How Sign-Up Bonuses Work
Most – if not all – online poker rooms offer sign-up bonuses to new customers. These bonuses are generally offered first time depositors. If you are already a customer or have already deposited money into the online poker site, you will not be eligible for the sign-up bonus.
Because these bonuses require a deposit to obtain, they are often called deposit bonuses. Which, if you think about it, makes a ton of sense.
A very common sign-up bonus is 100% up to $600. This means, deposit $600, get $600 for free. The “up to” part means if you deposit $100, you only get $100 free. You cannot then go back and deposit another $500 to max out the bonus (usually).
The proper terminology, however, should be “eligible for” not “get”. When you deposit $600, there is not instantly $1200 in your account. There is $600 in your account with $600 more you are eligible for. You get the second $600 by playing online poker.
As just an example, a player gets $20 of their $600 “released” for every 100 he plays. Therefore, after 3000 poker hands played, he will have gotten the whole sign-up bonus. In this case, 3000 hands might seem like a lot of poker. However, it’s really only about 100 hours of poker. Therefore, your deposit bonus means $20/hour in compensation for playing poker. And if you like poker and play somewhat regularly, you know that an hour of poker goes by in an instant.
Some sign-up, deposit bonuses are harder than others to achieve. This depends on the poker site where the bonus is being claimed. For example, at Full Tilt, the bonus goes by Full Tilt Points and at Stars it goes by Frequent Player Points. Poker Sites’ in-house loyalty programs almost always measure how the bonus is “released”.
If you are new to online poker, the best way to maximize your deposit bonus is to play small stakes and play very tight. Tight play means you only play good starting hands. To learn more about the specific bonuses, click a poker room below:
Article by
Byron
