Ever wonder if those no-deposit poker bonuses are legitimate? Having personally played at numerous “real money” poker sites (ayediting my poker bankrolls to keep it all anonymous) I know for a fact that the majority of these offers are, so how can these companies lure new players?
The majority of offers look something like this: sign up and they will give you “free money” to play poker. You deposit $100 and they match it with another $100. Sometimes they do NOT match your deposit – that is, you have to deposit more than the bonus to cash it out. vioepoker Very few poker rooms give you free money for free – they are all giving it away to play poker. At least you can decide how much you want to play with – the last thing you want is to deposit $100 only to have the providers keep 10% of your winnings.
Log on to any poker room either now or after you have read this article and click on the offer. Most sites will say how much you need to deposit to get the bonus started. Be sure to read the fine print as some places will try to trick you into thinking you have to deposit more than the bonus – this is technically not true.
The majority of poker bonuses are given to players who sign up for rooms through their links. It is why you will often see two or three poker rooms mentioned on a poker review page and the poker room is the same one offering the first offer.
The difference being that with the first offer the poker room offers you a reward for signing up through their link. Their brand spreads around the internet so they have a lot of traffic, which means they can offer lots of great bonuses.
The third offer is not a referral by a poker room – it is a referral by another poker room.
The fourth offer is a mix of both previous offers, so you might see poker rooms mentioned both here and there on poker review sites.
These offers are primarily to encourage poker players to sign up for rooms through their links and poker affiliate links, which means that if you visit a poker room you will gain poker bonuses. The final offer is generally a reward for when you refer other players to the poker room
So what is the catch?
Well, there are a few different catch – the two most common being that you have to “play” (lose) a lot of hands in order to withdraw the bonus and the other that you have to rack up a lot of points in the poker room, usually between 50 and 100 hands.
In the first case, if you lose the bonus you can withdraw it back into your poker account – but keep in mind that even if you have not played that many hands, you will be deemed to have “employed” the bonus so you will find your poker account credited with the bonus money.
In the second case, the poker room will give you points that you can exchange for cash – but you only get the money if you start playing soon enough – the bonus and the point exchange will remain in your account until you lose it.