Most online poker rooms offer extra ways to make money through rakeback and various promotions of which the most popular are freerolls and poker bonuses.
Freeroll is a free poker tournament where sometimes you have to achieve some requirements to take part but mostly there is nothing mandatory. Freeroll prizes can be money or tickets to bigger tournaments. Freerolls sometimes feature prizes worth hundreds of thousands, packages to World Series of Poker, Caribbean cruises etc. Regular freerolls allow people to increase their profits and to practice multi-table tournaments . Bonuses are simply extra money which poker room will add to players account if he/she has fulfilled the requirements for it (mostly it is needed to play through a previously set amount of hands in real money tables). Poker Bonuses are divided into three groups:
Sign-Up Bonus: Poker bonus for opening a new account. For example, online poker room offers $100 bonus and in order to receive that you have to play 700 hands (most known as „raked hand“). If the player has fulfilled this then the bonus will be released.
Refer-A-Friend Bonus: Poker bonus for referring your friend. Referring player and his friend both benefit from this. This also usually requires the fulfillement of earlier set requirements, which are easier then the sign-up bonus terms. This is also offered by various affiliates and runs regularly month to month. You will not get a one time bonus, you can earn a percentages of your friends rake every month! Earning money for doing nothing.
Loyalty Bonus or Re-Load Bonus: Poker Bonus for depositing again into your account. Terms are also set, for example: If the bonus says „20% up to $200“ and the requirement is „10 raked hands per bonus dollar“ then the player has to deposit $1000 dollars to his account to receive the maximum bonus , play 2000 hands and you get $200 extra cash.
Playing through bonuses is very popular in the world but we dare to say that in order to make a bigger profit it is not enough. Bad player can lose more than the bonus is worth during his time of playing through it. Playing only for poker bonuses result in many issues :
1) Sign-up bonuses run out eventually .
2) Re-Load Bonuses can take too much time ($100 poker bonus can take up to 7-8 hours but 2-3 hours for a good player)
3) People playing for Re-Load Bonuses can get their account closed or can be excluded from the future bonuses. Some countries have gotten into the „blacklist“ , Latvia in Cryptologic for example.
Rakeback deal comes in addition to Sign-Up Bonuses (depends on the online poker room) and freerolls. Rakeback is something that the poker room offers you for playing. Rake is the fee online poker room takes from every real money table and from tournament fees. Rake is the only way for a poker room to make money but still they offer some of it back! For example, up to 36% 888 Poker Rakeback through their VIP Program. If you rake $1000 during a month you could get up to $360 back with 888 Poker.
Tue, Jun 15, 2010
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