Poker Bonus

Where to find the best poker bonuses

Play online with a poker bonus

If you need a reason to play poker online, consider the poker bonus. A poker bonus is designed specifically to get you signed up with a poker site and playing online. The bonus doesn't cost you anything and it can be very rewarding if you get the right one.

Read more about playing poker online with a poker bonus

Clearing an Online Poker Bonus

It's not hard to find an online poker bonus. Poker bonuses for a variety of online poker sites are advertised on multiple websites and in many poker magazines. Often these offers are for potentially large amounts, such as a 100 percent match bonus for up to $500 on some sites. But are you really going to get that extra $500? How easy are these bonuses to get?

What is clearing an online poker bonus?

If an online poker site offers a 100 percent match bonus, you will get an amount equal to your deposit. However it will not be immediately credited to your account. Instead it will be put in a bonus account. To get the money from the bonus account into your regular account you will have to do what is called clearing the bonus.

How do you clear an online poker bonus?

The way to clear your online poker bonus is by playing poker, which presumably is what you had planned to do anyway. Your poker bonus online will be cleared once you have played the requisite number of raked hands. How many hands you have to play will vary according to site, but in some cases it is ten times the amount of the bonus you are trying to clear. In this case, you would have to play 1000 hands to clear a $100 bonus. In other cases, you may have to generate an amount in rake equal to the amount of your bonus through cash play. In the past, you could only clear bonuses by playing raked hands. Now you can also clear bonuses on many sites through tournament play.

You will earn points by playing tournaments and once you have achieved the requisite number of points, your bonus will be released. The best poker bonus online is easy to clear.

Other notes on clearing online poker bonuses

Your bonus clearing may be under a time constraint. Check your account to see how much time you have to clear the bonus. If you are running out of time you may want to play more quickly or on more tables, even if you play at lower limits. If you fail to clear the bonus by the time limit, you will forfeit the bonus and all the bonus money you earned will have been wasted. Remember that even the best online poker bonus is only good for the site that offers it. Once you have cleared the bonus you can withdraw that money and move it to another site if you are so inclined.

Poker Bonuses give you more action for your $

Some people win, some people lose. That's the way it is, in poker as well as any other game or sport. That's the whole point of competitions. However, if your poker money is fading away slowly, it could very well be that you're actually a winning player but that your winnings are consumed by the rake.

The rake planes off your winnings

The rake is the small fee that the poker site takes off each pot at the poker tables. It may vary between different poker sites, but usually is about 5% with a maximum rake at 3 or 5 dollars per pot, depending on the stakes and the number of poker bonus players at the table. If the pot is very small, of if play ends before the flop, the rake may be zero. Now, 5% may not sound that much, but after you've played a couple of hundred hands during an online poker session, the small sums start to add up. For a lot of players, the rake is what prevents them from being winners.

Poker bonus and marketing

A poker bonus is an amount of cash that a online poker site is offering you when you sign up to the site (sign up poker bonus), or when you deposit cash at the site (deposit bonus). Even the best poker bonus sites do this to attract more players. They give up some of their margins in order to increase their market shares, so to speak. For most poker bonuses, to earn them you are usually required to play a certain number of hands at the site. For example, for each dollar in poker bonus, you may need to play 10 raked hands. A raked hand is simply a hand where a rake is taken off the pot. At some sites, the rule is that you yourself must contribute to the raked pot in order to earn your credits towards the poker bonus. Now, the thing is, as long as you play to clear a pending poker bonus, the actual rake you pay will often be reduced to zero, or close to zero. This effect alone may turn you into a winner with poker bonus.

Lock in your poker bonus at Betfair Poker