Are poker bonuses worth my time?

[notreallymyname]

I'm a winning NLHE player for micro stakes (but slowly moving up) at party and have never played at any other site. I'm always hearing that the games here are softer than elsewhere and they're certainly very beatable so I suppose I have no reason to doubt it. As I'm now playing just high enough that clearing bonuses at other sites should be possible, I'm having to think about whether attempting to do so is really a better use of my time than playing the games I'm familiar with without a bonus most of the time.

I don't have a large enough sample size to estimate my win rate even at party nor do I currently have poker tracker, and I doubt this would be an easy decision even with those two because of the unknown factor of the games at any given site. Can someone give me a hint for finding the path of greatest profit?

[Miyogi]

Easiest path to profit will be to get Poker Tracker and PA hud. After that check out sites like Poker Source Online that do kickbacks. For microlimit players these extra bonuses are faster and more profitable then rakeback. Just remembr to save one or two sites for rakeback for when you are playing higher stakes.

[solucky]

How many tables and hours do you want play ? With small stakes its easy possible to clear 3-500 / month.

[nosmith]

Your first site after Party should be Empire Poker as they use the same tables as Party and the bonus clears at a very similar rate. Unfortunatley you wont find any other bonus's that clear as fast as the initial Party or Empire bonus or in fact the Party reloads. I agree that you should sign up with kickback sites such as PSO. It all depends what level you play at. For instance the bonus's on the Prima sites (Poker Rewards, Royal Vegas etc) would clear pretty quickly at 50NL but are possible to do at 25NL if you have the time on your hands. As for the play yes Party is the easiest site ive played NL at but the competetion on Prima is still beatable. Hope this helps.

[notreallymyname]

Ah, Empire's a good idea, I'd quite forgotten that I can get an account there too (although I understand that there may be a minor hurdle to overcome there) and... by kickbacks you mean the PSO "gifts"? I'd never really considered them, but looking again they do have some real value, especially the PSO points, which sweetens the bonuses somewhat.

My options look a bit better now, I've just got to decide which sites I'm likely to want a more permanent arrangement with and whore the rest.

[notreallymyname]

...having said that, I'm beginning to doubt again that it's worth it when you take the level of play into account. Where else but party can you find victims willing to go all in on the flop with TPNK?

[dostofan]

Check out Bonus Whores and PSO.

For many sites, bonuses clear faster playing limit.

[notreallymyname]

(Yes, I've noticed that minbet hold 'em tends to have better clearance rates but that's not much help if I lose more than the bonus while clearing it.)

I just did some quick sums (using bonus whores figures, so they're probably wrong) and it looks like clearing the regular reloads at interpoker, sun poker and poker plex with rakeback on each is good for about $900 per month (pretty much regardless of limit because of the bonus release structure) and not really much slower at NL25 than clearing an equivalent 10x party bonus. Faster at NL100 if we're to believe BW. Can this possibly be right? Am I missing something?

[nosmith]

Re the crypto sites. I cleared the $100 reload from Interpoker last month. I needed 450 MPPs to clear it, All the crpto sites award 1 MPP when the pot reaches $20 and 1/4 MPP when it is $5 - $19.99. With that in mind it took me 4,815 hands at NL25 10 handed. I multitabled 5-6 tables at a time and it still took a while. Standard of players are higher than Party but still beatable.

[Chomp]

I've come to the think that the amount of time and effort it might take to bonus-whore properly is probably just not worth it for many players (well, me anyway).

On the time issue, even registering/downloading a new site can take a while, and by the time you get the feel for the games, settle in, get your bearings etc. you may just have been better spending that time RB whoring at your normal site.

Also, adjusting to the different styles of play/players/rng/whatever at a new site could easily cause you to be thrown off and potentially lose money.

Finally, it must take quite a bit of effort to actually administer your bonus whoring. Again, a lot of the time and effort spent working out where to whore next, where your clearances are at at various sites, troubleshooting etc. might be better spent just grinding out your normal winrate + RB at your existing (presumably favourite) site.

Just MHO.

[notreallymyname]

~5000 hands sounds in line with my estimates. Since $100 for 5000 hands of NL25 is like adding 4 PTBB/100 (more with RB) to your win rate, it almost has to be better than playing with no bonus or RB at party.

(And if I was getting rakeback I probably wouldn't be so concerned about bonus whoring, but as my regular site is party this isn't possible.)