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How to Boost Your Bankroll With Free Online Poker Money
For many successful poker players, a large percentage of their winnings actually comes from other ways than winning pots. Yes, that’s right! Winning low-limit poker players get a large part of their winnings from some sort of free poker money. For some, the free money on offer at poker sites is what really makes it profitable to play poker online.
Online Poker Bonuses
The first way that players get free money online is through online poker bonuses. There are three kinds of poker bonuses you should look out for.
Reload Bonuses – These bonuses are given to existing customers that have made deposits in the past. This kind of bonus is given to encourage customers to keep playing at a site, often after they haven’t logged into their accounts for some time.
In most cases, this is a clearable bonus that you must earn points by playing in real money cash games. The clearance rate is revealed in the terms and conditions of the offer.
Welcome Bonuses – These are bonuses that you get on an initial deposit. For example, a poker site might offer a 100% bonus, up to $500. This is the most common kind of poker bonus, and it is given to new customers as a first deposit bonus. Welcome bonuses usually must be cleared in the same way as a reload bonus.
No Deposit Bonus – These bonuses are given to new customers without them having to deposit. This is different from the normal type of poker bonus where you have to deposit money in order to get the bonus money, and it is a great way to play poker for free and without risking any of your own money.
Many no deposit bonuses don’t require a playthrough, but many are too small to cash out on their own. You can expect to get from $5 to $20 on average with these bonuses.
Poker Loyalty Programs
Most online poker sites have loyalty programs that reward players based on how much they play in a month or in a year. These loyalty programs allow you to earn loyalty points the more you play at the real money tables, whether it be cash games or tournaments.
In many cases, you can earn points towards cash prizes or other forms of bonuses. Cash prizes are often wager-free while bonuses will be bound to the same terms as standard bonus offers.
Be aware that in order to get the top percentages you will have to play a lot of poker. However, many sites are gearing offers more towards casual players, so even infrequent players can benefit from loyalty programs.
Freerolls and Leaderboards
Most online poker sites offer freerolls and leaderboard promotions. Freerolls are tournaments that are free to enter and they are very common in the online poker industry. If you prefer tournaments over cash games, and you don’t want to deposit any money, these freerolls are a fantastic way to earn small sums of money to get started at the real money tables.
Leaderboards are basically competitions that exist both for tournaments and cash games. The better results you have in predetermined tournaments, or the more rake you generate in cash games, the higher you climb the leaderboards. The top spots on the leaderboard often earn cash prizes or some other substantial prize.
Rakeback
Lastly, and perhaps the most important of the four ways to get free online poker money, is through rakeback. Rakeback means that you get a certain percentage back on all the rake and fees you pay to the poker site.
In the past, this was often overlooked by recreational poker players, but now even recreational players can find offers for limited rakeback. For professional players. it can add up to large amounts of cash over time, and that is why professional poker players almost always make sure they have a rakeback deal at the poker site where they like to play.
Note that most of these deals require you to be a regular player on the website. Also, promotional deals and rakeback are nowhere near as lucrative as they have been in the past. As such, you aren’t going to make the insane profits that you’ve read about from other pros. However, they are a great way to help supplement your sessions and at times these promotions can make the difference between being a loser or a break-even player and being a regular winning player.
