Smart Bonus Clearing Techniques: Status Check

Check your bonus status whenever you can. Frequent status checks will let you know just how well your bonus clearing efforts are working. You can calculate how many points you are earning per hour and check that against the amount of time you have to clear the bonus to see whether or not you are making good progress. Most online poker sites make it fairly easy for you to check your bonus status. You will usually find a button or drop down menu option that will take you instantly to your bonus status page.

Smart Bonus Clearing Techniques: Cash/Tournament Ratio

If you only play tournaments, you should not switch your focus just for the sake of the bonus. However, if you already play a mix of tournaments and cash games, you should probably consider weighting things towards the cash games during your bonus clearing period. The reason for this is that you earn bonus clearing points for every single raked hand you play, while you can only earn a fixed amount for each tournament. Since a tournament can take a long time to finish, you may be cheating yourself out of a lot of bonus point opportunities where you could have been playing raked cash hands.

Smart Bonus Clearing Techniques: Staying the Course

Except for shifting things towards the cash games, you shouldn't stray too much from your normal poker routine while trying to clear an online poker bonus. Playing extra hours, higher stakes or different games could disrupt your win rate and increase variance, and you may end up losing more money than the bonus is worth in your efforts to snag the bonus faster.