Bonus Rakeback

Using bonuses to earn Rakeback is an excellent way to keep your online poker bankroll on the rise, even when you're not seeing much success on the virtual felt. From the initial welcome bonus to the standard reload bonus opportunities, use this free cash to earn Rakeback and even a break-even game can become quite prosperous.

For novice poker players especially, using bonuses to earn Rakeback presents a highly opportune moment to practice various poker strategies. Not every proven poker strategy suits all players, so you'll have time to try one and either keep it, or toss it aside for something more suitable.

Bonuses are rarely awarded instantly, and will require a good number of poker points to clear. So at first, you'll be playing with your own deposited money. As you play, the bonus cash will be awarded, usually in small increments of $5, $10 or $20. As this cash trickles in, your bankroll shouldn't be taking too much of a hit. Plus, when you combine the Rakeback profits on top of that, you may find that you never have to make a second deposit, so long as you found the right strategy to keep from losing your bonus and Rakeback profits at the tables.

Even though your bankroll is on a steady rise, you may decide to make another deposit anyway. If a decent bonus is available, and you're playing regularly enough to release it, make another deposit just to earn the bonus cash. Once cleared, you can always make a withdrawal later.

One thing you may need to consider is bonus deductions. Not all online poker rooms require Rakeback earners to deduct a portion of their bonus from their Rakeback earnings, but many do. The deduction is normally equal to the earned Rakeback percentage. For instance, a 30% Rakeback deal may deduct 30% of your bonus from Rakeback.

So if you deposit $100 and get a 100% bonus of another $100, 30% of that ($30) would come from your Rakeback before you are actually paid any Rakeback. Then again, you will get that $30 in poker account as “bonus money”, which is basically the same as Rakeback profits, except that you are clearing the bonus much faster than simple point accumulation would have allotted.

Bear in mind that several online poker rooms do not deduct bonuses from Rakeback, so if you're not too pleased with this idea, stick to the poker sites that don't take bonus deductions, such as Cake Poker or Aced Poker. You may be surprised, however, to know that you can actually earn more profits at a faster rate by using bonuses to earn Rakeback via bonus deductions.

In order to do this, you must be earning Rakeback at a faster rate than you are clearing your bonus. For example, if every 10 hands you average $1 of the bonus cleared, you need to earn more than $1 in Rakeback over the course of 10 hands. If you earn the same amount in Rakeback as bonus cash on a per-hand basis, you are essentially earning the same as you would in Rakeback alone without the bonus, so there's no loss there. But earning more in Rakeback than bonus payouts makes it extremely valuable to combine these offers.