Bonus Chasing: A journal
Hey all,
Not really sure if anyone's interested, but I've decided to start a little log here which describes my new path of bonus whoring. Every so often, I'll pop on here, update my stats and let you know which bonuses I've found easiest to chase and any lessons learned along the way.
THE PLAN: Start with $100 and see how high we can milk this sucker!!! To be fair I'll also be keep track of how the bankroll is doing (ie. Any money earned or lost while chasing bonuses will be added or subtracted from this bankroll.
BALANCE(Oct27-2004) - Bankroll: $100 - Bonuses Collected: $0
Bonus#1: Pokerroom.com
While surfing this site, looking for a mac friendly place for a friend, I found a Hallowe'en special of a 40% desposit bonus. My lack of understanding of the requirements on how to work off bonuses caused me to make this my first deposit. So, I signed up, deposited $100 and saw that $40 was sitting, pending in my account.
How to cash: Earn 7 x bonus in Points. 1 Point earned when the rake hits $1, 1/2 if less than a dollar, but more than 0.50.
Egad. I did not read this one close enough. (I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that I'm an unexperienced bonus whore.) Of course, I even misread the above and it's worse than I thought...
I was playing one session and mentally keeping track of the points I was earning. Once finished, I when to the account page (which loses points for not updated your stats in real time... you have to leave a table for your Points to be udpated) and I noticed that I had a lot less Points earned than what I was expecting!! I went back and did another session, specifically keeping track of the rake for each hand. Once I stopped playing I added everything up and realized my blunder.
You see, I read the above as "1/2 a point when the rake is less than a dollar but more than or equal to 0.50" Yep. The "equal to" doesn't exist, so you get 1/2 a point for a $0.75 cent rake and 1 point for a dollar rake.
This means, that in order to earn points, I need to play at a table where the pot reaches $15.00 in order to earn a half a Point. With a $100 bankroll, I'm in very dangerous territorty. With $100 I should really be keeping to $.5/$1 tables, but you can't earn points here. At $1/$2 it's possible, but you need a fairly loose table. $2/$4 is realistic but that's WAY over my bankroll. So, I accepted a bit of danger and stuck with $1/$2. I've been slowly working off the bonus, but have been considering just cutting my losses and giving up. My bankroll has yo-yo'd between $60 and $120, and it's very nervewracking.
I also got an email from Empire saying that they missed my money... errr, I mean, me and offered me a 50% deposit bonus to come back. Since I have two months to finish off this one I've decided to cash out $100 (leaving a balance of $1.50, and chase Empire first.
BALANCE(Nov16-2004) - Bankroll: $101.50 - Bonuses Collected: $0
PokerRoom - Outstanding Bonus: $40 - Points: 173.5/280
Bonus#2: EmpirePoker.com
The cashout went smoothly and the funds were in paypal within 2 days without hassel, so they do get marks for a prompt cashout.
I took $100 and headed over to Empire. I had deposited there a while ago in order to get free chips from Sloth, but it was at the beginning of my career and, after winning the chips I pissed away my bankroll away on stupidity. Oddly enough, there was still $0.50 left in the account.
The bonus was 50% (up to $100 in bonuns money) and so I put in $100 and have a pending bonus of $50.
How to cash: Earn 5 x the bonus in Points. 1 Point earned when the rake hits $0.50.
Um. Wow. Night and Day there. While the rake at a $.5/$1 table is 10%, this means that I'll earn one point whenever the pot reaches $5.... like that ever happen in Low Limit, No-Fold'em Holdem. Empire shares the same tech as Party, so I'm going to assume both have the same bonuses.
I played a little over a half hour and earned 11 points (which was low because the table tighended up after a maniac left the table... but not before I freed him of a good portion of his roll.... )
On an aside: I get dealt JJ and three-bet his raise (which he caps pre-flop). this isolates us and I see a flop of JJ9!!!!! He bets, I call. Turn is a 7, betting is capped. (I put him on AA's or 99's). River is a 3, and the river betting is capped. I win. Curious to see what he had I open the hand history....
Ace. Eight. Offsuit.
Yep. He capped betting on the turn and river with Ace high. He's my new, most favorite player ever. end of aside.
...so, I called it a night and realized just how much less stressful this bonus will be to clear. Even thought the rake % is higher, I can play within my bankroll. Once I'm done here, I'll head back to pokerroom... maybe.
BALANCE(Nov19-2004) - Bankroll: $112.50 - Bonuses Collected: $0
PokerRoom - Outstanding Bonus: $40 - Points: 173.5/280
Empire - Outstanding Bonus: $50 - Points: 11/250
Not really sure if anyone's interested, but I've decided to start a little log here which describes my new path of bonus whoring. Every so often, I'll pop on here, update my stats and let you know which bonuses I've found easiest to chase and any lessons learned along the way.
