The Beast Explained: Why WPN's Rake Model Is the One You Can Actually Calculate

Every serious poker network funds its promotions out of rake. That is not a scandal; it is how rake races, leaderboards and loyalty programmes exist at all. The question worth asking is not whether a network does it, but whether you can find out how much, and whether the answer is the same for you as it is for the player next to you.

On the Winning Poker Network — ACR Poker, PokerKing, Black Chip Poker, True Poker and Ya Poker — the mechanism is called The Beast, and it is published down to the cent. You can work out your position before you sit down. That is rarer than it should be, and it is the main reason this page exists.

For every $0.06 of rake you generate, $0.02 is allocated to The Beast, and that $0.02 buys you one point on the Beast leaderboard. The allocation is capped at $0.24 from any single pot, which is reached once that pot's rake hits $0.72.

The money is carved out of rake you already paid. It is not added on top, and your cost to play is identical either way. What it changes is the base your loyalty status and rake chase rankings are calculated from — that portion doesn't count toward either.

The $0.40 contains six complete $0.06 blocks; the remainder doesn't round up. So roughly 30% of the rake on a standard pot goes to the leaderboard, and the ratio improves on very large pots where the $0.24 cap stops the deduction growing.

Note what you can do with that number: you can predict it. Same formula, same cap, every player, every hand. Hold that thought.

GGPoker's model does something structurally similar — it adjusts the rake that counts toward rewards — but arrives at the number a completely different way, through the Player Value Index (PVI).

PVI is a multiplier applied to your rake before rewards are calculated. Recreational players sit near the top of the range; consistent winners sit well below it. The formula is not published — GGPoker does not disclose it to players, and does not disclose it to affiliates either. The minimum multiplier was lowered to 0.1 in 2020, meaning a player at the floor has 10% of their rake counted.

The practical effect is documented across the industry: winning regulars commonly report multipliers well under 1, and a reg may need substantially more gross rake than a recreational player to reach the same loyalty tier. GGPoker replaced Fish Buffet with Ocean Rewards in January 2026, and PVI continues to govern how much rake converts into Tide Points.

We wrote about this in detail here: Understanding the PVI system at GGPoker.

This is the distinction that matters if you take your results seriously. WPN runs a direct, volume-based structure: the more you play, the more you get back, and the arithmetic is the same for a break-even recreational player and a winning reg. Under a value-indexed model, playing well is the thing that reduces your return — and you can't quantify by how much until the money has already gone.

Neither approach is illegitimate. Value indexing exists to protect recreational players, which has real ecosystem benefits. But if you are a winning player choosing where to put your volume, the two models point in opposite directions, and only one of them lets you do the maths first.

This is the half of the story most explanations skip. The allocation isn't a deduction that vanishes — it is the prize pool, and it comes back out every week.

The Beast is a weekly cash game race, running Saturday 00:00 ET to Friday 23:59 ET, with cash paid out by end of Monday. There's no opt-in and no entry fee: every cash table is automatically a Beast table. Points are awarded per $0.02 contributed under the Weighted Contributed Rake method, so points track stake level and rake contribution, not whether you won or lost the hand.

The Beast has no fixed guarantee. The pool grows with network rake, and the payout structure expands with it: 28 additional players are paid for every $3,500 in the pool. In busy weeks the pool has passed $200,000, which puts roughly 1,600 players in the money in a single week — and that has become the normal range rather than the exception.

A quarter of each week's pool is held back to seed the following week, so the race never starts from zero. First place is capped, deliberately, to flatten the top and spread more of the pool downward.

Lifetime, The Beast has paid out more than $20 million, which makes it the largest rake race ever run online.

On PokerKing specifically, the weekly cash prizes run from $50 up to $500, with somewhere between 100 and 600 players paid depending on the week. Players in the NL and PLO $25–$50 range are the core of that field, with payouts landing at the $50, $125, $250 and $500 marks. Winners also pick up a $95 satellite ticket to a Sunday event.

Two more races run alongside it. Sit & Crush covers SNGs and Spinz. Blitz Beast, launched in 2026, is a separate roughly $30,000-weekly pool exclusively for Blitz Poker tables — and it runs concurrently, so a Blitz player is climbing two leaderboards at once from the same volume.

Across most WPN skins, players choose between a flat 27% rakeback and the tiered Elite Benefits programme — and taking the 27% flat option forfeits Beast eligibility entirely. PokerKing doesn't run that fork. Every PokerKing account sits on the Royal Club tiered programme automatically, which means you are never in the position of having traded the leaderboard away without realising it.

So: is this good value for you? The wide payout structure and capped top prize mean the money spreads far further than a typical rake race, and a mid-stakes regular is well inside the paid field rather than chasing an unreachable top ten. Low-volume recreational players won't rank — but their value at PokerKing comes from the Royal Club and the chase, both of which are unaffected. The design rewards consistency more than it rewards being the biggest raker on the network, which is a meaningfully different thing.

Two things stack on WPN that are hard to find together elsewhere.

The player pool. WPN is one of the few major networks serving the United States, alongside a strong and growing Latin American base, and an increasing number of European players. That mix — a large recreational contingent, spread across time zones, on a network that does not penalise winners through a hidden multiplier — is the reason the games have a long-standing reputation as some of the more beatable on the market at comparable stakes. Combine a beatable field with a linear reward structure and the two effects compound rather than cancel out.

The stack on top of it. Here is where the value on PokerKing comes from:

The chase is the part people underestimate. It is not a sign-up bonus that clears once and disappears — it runs every month, for as long as you play. On $1,000 of monthly rake, 8–13% is roughly $80 to $130 a month, or $1,000 to $1,500 over a year, on top of everything the room already pays you. The only thing separating a player who gets it from one who doesn't is which link they registered through.

That is also why we offer a best-deal guarantee: if you find better terms for PokerKing elsewhere, tell us and we will match or beat them. Run your own stakes and volume through the rakeback calculator and see what the difference is worth to you.

Two administrative steps decide eligibility, and both are easy to miss.

Register through RakeRace. Only accounts opened via the RakeRace link qualify for the exclusive chase, and an existing PokerKing account cannot be moved across retroactively. If you already have one, talk to our support before doing anything else — there are usually options.

Link your username. Your PokerKing login name has to be added to your RakeRace profile, or your rake is generated but never attributed. This is the single most common reason a player finishes a month with nothing to show for it.

Chase terms carry a minimum rake requirement to be eligible for prizes. Current thresholds, rake structure and the live leaderboard are on our PokerKing review and in current rake races and chases.

18+. Gamble responsibly. BeGambleAware.org · Rake structures, loyalty programmes and chase terms are set by the operators and subject to change. Figures are illustrative; confirm current terms before playing.

Related: PokerKing review · GGPoker's PVI explained · Rakeback calculator · Current rake races & chases · Compare poker rooms