Breaking Down the First Deposit Bonus - Published: 12/4/2005
Eager to get you as a customer, online card rooms have been offering a variety of contests and promotions since their inception in the 90’s. The most common, and often rewarding, of these promotions is the first deposit bonus. Every online poker room on the net is currently offering extra funds into your poker account, based on a percentage of your first real money deposit amount with them.
In almost all cases there is a maximum bonus amount you can earn, and this amount varies between promotions. At the time of writing, bonuses are available at every single online poker room, mostly ranging from 20% to 200%. The true value of some of these bonuses can be quite misleading however, as there is often playing requirements before the bonuses are actually paid out to the players. We have included a chart for your review with details on current first deposit promotions across a dozen different poker rooms:
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Wow! There is tons of information contained in this chart! On first glance, the % amount always seems to be the most attractive bonus feature, but there are really 3 main components of deposit bonus promotions that should influence your decision:
A. The percentage (%) amount
B. The total bonus allowable amount (i.e. Up to $100)
C. The playing requirements
The order of importance to these three components will depend on your poker bankroll and playing goals.
If you have a small poker bankroll (i.e. $100 or less), it seems the percentage amount should indeed be the most influential item, as the need for quick bankroll growth is crucial in order to survive any bad streaks of cards in your near future. Our chart shows the best place to start for small bankrolls is currently Absolute Poker and Fair Poker.
If you have a larger bankroll that you can use at will to deposit the amounts of your choice, then the most influential factor will depend on why you are depositing in the first place and your anticipated poker schedule. It stands to reason that if you already know that you like a few of the online rooms that you are evaluating and plan on committing to many hours of play every week to whichever room you finally choose, then the total bonus allowable should be the biggest influencing factor. Right now the offers at Full Tilt Poker, Poker World and Tiger Gaming are by far the best in this respect. Maximizing the dollar bonus amount is important since you’ll easily be able to meet the playing requirements regardless of what they are, and your large bankroll will negate the relative percentage importance, assuming you deposit enough to earn the maximum bonus amount.
If you have a large poker bankroll to deposit but already commit many hours of poker each week to another online room(s), then the playing requirements needed to earn each bonus may well be the most influential factor in your depositing decision. If you are looking to just try out somewhere new and don’t necessarily want to commit a lot of playing time to this new poker room, you will want to be able to quickly pass the playing requirements needed so that you can be able to still earn a bonus before withdrawing and going on to deposit elsewhere. It’s interesting to note that the playing requirements at many card rooms are remarkably quite similar, with the most common scheme being 100 raked hands for $10 in bonus, but the easiest requirements can be found at Royal Vegas Poker & InterPoker at about half that rate.
Although the first deposit bonus is touted all over most card rooms websites as being a heavy promotion factor, it should in fact rarely be a players biggest reason for depositing at an online poker room. Factors like software quality, tournament quality and customer service will be discussed in future poker articles. Of course some bonus offers occasionally arise that should be taken advantage of immediately and we recommend visiting the Winners Table promotions page to keep updated on our recommendations.