Introduction

G'day from down here in sunny Australia! My name is Jonny Vincent and I post on the best poker forum in the world (pokernetwork.com) as yoyo. Recently, I won a spot on Team PokerNews at the WSOP, and I've been asked to write an introductory article about online poker bonuses, with a view to possibly writing occasional updates assessing some of the best poker bonuses going around.

It seems everywhere I look, the new buzzword in poker is rakeback. Rake back involves getting a portion (usually between 20-40%, but can be much higher) of the rake you pay deposited back into your poker account. Poker rakeback is great, if you are playing mid-limits or higher. But if you are a low-limit player, absolutely nothing in the world beats the value you can gain from being a crafty bonus hunter. Bonus hunting will always hold a special place in my heart as it enabled me to quit my job and take up poker fulltime, even though, at the time, my game wasn't strong enough to play poker 'professionally'. Yet the value I was able to gain from chasing various signup and reload bonuses around the hundreds of online poker sites enabled me to average US$24/hour for my first year of 'professional' poker. That's a lot more than many hard-working members of society earn, and even though bonus hunting is a real grind, and can be incredibly boring or mundane at times, once you get the hang of it and slip into a routine, it's a fairly easy way to make a comfortable living playing poker as you build up the bankroll and skills necessary to hit the mid/high-limits as a pure 'poker pro'. I started bonus hunting two years ago with $100 and, within a year, had the bankroll and skills to jump into the mid-limits (5/10 and 10/20) where, of course, I had to start looking into rakeback percentages very seriously as they substantially add to your earn rates.

But until you hit the mid/high-limits, you will never have to worry about rakeback, because we have literally hundreds of bonuses to clear first, and they are simply worth more to you than rakeback is. At the end of this article, I'll quickly compare the value of bonuses vs. rakeback, but for now, let's start with some basics...

Definitions

NETeller - You must have a NETeller account before you start bonus hunting. Go to neteller.com and open an account. NETeller is the fastest way to deposit and withdraw funds into the various online poker rooms you will be clearing bonuses at and it's probably safe to say that if they don't accept NETeller, they're not worth bothering with.

Initial Sign-up Bonus (deposit bonus) - As the online poker market is so competitive, online poker rooms are forced to compete for new signups aggressively. Almost every online poker site has some form of sign-up bonus - a bonus amount given to a new player who signs up at their poker room. Some sites give you the bonus to play with immediately, others require you to play a number of raked hands before you can access or withdraw the bonus money.

Reload Bonus - Some sites offer promotional or monthly reload bonuses, usually requiring a code to activate the bonus when you re-deposit.

Raked Hand - Online sites vary greatly in their definition of what constitutes a 'raked hand' for the purpose of clearing a bonus. A successful bonus hunter will have to become adept at reading the Terms and Conditions' for each bonus they attempt to clear. Usually, a 'raked hand' (for the purpose of clearing a bonus) will be a hand that is raked at least a nominal amount (50c or $1). This usually results in the bonus hunter needing to play at least 50c/$1 or $1/$2 to clear the bonus.

E-Cash PIN - A PIN sent to you via snail mail by Cryptologic sites that enable you to withdraw your money into NETeller. This quirky procedure prevents bonus hunters from clearing Crypto bonuses effectively straight away unless you have a large bankroll to start with, as you need to wait a few weeks to receive your PIN and, until you get your PIN, you can't withdraw. Once you have a decent bankroll, you can start on the Crypto sites.

Bankroll - A poker player's combined available funds to play poker with.

Bonus Expiration Date - The date by which the required conditions must have been met to clear a bonus before it expires and is lost.

Contributed Raked Hand - An unfortunate bonus term some sites have stating that a player must contribute to the raked pot for the hand to be considered a raked hand. Usually makes the bonus not worth doing.

PokerTracker - An awesome program that tracks thousands of statistics in almost real time while you play at sites that are PokerTracker compatible. Costs around US$50 but is well-worth the money. Highly recommended and can be downloaded from pokertracker.com.

7x, 10x, 15x - When you see these numbers as you read the Terms & Conditions, they mean you have to play the designated number of raked hands to clear each dollar of bonus money. So if you've received a $100 bonus, and it's 7x to clear, you need to play 700 raked hands before you can withdraw the $100.

