adminEvery online poker room offer bonuses that are anything from a $100 up to $600 with a 100% match bonuses. All you have to do is open an account at any good poker site and deposit your money, that’s the easy part, but what’s the best way to clear your bonus? How do you set about the task of moving all that extra cash from the bonus account into your real money bankroll?
Here are my 3 steps to getting the maximum bonus
Step 1: Read the Terms & Conditions
When you’ve selected the poker site that best suits your playing requirements carefully read through the terms & conditions on how your bonus is earned. You may be attracted to the poker site with the highest bonus. This is not a bad thing but do check for things like, how long you have before the bonus expires, is it released in increments and how many player points you need for Bonus web3 the bonus to be released.
I would say the most important factor is player point. Each poker room has its own name and variation on player points but they are all basically the same. Earning player points is the key to releasing your bonus. Firstly find out how they’re awarded its normally by raked hands played. So any hand in which you contribute to the pot and the pot is raked you will earn player points. Secondly see how many player points are award to the players in the pot. It’s usually 1 point divided among those players.
Awhile ago poker room bonuses, could only clear the funds through cash game play through the rake. Players were required to play a number of raked hands and to get the bonus. Tournament players lost out or had to try their luck in cash games.
Now, most poker sites allow you to clear your bonus by playing in tournaments. These sites calculate bonus clearing by awarding player points for the buy-in you pay to enter the tournament, so both cash games and tournaments count towards the total. It’s still worth your while to check if your preferred poker site awards player points for tournaments but its worth pointing out it can be a hard slog clearing your bonus by only playing tournaments especially at low buy-in tournaments. It’s best to mix your games by playing both cash and tournaments.
Step 2: Don’t Play Above Your Skill Level
You’ve selected your poker room, read all the terms and conditions, deposited your money and now the fun part: earning your bonus. Now, the temptation for most new players is to think, well I’ve just deposited $100 and I’m going to get a $100 bonus so why not try my hand at higher stakes and earn that bonus quicker. Right, no wrong.
Its true, playing at high limits can get you your bonus quicker but most players will lose their bankroll before they earned enough player points to release their bonus. This means to clear your bonus you need to deposit more money which kind of defeats the object.
Only move up in limits when you’re ready to do so and not because you want to release your bonus quicker.
If you are playing lower limit stakes you may think you’ll running out of time before you can clear your bonus, don’t forget a lot of poker rooms pay in increments, a way of clearing your bonus faster when playing at lower limits is to multi table.
Start off by playing 2 tables and slowly add more tables as your confidence and skill levels improve. I would play no more than 4 tables at once, it can start to get a bit tricky with more than 4 and you don’t want to lose your bankroll before you’ve cleared your bonus.
Step 3: Bonus Money in Your Account
Now you’ve done all the hard work, played enough hands and earned the player points in the allotted time and finally the bonus money is in your account.
The most important thing now is to be sensible with it, it’s your money. Treat is with care, stick to what you were doing to earn the bonus and not jump up in stakes just because you’ve got a bigger bankroll. Good bankroll management is the key to becoming a profitable poker player.
Of course there is one other option open to you and that’s to withdraw your bonus and spend it on something nice!
Whatever you decide to do, enjoy clearing your poker bonus.