Well that is how it works. The casino provides the service of collecting players together to form a game, serving a fair platform for them to play on, ingesting and disbursing funds (which is no small matter), and then attempting to prevent them from cheating each other. That is the business model for poker, and it's extremely hard to make it profitable. If you factor in the time it takes to do all those things, as well as managing the software 24/7, it's a wonder anyone bothers to host it at all these days.
[edit] As an individual player, obviously, whether IRL casino or online your goal is to outpace the rake. You factor the rake into your expected losses and find a casino with a low rake (ours was actually 3%) and try to get away as a winner. But of course as a casino owner I love grinders and they're who you want day in and day out.
[edit] As an individual player, obviously, whether IRL casino or online your goal is to outpace the rake. You factor the rake into your expected losses and find a casino with a low rake (ours was actually 3%) and try to get away as a winner. But of course as a casino owner I love grinders and they're who you want day in and day out.