In the online poker world, you have to get every edge that you can get if you want to maximize your chances of being a winning player. Poker bonuses are an excellent way to go about doing that. These deals are essentially free money that you’ll receive for playing games that you would have been playing anyway. There’s not really any good reason for not taking advantage of bonuses. Our goal here is to provide you with every single thing you need to know to get the most of these special deals.

What Poker Bonuses Are and How They Work

When you make a deposit for a poker bonus, you’ll receive a matching amount based on a percentage of your deposit. For example, a 75 percent bonus on a deposit of $40 would be worth an extra $30 for your account. To help prevent abuse of these deals by people who aren’t actually looking to play at the tables, there are certain terms and conditions that have to be met before the bonus is released to your account and you are able to cash out. Here we’ll show you everything you should know to understand the fine print of these deals.

Play-Through Requirements

The main part of the terms and conditions that you need to know are the play-through requirements. This essentially determines how much you have to play to release the bonus to your account. There are several ways that poker rooms can decide on how these play-through requirements work, but they will almost always be based on your contribution to the rake in the pots you’re involved in.

Important Point: Sometimes the play-through requirements can be a little irritating if you want to have the bonus released to your account immediately. However, the bonuses themselves would not be as good if poker rooms allowed this because people could abuse the promotion and not play any poker at all.

Along these lines, you’ll typically clear bonuses faster as you play higher stakes, but it’s very important to note that play at all real money stakes can be used to clear bonus requirements.

Other Terms and Conditions

There are typically other terms and conditions that help to protect the integrity of the offers. Generally speaking, you’ll usually have to clear the bonus requirements before you’re allowed to cash out, and there may be time restrictions on how long you have to clear the play-through requirements. Also, the bonus may release in increments, or it may only release all at once when you are finished with the play-through requirements.

Adding Value to Your Bankroll

There are incentives on both sides of the equation when it comes to these types of offers. For the poker room, the incentive is to bring in more players and help to grow their player pool. For players, the incentive is to add depth to your bankroll. Along these lines, poker bonuses are a win-win proposition for both parties involved.

When you add to your bankroll with these deals, it does a few important things for you. First off, it helps to make sure that you’re less likely to be wiped out from a set of bad beats or other types of bad luck that can cause big swings in your earnings. Second, it makes it easier for you to feel comfortable in moving up to the next level to try to face tougher competition, improve as a player and win even more money. In short, they will help you to maximize your chances of winning and boost your opportunities to come out on top no matter what forms of poker you enjoy.

Evaluating Specific Bonus Options

In what follows, we’re going to break down some of the most important bonus offers that poker players can take part in. We want to show you how these bonuses work and what you’ll need to do to claim them and have them released to your cash bankroll. We’re going to give you examples of both good bonuses and bad bonuses and show you how you can evaluate them yourself. Along these lines, the basic process to follow when evaluating a bonus is as follows:

1. Identify the match percentage and the maximum value for the bonus.
2. Determine how the play-through for the bonus is determined.
3. Figure out how much rake you’ll need to generate to clear the offer.
4. Find the percentage discount on rake that this bonus gives you.

We are going to go through these steps with you for a couple of popular bonuses and show you how you can evaluate the other deals we have here at FlopTurnRiver.com.

Evaluating the 888 Poker Welcome Bonus

When you play with 888 Poker, you’re going to get a 100 percent match on your initial deposit, and this is worth up to $600 total. Again, you’re looking at a deal that’s based on earning points, and you’ll need 100 of them for every $10 worth of bonus money that’s released to your account.

With 888 Poker, you’ll earn bonus points based on how much you pay in rake. In both cash games and tournaments, you’ll be given 2 points for every $1 that you pay towards the rake. Using this information, you can determine how much you would pay in rake to clear a bonus for a specific deposit size. It would take $50 in rake to generate 100 bonus points, and that would earn you $10 worth of your bonus. This means that this deal will give you back 20 percent of your contributed rake while you’re clearing it.

Key Points of Analysis

• Match Percentage: 100%
• Maximum Bonus: $600
• How is Play-Through Determined: $10 for every 100 points
• How Much Rake Needed to Clear 100 Points: $50
• Percentage of the Rake Given Back: 20%

For example, suppose we deposit $200 to get a bonus worth $200 at this room. We would need to generate 2,000 bonus points to clear the entire bonus. This means that you would need to generate a total of $1,000 in rake to have the whole $200 bonus released to your cash account. Here we see that $200/$1,000 gives a 20 percent rate of getting back your rake contributions.

Verdict: A rate of 20 percent is not bad at all. When you combine that to the fact that you can use your points for other sources of value as well, it’s a fairly good deal overall.

Putting it All Together

It doesn’t matter if you’re just looking to get in some hands for fun from time to time or if you’re looking to become the next Phil Ivey. Poker bonuses are absolutely critical to being able to increase your chances of success because they’re just like picking up free money for playing games that you would have been playing anyway. There are plenty of them to collect, so feel free to check out the bonus offers we have available here on FlopTurnRiver.com to find even more ways to boost your bankroll.