Whether you’re an avid poker player or a newbie still learning about the game, you can surely benefit from some poker bonuses. These kinds of incentives will give you an opportunity to make big cash, but also to practice your poker skills, without spending any of your hard-earned money.
Of course, this is only true if you find the best poker bonus offers. Luckily for you, you’re at the right place – Play Pokies Online is your source of information about everything poker-related, including poker bonuses and promotions!
How Online Poker Bonuses Work?
Same as any other types of
online casino promotions, poker bonuses are also used by online casinos to attract new players. What this means is that you probably won’t find a reputable online poker site that doesn’t have at least some kind of bonuses for their players to claim.
In most cases, the bonus in question is the sign-up bonus a.k.a. welcome bonus. Basically, this means that casino will give you a bonus as a way of saying thank you for creating an account. Although some poker sites do give away free chips to everyone who registers an account, most of them still give the bonuses according to your first deposit. Usually, the bonus is equal to 50 or 100% of the amount that you have deposited.
The rule is simple – the higher the percentage, the more bonus chips you will get. So, let’s say that the welcome bonus is 100%, if you upload 100 dollars, the casino will give you bonus funds in the same amount. The problem is that the bonus funds are not real cash in a sense that you can’t withdraw them straight away. Instead, you need to wager them first. Unfortunately, many poker sites require you to wager the funds not once, but dozens of times, before you can actually use them as real money.
Poker Bonuses and Their Wagering Requirements
It’s actually pretty obvious that casinos are reluctant to give away bonuses that are free of any conditions. If they did, they would quickly get bankrupt. This is the reason why many of them set
wagering conditions, which are, more often than not, very difficult to fulfill.
In regular casinos, the wagering conditions usually involve spins on certain games like slots or roulette. When it comes to poker websites, it’s all about poker hands. In order to receive the bonus, you need to play a certain number of hands first. It’s needless to say that at the end of the day, you need to make money off those hands; otherwise, your bonus will go to waste.
Many casinos decide to put a cap on the amount that you can get via bonuses. So, even if you win big amounts while trying to work off the wagering requirement, you will only get the amount that you’ve started with. For example, if you get $100 in bonus funds, which you need to wager 10 times, after you’ve fulfilled the requirement, you will receive only 100$ in your casino account. It doesn’t matter that you might have won much more along the way.
Solving the Problem of Poker Bonus Requirements
Obviously, the easiest way to clear the bonus requirement would be to put it all in one hand. The bad news is that most casinos don’t allow that. Instead, they set a limit, which is much, much lower. Sometimes, the maximum amount of bonus money you can wager per hand is one dollar.
If you
play online poker often, you probably have the skills to play at multiple tables simultaneously. If so, you have a great chance to quickly deal with bonus requirements. Rather than wasting your time trying to reach the number of played hands as required by bonus rules, you can clear it by playing at two or more tables at the same time.
It’s simple math really if you think about it. By playing at two tables simultaneously, you will be able to speed up the process by double. Instead of playing with $1 of bonus per hand per table, you can do it on two tables.
How to Find the Best Poker Bonus Offers?
Obviously, the best-case scenario would be to find a no-deposit bonus offer. That way, you wouldn’t have to upload any of your money, but you would still have a chance to win real cash. Unfortunately, offers like those come by very rarely.
Instead, rather than hoping to run into such an offer, it’s best to try to look for poker bonuses which have wagering requirements that aren’t too difficult to work off.
Of course, you also need to pay attention to how big the bonus actually is. There’s really no point trying too hard if you’re gonna receive only a couple of dollars once bonus wagering requirement is finally dealt with.
Final Word of Advice
Make sure not to get lured in by shady poker sites offering unrealistically good bonuses. You need to check the website properly before placing your money. Some of them might give away bonuses that are pretty easy to claim, but then you might end up stuck with money in your casino account. Such scenario can happen if the casino doesn’t allow using your preferred payout method, for example.
At some poker websites, the minimum withdrawal amount is set too high. So, even if you manage to work off the wagering requirement, you won’t be able to actually withdraw that money. Instead, you will have no other options but to wager it again.