Best game to play to clear bonus

You can clear a bonus playing almost any game and any limit, with the exception of some micro-limits. However, the ideal game and limit for clearing bonuses overall would be Limit Hold'em $1/$2 6-max. You can clear a bonus playing NL HE; however you can't multi-table NL HE as effectively as you can with Limit HE. Obviously, the more tables you can play at once, the faster you can clear a bonus, which increases your hourly earn rate. You can play more tables of full ring Limit than short-handed, however on a short-handed table, you can get up to double the hands per hour a full ring game gets. More hands/hour means faster bonus clearing. $1/$2 is really the best limit to play - with some bonuses, you can clear them at 50c/$1 as fast as you can with $1/$2, however, $1/$2 is usually the perfect limit to clear a bonus.

To be a really successful bonus hunter, as an end-goal, you should be working towards getting your Limit $1/$2 short-handed skills and your multi-tabling skills up to a level where you can play at least 5 or more tables at once. By the end of my first year of bonus hunting, I was playing 10 x $1/$2 Limit 6-max tables at Party at once to clear Party reload bonuses. This may sound crazy, especially if you are used to playing only one table at a time, however, if you keep pushing yourself, you'll be amazed at how quickly you build up your multi-tabling skills. Don't push yourself too far too fast though - make sure you're comfortable with how many tables you're playing. When you think you could handle another table, open one up and see how you go. Before you know it, you'll have 5 tables open and be thinking, "Well, this is a little boring..." :P

Possible earning rates

You can bonus hunt and show a profit even if you aren't a winning player, but to show you the possibilities of what you can earn if you are a winning player at $1/$2 and learn how to multi-table 6-max effectively whilst clearing bonuses, we'll run through some rough maths. If you are a 2bb/100 player at $1/$2, you will earn $4 for every 100 hands played. 6-max games average around 100 hands/hour - PartyPoker's 6-max games certainly do. Now, if you play 5 tables, you are already earning $20/hour, not including the bonus. If we use PartyPoker as an example again, their initial sign-up bonus is $100, with 7x, or 700 raked hands, to clear. Not all of your 500 hands per hour will be raked however, so the 700 hands will probably take you just under three hours to clear. Your hourly earn has just risen from $20/hour to around $50/hour. These are incredibly rough maths, of course, but from them, you can start to see the potential. It's the $50/hour figure you should be working towards if you're going to bonus hunt seriously. You won't be earning that straight away unless you can 5-table $1/$2 Limit 6-max, but we'll get you there before too long.

Obviously not all bonuses are as good as PartyPoker's initial signup bonus, and not all sites let you play 5 or more tables at once, or have software as fast as PartyPoker's, so your true hourly earn will probably hover around US$25-$40/hour once you build up your skills, but that's not so bad now, is it? You'll be making more than a B&M pro would average playing 15/30 in a casino, but you'll be playing $1/$2.

Bonushunting vs. Rakeback

From a sample of $1/$2 hands in PokerTracker, I paid $180 in rake in just under 3000 hands. The standard poker rake back deal gives you around 25%, so that would be roughly $45 in rakeback. If I was clearing 7x bonuses, I would have earned between $300-$400 in bonus playing 3000 hands, so you can easily see how much better bonuses are than rakeback.

- Disclaimer: Of course, this is a very rough example. Small sample size, PT calculated Total Rake is player paid rake, whereas rakeback works on table rake divided by number of players, etc. This is just to show low limit players the potential power of bonuses as opposed to rakeback. There is no point worrying about rake back until you get to 5/10 or 10/20 even.

As a side note, for these 3000 hands, I ran at 4.5bb/100, which is upswinging for me, even at $1/$2 6-max. However, even if I was clearing 10x bonuses, I still would have made more from the bonuses than from actual poker winnings.

Have I convinced you of the value of bonus hunting yet in this quick introductory article?

Next article I will look at a couple of the best initial sign-up bonuses available at the moment. Until then, good luck and happy bonus hunting!

Yoyo

Ed Note: Go hunt those bonuses. Start by signing up at Everest Poker today