Bonuses are not a promotion confined solely to the realm of online casinos, online poker rooms offer a varied choice of bonuses usually even topping casinos with variety and number of bonuses offered. Online poker rooms tend to offer much more frequent reload bonuses for their players since their revenue comes from every hand played never mind if a particular player won or lost the hand.

Virtually all online poker sites offer a sign up bonus although those tend to be a bit smaller in comparison with online casino bonuses. On the other hand, online poker is a game where the variance is much smaller than in casino games so that even a modest bonus will give a player’s bankroll a significant boost, even if he is only a poker beginner.

As mentioned earlier, online poker rooms’ revenue is generated by taking a small part of each pot (usually with a maximum of 5% or 3$) called “rake”. The basis for the calculations of the wagering requirements to withdraw the bonus is calculated using the rake. Typically a player is required to play a certain number of raked hands before he is eligible for the bonus. The number of raked hands is in general a multiplication of the bonus amount. For example, a certain poker room might require a player to play 10 times the amount of bonus awarded in raked hands. So if you received a 100$ bonus from an online poker room using this formula, you are supposed to play 1000 raked hands before the bonus is awarded to you. A typical rate for online poker is between 80-100 hands per hour per table played.

Nearly all online poker rooms will only transfer the bonus amount into your account when the wagering requirements are cleared. This prevents uncomfortable situations common in online casinos where a player is sometimes not able to withdraw even the money he has deposited if he was awarded a bonus by the casino. Usually, there aren’t any limits to games eligible for the bonus. You can play any of the real money poker games although some poker rooms require you to play at a minimum level, for example 0.5/1 for limit holdem. Notice that even if there are no restrictions, playing at very low levels can make the bonus clearing process a very lengthy experience since very few hands are raked at those levels.

As mentioned, online poker bonuses tend to be more frequent. Besides the sign up bonuses there is usually an abundance of reload bonuses available. Some poker rooms offer reload bonus once per week while others offer only a few per year. Reload bonuses tend to be smaller and require more raked hands played in order to clear the bonus.