THE PLAN: Start with $100 and see how high we can milk this sucker!!! To be fair I'll also be keep track of how the bankroll is doing (ie. Any money earned or lost while chasing bonuses will be added or subtracted from this bankroll.
BALANCE(Oct27-2004) - Bankroll: $100 - Bonuses Collected: $0
Bonus#1: Pokerroom.com
While surfing this site, looking for a mac friendly place for a friend, I found a Hallowe'en special of a 40% desposit bonus. My lack of understanding of the requirements on how to work off bonuses caused me to make this my first deposit. So, I signed up, deposited $100 and saw that $40 was sitting, pending in my account.
How to cash: Earn 7 x bonus in Points. 1 Point earned when the rake hits $1, 1/2 if less than a dollar, but more than 0.50.
Egad. I did not read this one close enough. (I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that I'm an unexperienced bonus whore.) Of course, I even misread the above and it's worse than I thought...
I was playing one session and mentally keeping track of the points I was earning. Once finished, I when to the account page (which loses points for not updated your stats in real time... you have to leave a table for your Points to be udpated) and I noticed that I had a lot less Points earned than what I was expecting!! I went back and did another session, specifically keeping track of the rake for each hand. Once I stopped playing I added everything up and realized my blunder.
You see, I read the above as "1/2 a point when the rake is less than a dollar but more than or equal to 0.50" Yep. The "equal to" doesn't exist, so you get 1/2 a point for a $0.75 cent rake and 1 point for a dollar rake.
This means, that in order to earn points, I need to play at a table where the pot reaches $15.00 in order to earn a half a Point. With a $100 bankroll, I'm in very dangerous territorty. With $100 I should really be keeping to $.5/$1 tables, but you can't earn points here. At $1/$2 it's possible, but you need a fairly loose table. $2/$4 is realistic but that's WAY over my bankroll. So, I accepted a bit of danger and stuck with $1/$2. I've been slowly working off the bonus, but have been considering just cutting my losses and giving up. My bankroll has yo-yo'd between $60 and $120, and it's very nervewracking.
I also got an email from Empire saying that they missed my money... errr, I mean, me and offered me a 50% deposit bonus to come back. Since I have two months to finish off this one I've decided to cash out $100 (leaving a balance of $1.50, and chase Empire first.
BALANCE(Nov16-2004) - Bankroll: $101.50 - Bonuses Collected: $0
PokerRoom - Outstanding Bonus: $40 - Points: 173.5/280
Bonus#2: EmpirePoker.com
The cashout went smoothly and the funds were in paypal within 2 days without hassel, so they do get marks for a prompt cashout.
I took $100 and headed over to Empire. I had deposited there a while ago in order to get free chips from Sloth, but it was at the beginning of my career and, after winning the chips I pissed away my bankroll away on stupidity. Oddly enough, there was still $0.50 left in the account.
The bonus was 50% (up to $100 in bonuns money) and so I put in $100 and have a pending bonus of $50.
How to cash: Earn 5 x the bonus in Points. 1 Point earned when the rake hits $0.50.
Um. Wow. Night and Day there. While the rake at a $.5/$1 table is 10%, this means that I'll earn one point whenever the pot reaches $5.... like that ever happen in Low Limit, No-Fold'em Holdem. Empire shares the same tech as Party, so I'm going to assume both have the same bonuses.
I played a little over a half hour and earned 11 points (which was low because the table tighended up after a maniac left the table... but not before I freed him of a good portion of his roll.... )
On an aside: I get dealt JJ and three-bet his raise (which he caps pre-flop). this isolates us and I see a flop of JJ9!!!!! He bets, I call. Turn is a 7, betting is capped. (I put him on AA's or 99's). River is a 3, and the river betting is capped. I win. Curious to see what he had I open the hand history....
Ace. Eight. Offsuit.
Yep. He capped betting on the turn and river with Ace high. He's my new, most favorite player ever. end of aside.
...so, I called it a night and realized just how much less stressful this bonus will be to clear. Even thought the rake % is higher, I can play within my bankroll. Once I'm done here, I'll head back to pokerroom... maybe.
BALANCE(Nov19-2004) - Bankroll: $112.50 - Bonuses Collected: $0
PokerRoom - Outstanding Bonus: $40 - Points: 173.5/280
Empire - Outstanding Bonus: $50 - Points: 11/250
Comments
stp
Thats where I play...works for me Rob.
stp
Infact, if you ever play poker online at low limit and DONT have a bonus running at the same time you are throwing money away.
