Online Poker Tutorial for Beginners
Step 4 – Understanding Poker Signup Bonuses
A guide to help you understand how Poker signup bonuses work.
As there are now literally hundreds of different poker rooms available on the internet and the fact that they are very easily accessible to anyone, it means they have to compete aggressively for new customers. One of the major tools in which online poker rooms use to attract new customers comes in the form of signup bonuses.
The good news for us is that we can take advantage of these competitive signup bonuses. Some of the bonuses currently out there are very good and by registering accounts at several poker rooms, you could literally obtain thousands of dollars in free money.
Different poker rooms vary in the way their bonus works, but the most common form of signup bonus is set up in a way where you as a first time depositor receive an extra bonus as a percentage of your first deposit. For example, if the bonus was a maximum $250 at 50% deposit, this would mean that a deposit of $500 would get you the maximum bonus of $250, meaning your account balance would be $750.
You might be thinking to yourself that this is too good to be true, there must be a catch? The fact is there will be certain terms and conditions that will need to be met before you can redeem your bonus. The most common method by poker rooms is that you must play a certain amount of hands known as ‘raked hands’ in order to receive the full bonus. The ‘rake’ is the poker room’s way of making money, by taking a cut from each of the pots and from each of the tournament entrance fees. The more time you spend playing, the more money the room will be making.
Offering free bonuses is actually a very clever way for poker rooms to get you playing because as mentioned, the more hands your playing the more money the room is making. Usually, poker rooms will have a special points system they have devised whereby the more hands you play, the faster you will be able to obtain the bonus.
This is not a bad thing though, in fact it’s a good thing as it gives you an opportunity to compare the different bonuses currently being offered with the different poker rooms. As the points ‘rake’ system will vary with the different rooms, you may notice some are much easier to obtain than others and this is where you can take advantage.
Also, generally the smaller bonus offers are much easier to obtain as they have far easier clearing requirements than the larger ones. This is not only because the amount is small, but also because they do not require you to play as many rakes hands.
You may be thinking to yourself why would I bother playing so many of these ‘raked hands’ just to secure these bonuses? The fact is if your going to be playing poker online then every hand you play or every tournament you enter, you will be paying a rake either way, so why not take advantage of these excellent signup bonuses anyway?