and mixing the two guarantees a count that does not reconcile at the end of the night. More on keeping the money straight here.
The short answer
No. Cover the costs openly and keep the pot for the players.