Visiting any online poker room will guarantee you'll be tempted with the reward of an online poker bonus if you signup for an account and make a deposit! Fierce competition and rapid rise in the popularity of the game have resulted in competitors vying for players' business. These bonuses may tempt you into registering with a poker site. However, just as in any other business, in poker too, bonuses don't come without a price or a few caveats.
Types of bonuses
The most common kind of bonus is called the "sign-up" bonus. This provides an incentive to a player for signing up and depositing an initial amount. The bonuses are provided as a percentage of the total amount deposited by the player and range from a 100% to even 1000%. For example, if the bonus percentage is 100% and you've deposited 40 dollars, you will get another 40 dollars extra as bonus.
Another popular online poker bonus is called the "raked hand" bonus. This entails that you need to accumulate several raked hands to be able to qualify for this type of bonus. If you fail to make the desired number of raked hands, you may have to keep depositing the amount each time to free up the bonus money. Confused what a raked hand is? It is a hand where the player is dealt the 5 cards and also a certain amount of rake from the pot. Usually it does not require the player to deposit any wager into the pot. One drawback of raked hand bonus schemes is that if the limits are low, the scheme is not worthwhile. For example, if the rake requirement is 1 dollar, then very few pots will qualify for the bonus. Some raked hand bonus schemes necessitate the player to accumulate a fixed number of raked hands within a particular span of time – for example a few months.
Another popular bonus type is called the "loyalty programs" scheme. In this case, the poker rooms will reward the players with the rake they have earned over a period of time. This is just a method to get players to continue playing in their room for extended periods of time. It's similar to the carrot you dangle in front of a horse – the horse keeps running till it gets the carrot. There are 3 most common types of loyalty programs – the loyalty points, which are typically 5 or less than 5 percent of the rake, dollar points, which provide 5-10% of the rake accumulated and the rake-back programs which offer 10-20% of accumulated rake.
Watch out for the 'hook' in an online poker bonus
Life has so many choices – so does poker! Poker rooms are filled with so many bonus schemes – it can be very confusing. Most of these bonuses are merely initial incentives to get you to play in a particular poker room. Most of the time these are legitimate in nature but many require you to make a deposit upfront.
There have been situations where players would have paid the deposit money only to realize later that they'll never see their bonus again! Beware, even missing out on contacting the poker support team can mean missing out on receiving the full bonus! You can prevent such things from happening to you by knowing more about the bonus schemes:
- Sites that offer bonuses without requiring any upfront fee are usually suspicious – they'll eventually end up getting you to pay later!
- There are many free online poker sites – however, they'll only pay you your bonus for a limited duration after registration.
- Read the terms and conditions carefully so you understand the caveats.
Online poker bonus schemes can provide good earning potential if you know the eligibility criteria in addition to what it takes to win.