We review online poker rooms and offer bonus codes, referral codes, promotional codes, and coupon codes to use for your first deposit and give you the opportunity to compare online poker room features. Use our poker ratings, poker bonus codes, and recommendations to choose the best poker site for the long term. If you want to just play for bonuses you can jump from room to room with our codes to achieve maximum free money. Its not a long term poker strategy to making actual money however.

The most crucial time in a poker player's career is when he makes his first deposit, and then tries to play poker without going bust. Becoming a winning player right from the start is not easily accomplished. You usually make a small first deposit and then participate in low-limit games where many of the players are willing to push in their chips with a wide range of holdings. And to be able to keep your bankroll, and hopefully see it grow, you have to dodge a few bullets along the way and manage to win a quite a few important key-pots. Your focus is on keeping your bankroll alive, which usually is very tough.

The poker room's rake also has a big impact on your bankroll when you are playing with small stakes. The house usually deducts around 3 % from every pot that reaches a certain size. The rake is capped at $3, a number that very rarely is reached at the lowest limits. Therefore, when you make your initial deposit and try to build yourself a bankroll, you play in games where you always have to pay the full 3 % in rake. So to be able to see a growth in your poker account you need to beat, not only your opponents, but also the rake as well as have some luck along the way.

What is an online poker bonus?

An online poker bonus is a promotion designed to get you playing on a particular website. If you're already playing on that website, it's designed to get you to continue. The idea of the bonus comes out of the tradition of comps. In the past, live casinos provided comps in the form of free meals, shows or even hotel rooms in order to entice customers. They realized that the amount they win from these individuals once they got into the casino far outweighs the cost of the comps. The online poker bonus is like a comp for an online casino. In poker, however, you don't have to lose money for the casino to benefit; they take a percentage out of every pot, so there's no reason for you to forgo taking advantage.

learing an Online Poker Bonus
It's not hard to find an online poker bonus. Poker bonuses for a variety of online poker sites are advertised on multiple websites and you often find sign up bonus codes in poker magazines. Often these poker-code offers are for potentially large amounts, such as a 100 percent match bonus for up to $500. But are you really going to get that extra $500? How easy are these poker sign up deals to get? And how do you find the best bonus on poker sites?

What is clearing an online poker bonus?
If an online poker site offers a first deposit bonus with 100 percent match, you will get an amount equal to your deposit. However, it will not be immediately credited to your account. Instead it will be put in a bonus account. To get the money from the bonus account into your regular account you will have to do what is called clearing the bonus.

How do you clear an online poker bonus?
The way to clear your online poker bonus is by playing poker, which presumably is what you had planned to do anyway. Your poker bonus online will be cleared once you have played the requisite number of raked hands. How many hands you have to play will vary depending on site, but in some cases it is ten times the amount of the bonus you are trying to clear. In this case, you would have to play 1000 hands to clear a $100 bonus. In other cases, you may have to generate an amount in rake equal to the amount of your bonus through cash play. In the past, you could only clear poker promotions by playing raked hands. Now you can also clear bonuses on many sites through tournament play.

You will earn points by playing tournaments and once you have achieved the requisite number of points, your bonus will be released. The best poker bonus online is easy to clear.