The popularity of online poker in the last five years or so has meant that more and more poker sites are starting up all the time, and they are all competing for your business in this fiercely competitive environment. The main incentive that most of them offer is off course a sign up bonus. This is great for you, but are they as profitable as they sound?
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A mistake a lot of new players make is they see a large sign up bonus offer like ‘free $600 sign up bonus!’ and interpret this as meaning that all you have to do is open an account and you will receive a nice fat $600 in your account.
Unfortunately it’s not as easy as this. With offers like this, of course they’re not scamming you, they will give you the $600, but there are generally conditions to this offer. For instance you may have to match this offer with your initial deposit, so you would have to put $600 into your account yourself when opening an account, or you would have to generate $600 for the poker room in rake before they will give you the money.
If online poker rooms threw vast sums of money at every customer that joined they would soon be out of business so they have got to protect their own interests as well. After all their goal is to lure you in with an attractive offer, and then profit from your business in future months and years through you playing at their site and generating lots of rake and paying lots of entry fees to tournaments.
The worst type of customer for them are the people who open an account, take their bonus, and never play at their site again, which is why a lot of sign up bonuses have conditions attached to them.
So if you hear about people saying that they make loads of money going around signing up to various different poker rooms just for the sign up bonus, and think you could do the same, then be aware that it’s not that easy.
Yes you definitely can make profits doing this but you have to be a very competent poker player in the first place to be able to pocket the sign up bonuses without being out of pocket yourself. For example, a lot of sites will require you to generate a certain amount of rake or play a certain number of hands to clear the bonus. If this is the case then you will obviously need to be at break even point at worst in order to claim the maximum bonus available.
So always read the terms and conditions when you sign up to a poker room just for the sign up bonus because poker rooms aren’t in the business of giving away free money. There are nearly always conditions attached, but if you are a good solid poker player then these bonuses are relatively easy to clear.
James Woolley is a regular poker player and the author of a poker blog which contains the very latest internet poker tips and poker sign up bonuses.
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