Most online poker rooms provide options to earn more through rakeback and various promotions of which the most popular are freerolls and poker bonuses.
Freeroll is a free poker tournament where sometimes you have to fulfill some requirements to participate but mostly there is nothing mandatory. Freeroll prizes can be money or tickets to bigger tournaments. Freerolls sometimes feature prizes worth hundreds of thousands, packages to World Series of Poker, Caribbean cruises etc. Regular freerolls allow people to increase their profits and to practice multi-table tournaments . Bonuses are simply extra money which poker room will add to players account if he/she has fulfilled the requirements for it (mostly it is required to play a certain amount of hands in real money tables). Poker Bonuses are divided into three groups:
Sign-Up Bonus: Poker bonus for opening a new account. For example, online poker room offers $100 bonus and in order to receive that you have to play 700 hands (most known as „raked hand“). If the player has fulfilled this then the bonus will be released.
Refer-A-Friend Bonus: Poker bonus for referring your friend. Referring player and his friend both gain from this. This also usually requires the fulfillement of earlier set requirements, which are easier then the sign-up bonus terms. This is also offered by various affiliates and runs regularly month to month. You will not get a one time bonus, you can earn a percentages of your friends rake every month! Earning money for doing nothing.
Loyalty Bonus or Re-Load Bonus: Poker Bonus for depositing again into your account. Terms are also set, for example: If the bonus says „20% up to $200“ and the requirement is „10 raked hands per bonus dollar“ then the player has to deposit $1000 dollars to his account to play for the best bonus , play 2000 hands and the result would be $200 extra cash.
Earning from bonuses is extremely known on the globe but we dare to say that in order to earn more it is not enough. Bad player can lose more than the bonus is worth during his time of playing through it. If a player gets comfortable playing only for bonuses he faces several problems :
1) Sign-up bonuses run out eventually .
2) Re-Load Bonuses can take too much time ($100 poker bonus may take 7-8 hours but 2-3 hours for a good player)
3) Players who only play for Re-Load Bonuses can get their account closed or can be excluded from the future bonuses. Poker rooms have “blacklisted” some countries , Latvia in Cryptologic for example.
Rakeback deal comes in addition to Sign-Up Bonuses (depends on the online poker room) and freerolls. Rakeback is something that the poker room offers you for playing. Rake is the fee online poker room takes from every real money table and from tournament fees. This is the only thing that keeps the poker room running but still they offer some of it back! For example, up to 36% 888 Poker Rakeback through their VIP Program. If you rake $1000 during a month you could get up to $360 back with 888 Poker.