In business being profitable is a simple concept but often never achieved! Over half of all started businesses go broke in the first five years. New poker players have less chance to succeed than most businesses. Businesses also spend hundreds to millions of dollars on advertising, marketing, development, salaries, leases utilities, equipment, etc. In every dollar spent, there is a Return on Investment (ROI) calculation done. So every dollar spent in marketing will generate x amount of income. At the end of the day, all you need to be profitable is to earn more than you spend. Poker is no different.
When you sit down and play poker you buy into the game with a certain amount of money. When you place money into the pot you are performing one of the various business activities associated with the poker business. Some chips are for advertising, some for research, while others pay for drinks, but each chip has a value and a meaning. Through this series of articles I will show how to become a profitable poker player.
The first things you need to do if find which poker sites give deposit bonuses. A deposit bonus is just that, you deposit some money with a poker site and they match your deposit or a percentage of your deposit. Some players will argue that getting a deposit bonus is not worth it, but they are uninformed or maybe they like leaving money on the table. Let's say you go to Las, Vegas, sit down and start playing poker, eventually you will receive a complimentary beverage, meal, room etc. These are all bonuses which casinos use to get you to come back and play at their establishment. Online poker rooms can't offer you these luxuries, so they offer deposit bonuses instead. Would you honestly go play at a poker room where you had to pay for your drinks if there was one right next door that would server you drinks for free? So, in the case of the matched deposit you have effectively doubled your bankroll without playing a hand, well sort of.
In order to claim your deposit bonus you must clear that bonus. Clearing that bonus requires you play so many raked hands per dollar cleared. Deposit bonuses start at 5x and go all the way up to 20x. As you can guess the 5x is a much easier bonus to clear as it requires less raked hands to player per dollar cleared. Bonuses in the 5x ranger are also smaller than the 20x range. In addition to playing raked hand, some sites require that the rake be a certain amount to qualify for clearing the bonus, while others give you percentages of points if the rake is below a certain level, but you get them every hand.
Many casinos also offer repeated customers a redeposit bonus. These bonuses are usually smaller in size compared to the first time deposit bonuses but are usually quite effective. I have seen redeposit bonuses as high as 50% and offered multiple times per week. In the case of redeposit bonuses you must be aware of a few things. First if they are stackable, which means you can add that bonus to an already existing bonus you have to clear. As you can imagine stackable bonuses are the best, and in general most sites offer these types of bonuses. The other thing is you have to read the fine print of the deposit bonus; some sites will not give you a redeposit bonus if you withdraw and make a deposit within the same 48hr period. When you have enough money in your bankroll I suggest keeping some of your bankroll ready to be deposited in the case a redeposit bonus if offered.
It should also be noted that some sites will put money right into your account that does not require any raked hands that have to be played. These bonuses are small in comparison to the actual deposit bonuses.
In addition to playing raked hands to clear bonuses, some bonuses have a time requirement to clear them in. Often those times are 90 days, while some bonuses never expire.
Playing enough hands and generating points to clear these bonuses is sometimes quite tough. Each site determines how fast you can clear a bonus at each level. I recommend for a NL player to start playing at $.50/$1 here you can clear roughly $4.00 /hour so if you play 20 hours a week you're looking at close to $80.00 in bonuses. The higher limits you play the more bonuses you can clear per hour. Bonuses clear the fastest at limit tables. It's really the nature of the game, in order to generate rake there needs to be a flop and many NL hands are won preflop and never generate a rake. In limit there is usually a flop every hand, so a rake is generated. In $1/$2 limit bonuses about $1.00-$2.00/hour faster than $.50/$1 NL. At higher limit tables casino's often double your points per hand because the blinds are much higher.
So how does this make me profitable? If your just a break even player, meaning your net winnings per week is exactly zero, but have cleared $100 in bonuses you have a net gain of $100 for the week. If you're a winning player, I.E. you actually have shown a profit over the hands you have played you will be up that amount plus the bonus you clear that week. This will have the effect of building your bankroll in order to play higher levels and clear bonuses more quickly. I will warn you though, you really shouldn't move up in levels until you have proven yourself a winning player at the level your currently at. If you move up too quickly you could end up losing more money than bonuses you can clear. In May of this year I actually lost $198 overall that month. I cleared $800 in bonuses for a net gain of $600 for that month.
I typically have a rotation of 4 online casinos' I play at that I am constantly clearing bonuses at. If one of those casinos does not offer a redeposit bonus I simply add the next one to the list. I spend a few hours each week checking the bonuses to see which site offer the best deals. I have cleared bonuses on the following sites: Full Tilt, Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet and am currently working Titan right now. If you are planning of playing one of these sites please sign up under Weston poker if you have not already done so. Go here for a full listing of the bonus code offerings WestonPoker provides.
In closing, a player can clear up to $1,000 or $2,000 a month in bonuses; limit depending; without having a winning session. My personal best is roughly $200/week playing $3/$6 limit. This is a really nice security for players just learning the game, winning players can expect there bankrolls to increase dramatically by clearing bonuses.
