Poker Rooms Give You Money to Play

A great way to build your bankroll is to take advantage of the many offers poker rooms give players to play at their poker room. Building a bankroll is quite a difficult task, so it is important for any player to use all help that they can obtain in order to increase their bankroll. Whatever your target is for your bankroll, this money that you can earn from simply playing poker is a welcome boost for any player.

Some rooms offer players a one off top-up on their first deposit. Usually a player is required to play a minimum amount of hands to release the bonus. The reason sites do this is because they earn rake from you playing at the site, and they hope that once you have played through the bonus period you will continue to do so, so their initial investment pays off. Quite often the amount of hands you need to play is around the 500 – 1000 mark, but this varies from room to room. Often you are given a time limit to clear the bonus, so check if this is the case. Ensure that you do not play out of your bankroll comfort levels to clear a bonus. This bonus hunting should be something that fits in with your normal play; otherwise you are taking too many risks and could actually end up losing money.

It is a good idea to keep checking each of the poker rooms current offers as from time to time the attractiveness of their offers vary depending on their marketing strategy. If you see a new advert on the television this usually indicates a major push by that poker room to obtain new players, and to attract the players and make full use of the television advert (they cost a lot!) they tend to offer attractive bonuses to both new and existing players. Quite often these bonuses are 100% match of your deposit bonus with a maximum of between $400 to $800. To get the maximum value from these bonuses I would keep about $500 available if you can to transfer to poker rooms so that you can clear as many bonuses as you can. It can be lucrative for your bankroll!

One of the benefits of this type of bonus playing is that you are always assisting yourself to get the maximum return from your poker play, as well as using good strategy. Poker rooms often have loyalty bonuses; re-load bonuses where if you deposit again you get bonus payments from the site as a thank you for continuing to play there. Re-load and loyalty bonuses are becoming more common thanks to the other poker sites offering good first time bonuses to new players. This forces your current poker room to compete to hold onto your business.

You should also ensure that you sign up for rakeback where possible but be careful as sometimes this eliminates the opportunity to earn other bonuses. Another benefit of swapping sites is that you get to sample other rooms, play different players and the visual differences in the software will help keep the grind feeling fresh. I enjoy playing for bonuses as it gives you a small cushion in a bad session that bonus you earn over 1000 hands may be the difference between a profit and a loss.

My recommendation is that you keep some money aside for bonus clearing and constantly transfer that around to take full advantage of the many offers poker rooms give to new players. Then from there you can focus on the re-load bonuses handed out by your favourite poker rooms and this ensures that combined with rakeback, profitable play using these two methods result in you earning lots more money. For players in the lower limit cash games these bonuses can be a great boost to your bankroll.

One note of caution, remember to factor in the amount of bonus into your profit tracking. A bonus can turn a losing player into a winning player or break even player, so ensure if you are playing and have leaks in your game, you forget about the bonus acquired and get to work sorting the problems. Ideally, you will win regardless of bonus and it should never be that the bonuses are saving you from losing money. They should be (as the name suggests) a bonus to your already large profits.

Malcolm Clarke