What is bonus hunting/chasing/whoring?
To attract new customers and to get existing clients to come back and play online poker rooms offer financial incentives. In order to release these incentives you must put in a certain amount of playing time at the site. The art of chasing these bonuses can best be defined as researching the offers of a range of poker sites and determining their value and ease of completion. Often times, you are only allowed to redeem one bonus once at a particular site, but there may be multiple poker room brandings that offer the same or similar deal. So a bonus chaser would withdraw their money on completion at one site and move onto the next.

Bonus hunting takes many forms, but all bonus hunters hand the same goal. That goal is to maximise your expected value in the long run. You may be a winning poker player in the long run, which means bonuses will just add to your profit. Even if you are a break even or slightly losing poker player though, the bonuses offered may mean that you actually profit from playing poker in the long run. That is one of the most important concepts of bonus whoring, it allows break even players to win.

Why do poker sites give away money?
Are they really giving away money? Not really, they are just giving you some of your rake back. Bonuses are a mutually beneficial deal as far as online poker rooms are concerned. Especially when without the bonus you probably wouldn’t be playing at a site anyway. Online poker rooms aren’t mugs, they know that if you play for a week to earn a $100 bonus, that they have likely taken more than $100 from you in rake. In that sense, bonuses represent somewhat of a refund on the cost of playing poker.

Bonuses provide poker rooms with new players to add to their database, customers that they can market to and provide for long into the future. They also, increase the traffic at the tables, which in turn brings even more people in because they know they can always get a game.

What is a sign-up bonus?
When you first join a poker site, most of them offer you a very enticing cash bonus on your deposit. An example would be a room that offers a 100% upto $500 bonus. That means that any amount you deposit between their minimum a deposit and $500 will be instantly match with a bonus of the same value. A sign-up bonus is a one time deal and once you have done it on a particular online poker room you will not be able to do it again.

What is a reload bonus?
In order to attract existing customers back to the tables, many rooms offer once-off reload bonuses or some even offer monthlies. They usually require a player to make another deposit in order to qualify for the bonus.

What is rakeback?
Rakeback replaces bonuses with a deal which sees you get a refund of the rake you generate. Essentially, it is an unlimited lifelong bonus. Rakeback deals vary in their value, but generally if you shop around you should be able to get rakeback that will see 25%+ of the rake you pay delivered back to you.

What is cover play?
Cover play is playing more at the poker room after you have already finished doing a bonus. Although you are perfectly within your rights to withdraw the instant that you release the bonus, it is usually a good idea not to. Putting in a little bit of cover play is an act of good faith with the poker room. It is a bad thing to be branded a bonus whore, because it diminishes the likelihood that a poker room will market themselves to you in the future and may see you excluded from some profitable reload bonuses.

What do I have to do to get the bonus?
Terms and conditions of bonuses vary widely. The commonality of them though is that they usually require you to play a certain amount of raked hands or earn a certain number of player points. Be careful in distinguishing between the definitions of a raked hand by each site you play. Some sites define a raked hand as a hand in which you were dealt cards and rake was taken, others you actually have to put money into the pot in a hand to have it counted.

What is a skin?
Maybe poker rooms are part of a greater network of poker sites. A network shares it’s traffic and software, but is made up of many individually branded skins. For instance, Noble Poker and CD Poker are two different skins, but they operate on the same network. Usually you are free to join as many skins as you like on the same network.

How do I move my money around?
If you are going to be serious about bonus chasing, then you are going to need to find yourself an e-wallet. While most pokler rooms offer bank wire and credit card deposits, these are highly inefficent. You are better off creating an account with a site like Neteller or Moneybookers to move your money between sites. In general the fees are low on these sites, often times the poker rooms themselves foot the bill.

For US players, the situation is a little more complicated post-2006. There aren’t that many universally accepted e-wallets around for Americans any more. Most sites have found ways around the US legislation, so it is best to consult each site on an individual basis and determine the best way to deposit and withdraw your money.

Is bonus hunting legal?
You are well within your rights as an online poker player to move your money around different sites and find the best deal for yourself. Online poker is a free market and you have full ability to exercise consumer choice. Most of the networks allow you to sign-up once per poker skin (unique branding). So there is nothing stopping you from joining both Hollywood Poker and Mansion Poker for instance, even though they use the same software and player base.

What is the best form of poker to clear bonuses with?
There are many different games of poke, Texas Hold ‘Em is by far the most popular and thus the easiest to clear bonuses with. With that said, should you be playing limit, pot limit or no limit? Should you play tournaments or cash games? Well this comes down to the terms and conditions of the bonus itself. In general though, you are going to find that you are going to be clearing bonuses at a faster rate playing cash games. Often times the choice between limit and pot/no limit is a matter of personal preference as bonus is released based on rake. Rake is going to be fairly similar at the same relative stakes between the two. We would advise you play the game that you feel you have the biggest edge at. We’d also make you aware that these days no limit cash games generally have better traffic and therefore are more readily available.

How can I track my play?
There are numerous poker software titles going around that allow you to track and analyze your poker play. Poker Tracker and Poker Office are by far the most popular and are great for not only recording your results by indentifying leaks in your game. Poker software isn’t a must of course, a simple spreadsheet can suffice. We would advise that you keep some sort of track of the sessions you play and the bonuses you release. If nothing else, it will give you a check list so that you don’t go back and try and do the same bonus again six months alter when you’ve forgotten about it.

Are all the bonus details on your site up to date?
Always check the terms and conditions on the web site or contact a support representative of the poker room before you deposit at the site. The nature of poker room promotions is that they are ever changing and fast moving. With that said, we do try and keep our listings as up to date as possible.

Can I sign-up for another account and do the bonus again?
You can sign-up for multiple accounts on the one network, but not multiple accounts on the one skin. Poker rooms have a strict policy of one account per household and signing up again would just be asking to have your account locked down.

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