The obvious question with chasing poker bonuses is a simple one: is it worth it? I’m pretty convinced the answer is a resounding yes, but I’ll play fair and lay out some pros and cons.
If you’re just starting out on your poker quest, building a bankroll and experience, I think poker bonuses are invaluable. They insulate you from the nasty effects of variance and give you nice short-term goals to shoot for. They also teach you to manage your bankroll well, as far as maximizing the value of signup bonuses that require a certain amount to take full advantage of. They’re also easy, free money, which can help you build a bankroll more quickly to get you to higher limits that you might be shooting for.
As far as negatives, the biggest is that you’ll have to make peace with playing on sites you don’t necessarily like, as far as the interface. We all have our own little peculiarities and preferences, liking the software on one site but hating the interface on another. If you’re going to chase bonuses you simply have to let that go. You’ll also have to deal with the occasional slow cashouts from poker sites, although that’s fairly rare these days and usually never takes more than 48 hours for most sites.
One crucial skill is the ability to multi-table. And the more tables you can handle, the better. Bonuses get more valuable with each table you can successfully play, as each additional table dramatically increases the rate you clear the bonus at, allowing you to collect more bonuses on other sites, etc. If anything, I think the need to multi-table is a positive factor, as I’m a pretty firm believer in multi-tabling being a necessary +EV skill to possess overall.
Some people prefer to start chasing poker bonuses with a separate bankroll, so that they can more accurately track the progress and overall profit. I think that’s a fine idea and it’s pretty easy to do.
While available bonuses are always in a constant state of flux, it’s pretty safe to say that they’re not going to disappear anytime soon. It’s pretty easy to always play with a bonus overlay if you’re willing to hop from site to site to site. There are a decent number of recurring monthly bonuses, too, which can easily add $200-$300 to your bankroll, each and every month.
Assuming you play ten hours of poker a week (and multi-table at least two tables when you play), it’s not unreasonable to expect to pull down $500-$600 per month, in just bonus money. That’s not bad money at all, even if you don’t make a penny from your own play and only bank the bonus money.
More important than the money, though, is the necessary experience you’re getting. You’d normally have to pay for that, in a world in which there were no bonuses, which would make the learning curve that much steeper. That’s the real value of chasing bonuses, I think, especially early in your poker career. They provide you with padding (both financial and psychological) that keeps you in the game, plugging away, until the lightbulbs start going off and you suddenly are a profitable player, all on your own.
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