Poker Site Offers and Bonuses
There are many poker websites on the internet, and competition to get you to play on their site is fierce. What kind of incentives are they offering to get you to sign-up?Sign Up Bonuses
There are countless adverts for poker sites all claiming free money when you sign up. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is and it isn't. In return for giving you money they expect two things from you - firstly that you sign up and deposit real money with them. Secondly you actually have to play at the site to release the bonus. Of course you were planning to do that anyway, but how hard is it to release the bonus?The poker sites make their money through rake, and so the bonuses are closely tied to rake. As you play at a site, they'll be taking a small cut of each pot, and once they've taken enough to cover your bonus they be happy to release it to you. That doesn't mean you have to lose the amount of the bonus first before you get it - the rake is taken from all the players at the tables you're playing at, and of course you'll hopefully be winning as you play.
The site will give you frequent player points (FPP's) as you play (and pay rake), and it'll be these that will determine when your bonus is released.
As an example, a site offers $600 100% sign-up bonus. What they mean is that they'll match your deposit as a bonus up to the amount of $600. They'll also only give you the money once you've earned a certain number of FPPs. They'll also probably give you a time limit to do that in as well.
So you sign up, but you don't have that much money to spare, so you deposit $100. The site says you've qualified for the bonus and you need 1500 FPP's to release the bonus. You also have to do this within 1 month. So you start playing at NL2, and the FPPs seem to increase really slowly. This is because the pots you're playing for are very small - it's going to take a lot of them for the site to make sure they've covered that $100 in rake. So you switch to NL10 and the points increase a bit quicker. You soon realise you're going to have to play quite a lot to get that bonus before the month is up.
That makes it sound like it's impossible to get the bonuses and it's all a swindle. It's not really though, since they will pay out the bonus - you just have to realise what you're capable of releasing.
Here are the things to consider;
- What is the time limit? Some sites only offer a month, while others offer 6 months.
- How much should you deposit? It makes no sense going for the maximum bonus if you'll nver release it.
- Will the site release the bonus incrementally?
Rakeback
Rakeback is a very important form of bonus, even more important than your sign-up bonus. Why? Because it doesn't have a time limit, and will last as long as you play at that site (or at least until the site decides to discontinue rakeback, which is unlikely but possible). If you become a regular player at that site, then the amount you will get through rakeback will be many times that which you receive through any sign-up bonuses.As mentioned earlier, when you play poker online the site takes a small cut of each pot played. Rakeback is simply giving you back a percentage of that rake.
The advantage of getting rakeback is that you get that money back regardless of whether you won that pot or not - rake is paid by all the players involved in a pot, won or lost.
Here's an example of just how much rake you could get, even as a beginning player. You play very low stakes (NL5) for a month and win some, lose some, and end up breaking even. You played 15,000 hands during that month, most of which paid some rake to the site. Your rakeback payment is 27% of your rake, and it came to $30 - that's 6 buy-ins! If you're a struggling player then rakeback can make a huge difference in offsetting your losses (of course if you're a winning player, then it's just more free money!).
It's important to know about rakeback before you sign up at any poker sites. If you sign up without using a rakeback code, then chances are you're out of luck and will never get it for that site. Have a look at the offers on Meteoric Poker and if you decide to go for any of the sites, then follow the sign-up instructions very carefully.