Recommended Poker Room
www.In this poker strategy article we explain everything you must know about poker bonus offerings. We tell you more about the advantages of poker bonus offerings and which pitfalls you should try to avoid.
At the end of the article we provide you with a link to a table of the best available poker bonuses, codes and sign-uplinks. Don’t forget to visit one of these sites to get a great bonus and save you plenty of money.
What is a Poker Bonus?
A bonus is a real money amount that a poker room pays out to you as soon as you meet certain conditions. Bonus offerings can be divided into three basic categories:
First Deposit Bonus
A first deposit bonus is offered to a player when he signs up as a new player at a poker room. This bonus can only be used once per player and poker room. You can compare a first deposit bonus with a welcome gift from the poker room to you as their new customer.
Bonus to Deposit More Money (Reload Bonus)
From time to time poker rooms make promotions, such as a reload bonus. Clever poker rooms only offer such reload bonuses to player who were inactive for a longer time period. And not all poker sites offer reload bonuses regularly: some of them make reload offerings every two weeks, while other make such promotions only once or twice per year.
Loyalty Bonus for Important Customers (VIP or Loyalty No Deposit Bonus)
In addition to the above, it is possible that a poker room rewards its best players (poker players who play poker for many hours and on high stakes) with a VIP loyalty bonus. This is usually done irregularly and the amount of the bonus depends on the importance of the poker player to the poker room. Unlike a reload bonus, it is not necessary to deposit money to be eligible for the bonus.
What is the Typical Size of a Bonus?
The bonus can be offered in any size. Bonuses can vary from $5 to $5,000, but most bonuses are between $50 and $500.
How to Clear a Bonus?
The requirements to clear a poker bonus are the critical part from a player’s point of view. Make sure that you read and understand the bonus requirements before applying for a new bonus offering.
Here is some background information about these promotions. You must understand that a poker site wants to earn money, even when offering a huge cash bonus. And when you deposit money, the poker site incurs costs (e.g. credit card processing fees). The poker room therefore requires you to play a certain amount of hands before you can withdraw that money. And the same is true when offering a bonus. The poker site typically only offers you parts of the money that you will have paid to them (the rake) in form of a bonus. So if you get a $100 bonus, the poker room might earn 250$ from you, giving you back $100 and making a net profit of $150.
So how can I clear a bonus? In general, a player will receive points for each tournament played (or at No Limit / Fixed Limit Texas Hold’em cash games: per hand played). The higher the buy-in of a tournament or the stakes at a cash game table, the higher the fees earned by the poker room, and the faster the bonus will be cleared.
Usually, you only have a limited time frame to clear the bonus. If you fail to clear it, you might lose parts of it or the whole amount when the bonus expires. Some poker rooms will activate the bonus in one or more stages. For example, if you have earned as 25% of the required points for a $200 bonus, then you get paid the first $ 50. In this case you can keep that amount of money, even if you fail to clear the entire bonus.
What do Figures Like “100% up to $ 500 Bonus for New Customers” Mean?
This means that you receive a maximum bonus of $500 bonus. The percentage figure refers to the amount deposited when applying for the bonus. With a 100% bonus up to $500 the player thus can receive 100% of the deposited amount as a bonus once he has fulfilled the bonus requirements.
A 110% bonus up to $550 means that the player gets 110% of its paid-in amount with a maximum bonus amount of $550. In this example, this is the case when a player deposits $500. If one deposits only $ 300, then he will be eligible for 110% of it, which is a $330 bonus.
With a 200% deposit bonus up to $500 a player must deposit even less real money: it is enough to deposit $ 250 to get the maximum bonus of $500. Of course one can deposit more money, but the bonus is limited to $500.
Which Bonus Offer is the Best for Me?
You should study the conditions to clear a bonus and then estimate what size of a bonus you will be comfortably able to clear within the required time frame. From this figure you can then calculate how high your initial deposit (or re-deposit in case of a reload bonus) should be.
Benefits of a Poker Bonus
More Money
Money is for many players the most important reason why they play online poker. And it is by far the most important reason why you should be interested in obtaining great bonus offerings. Getting for example an additional $500 basically for free is a really great offering. A bonus usually corresponds to a refund between 30% and 60% of your paid fees, which is also known as “Rakeback”. It is worthwhile to make use of as many bonus offerings as possible. To practice this kind of “bonuswhoring” requires that you sign up at multiple poker rooms in order to benefit from their first deposit and reload bonus offerings.
Higher ROI
The effective ROI increases massively when clearing a bonus. Depending on the conditions and requirements, a bonus can boost your ROI by around 3% to 6%. This is very much and can quickly lead to doubling your effective ROI and thus doubling your profits.
Building Bankroll and Career
With a bonus you practically get a part of your bankroll free of charge. Accumulating a poker bankroll more quickly will enable you to move up the limits faster, which should result in higher revenues per hour.
Disadvantages of a First Bonus Deposit
Most poker rooms will give you only a certain amount of time (usually 30, 60 or 90 days) to clear the first deposit bonus. If the bonus is not released in parts, you might forfeit the whole bonus amount if you are not able to accumulate the required amount of player points within the limited time frame. This bears three risks for you:
- you fail to unlock the bonus
- you have to play more poker than you have initially planned (more tables and / or more hours)
- you start to play on higher limits in order to clear the bonus faster, risking your bankroll on stakes that you are not accustomed to
The last two points should be avoided, since under these conditions you won’t be able to play your best possible game, your A-game. And you might end up in losing more money at the tables than the bonus is worth. We recommend you therefore to choose a bonus which you can clear comfortably.
New Poker Room
To practice an optimized bonuswhoring strategy, you must register at several poker rooms. Only this strategy enables you to always clear a bonus while playing online poker. However, this approach has two disadvantages
- you have to get comfortable with the software of the new poker room before you can play as many tables at once as you were used to at your original poker room
- you have no player notes on your opponents in the new poker room (but vice versa your opponents won’t have any notes or reads on you)
Recommendation on Poker Bonus and Bonus Overview
We believe that due to the large financial benefits it is worth to sign up at several poker rooms in order to grab their first deposit bonuses. Signing up at a new poker room is free. In addition to this, you will almost certainly receive additional bonus offerings if you do not play for a while in a specific room.
Check out our table with exclusive poker bonus codes now and sign up at a new poker room in order to profit from a special first deposit bonus!