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Mr. Superiority at it again. BBC Z get a life
I dont agree with you. I found this thread interesting just for the fact that I can see which online sites are easier to get the bonus. There are several threads in this forum where people post results, most people want to hear about others accomplishments. This thread is by far, not a thread just out there to brag. Please try and use a little more perspective when posting and use your words more constructively. If one person enjoys this thread, which there obviously is, then there is a point to the thread IMO.
stp
I find Empire one of the easiest sites for clearing a bonus, and Absolute would have to win for offering the most deposit bonuses. They offer something almost every week. At least 15% with neteller. If I'm going to be playing anyway, I don't see a problem with getting free money while doing it.
Keep us updated...
I've made money playing low-limit poker online at times when I had no bonus active.
Often, for a winning player (instead of just a break even player), the game selection is more important than the bonus in terms of per hand EV. For example, if there's a loose game one one site that I can beat for 3BB/100 hands, and a tight game on another that I can beat for 1BB/100 hands and receive a bonus of 0.5BB/100 hands, which one of these choices is throwing money away?
I don't see the OP as much of "bragging about winnings", and agree with all the comments so far that this is a worthwile thread.
ScottyZ
Thanks for disagreeing with me just to disagree.. I'd glad to see that no one actually reads anything I post and is just in argument mode..
A party bonus is usually 5x raked hands per $1 which would translate to about 20BB/100 for the lowest limit player..
But dont bother taking up those bonuses, stick to your game selection and grind out a pack of gum every few days. Good use of time. Even better.. wait for Zithal to tell you whats out there.. With such precious nuggets of information as 'Empirepoker paid me!' I'd want to wait for his opinion too..
Anyway, the bonus has cleared and I'm in the process of withdrawing the balance to bonus bankroll...
BALANCE(Nov25-2004) Bankroll: $147.00 Bonuses Collected: $50
PokerRoom - Outstanding Bonus: $40 - Points: 173.5/280
My choices now are to head back to PokerRoom and finish that bonus off, or try intrapoker.com as suggested above (the mailing of the pin# seems really wierd to me) or, I've gotten an email from checkandraisepoker.com which is supposed to be launching this weekend. I'm a little leary of chasing on an unproven site.
The big unknown is how you clear bonuses on the site. (You need to reference three or four different pages in order to get the complete picture.) So, I thought it'd be useful to summarize the deal here and compare it to what's already out there... it reall
How to clear "CheckandRaise Poker":
From the page describing the bonuses it appears that for every 400 check points that are earned by a player, $25 of the bonus will be put into your real money account. How do you earn a Check Point? I'm glad you asked...
From their FAQ, every dollar in rake attributed to a player collected from a hand, that player earns 12.5 Check Points. For example, if the rake reaches $0.50 on a .5/1 table when it's ten handed, each player has virtually contributed $0.05 cents to the rake. This is 1/20th of a dollar which means eachg player would earn 1/20 of 12.5 points or 0.625 points per hand.
So, to earn 400 Check Points, you must play 640 raked hands (where the rake is $0.50 in a 10 handed table to clear a $25 bonus. (To compare this back to Empire/PartyPoker this approximately works out to 25x the deposit bonus in raked hands. Ouch!!)
Of course, if the table were average $1 in rake each pot, then you'd only need 12.5x the desposit bonus in raked hands to clear. (Still.... Ouch!!)
If we look at a "best case senario", the site lists the max rake from a $5/$10 talble is $3. If 9 people are playing, they've each put in $0.33 into the rake, which would earn them about 4 Check Points. In this case, all you'd need to play 4x the bonus in raked hands (assuming a $3 rake and a 9 handed table).
The site claims.. "The Check Points Program at Check n Raise Poker.com is the most generous frequent player points program among any online poker room. This is because we realize that our players are our partners and, without you, we can't succeed."
This appears to be true at their most extreme levels, but it's completely worse than anything else out there at the lowest limits. If I thought pokerroom was hard to clear, this is going to be FAR WORSE (at the limits I play)
There is, one factor missing from all of this, and is a piece of information that I cannot find from the site... What is the rake percentage??
Empire/Party takes a fixed rake of $0.50 from a $5-$9.75 pot (which is a rake of between 5-10%) If checkandraise were strictly 5% rake, then you'd need a pot of about $15 to earn about 1 point. (remarkably similar to pokerroom) and you'd need 400 such pots to clear a $25 bonus.
For low limit players, any way you look at it, checkandraise is not the place to be clearing bonuses. (And if someone can find their rake policy on the site, please post a response here..)
Do you, or anyone else, know how easy the bonuses are to work off at Ultimate Bet? I might take a stab at it.
i just cleared the Party november bonus....i think their bonuses are among the best, although they don't occur very often...i'd say it took about 5 hours, playing 2-3 tables, to clear the $100 bonus they gave me
thx,
CO
i deposited $500 to get the max, and had one week to clear the 700 raked hands required, which took 4 days...i'm assuming you play on party but didn't get this email...i play there quite a bit, not sure if that had anything to do with it
Red
I signed up, is there a way to check how many hands you have played?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1060198&page=9&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1
Enjoy!