What is a poker bonus?

Online poker bonuses are a very common promotional tool used by poker rooms to entice players to sign up at their site and make a real money deposit. A typical poker bonus would be a 100% matching bonus up to $500 on all first deposits. The poker bonus is meant to bring players to the poker site by offering them “free money”. This money is in fact a free bonus, but it is very rarely given directly to the player. Usually the new player will have to clear the bonus in order to release it into their real money account.

Clearing an online poker bonus

Poker rooms place clearing conditions on their poker bonuses in order to reduce players abusing the gift and just coming to the room receiving the bonus and cashing out. By placing clearing conditions on the online poker bonus the poker room can ensure that they will make more money off of the player than they lose in the form of the bonus. Don’t take this last statement the wrong way. The poker bonuses offered by poker rooms are beneficial to both the player and the poker room. The player gets to play poker for cheaper than they normally would if they didn’t have a bonus and the poker room, thanks to the clearing conditions, will also make money, but less than they would if they weren’t awarding the bonus. For example, at Full Tilt Poker a tournament player clears $0.42 of the bonus for every $1 that they pay in fees. As you can see the player is saving $0.42 for every $1 that they would normally be spending, but the poker room is still making $0.58 of the $1.

How do you clear an online poker bonus?

At the majority of online poker rooms you must earn some kind of frequent player point in order to clear your bonus. These points can usually be earned by playing in either cash games or tournaments at the poker room. The rate at which you earn the points and the rate at which the bonus clears vary from poker room to poker room. We will continue to use Full Tilt for this example. At Full Tilt you earn 7 “Full Tilt” points for every $1 that you pay in tournament fees and you earn 1 point for every $1 that is taken from a cash game hand that you were dealt into. The points are worth $0.06 towards clearing your bonus, which is released in increments of either $20 or 10% of the total bonus amount. As you can see you will clear your online poker bonus just by playing at Full Tilt Poker. Some poker rooms have different clearing conditions such as playing a certain number of raked hands to clear a set amount of the bonus. When the bonus is cleared also varies from room to room, some use increments of varying amounts such as $10, while at other rooms you must clear the entire amount before any of the bonus is released to your account. It’s also important to note that at most online poker rooms there is a given time frame in which you must clear your bonus and if you cannot clear your bonus before the expiry date, the remainder of your bonus is lost, or the entire bonus in the case of lump sum bonuses.