Understanding poker promotions

All online poker rooms offer bonuses and promotions to their members in order to increase and maintain traffic in the poker room. There are many types of promotions offered, which differ from poker room to poker room. However most poker rooms offer loyalty points and other benefits through V.I.P. Clubs and these constitute the most sought after poker promotions.

The V.I.P. Club is usually tiered into six levels. The highest level provides the maximum benefits to the members and the lowest level the minimum benefits. Some of the benefits include faster loyalty points accumulation, special reload bonus terms and loyalty cash bonuses. Benefits to the highest level also include direct seats to major tournaments like the WSOP.

All players who register at the poker room automatically start at the lowest level. As players participate in ring games and tournaments they earn loyalty points. The more they play the more loyalty points they earn. As they earn more loyalty points they move to the higher level in the V.I.P. Club. At the higher level they accumulate loyalty points at a faster rate. In this way players rise from the lowest level to the highest level of the V.I.P. Club reaping rewards on the way. The poker room evaluates the points accumulated by the player in the previous month and adjusts his V.I.P. Club level on the first of the next month. Some poker rooms make the adjustment based on the average points accumulated in the past three months. The amount of points required for each level vary from poker room to poker room and depend on the rate the loyalty points are awarded.

Two factors affect the award of loyalty points for ring games. One is the rake taken per hand. The greater is the rake taken per hand the more are the loyalty points awarded. The rake taken is generally proportional to the table stakes. The higher are the stakes the greater is the rake. Therefore playing at higher stakes leads to getting more loyalty points. The second factor is the level of the V.I.P. club the player is in. The higher the level is the more are the loyalty points awarded. At the lowest level a poker room may typically award the following loyalty points. For a rake of $0.10 taken per hand the award may be 0.2 loyalty points. For a rake of $2.76 taken per hand the award may be 10 loyalty points. For the highest level the loyalty points could be awarded as follows. For a rake of $0.10 taken per hand the award may be 0.2 loyalty points and for a rake of $2.76 taken per hand the award may be 16 loyalty points. Hence the real advantage of the higher level accrues at the higher stakes.

For tournaments the loyalty points are fixed per dollar of buy-in depending on the V.I.P. Club level. At the lowest level the award could be 17 loyalty points per dollar of buy-in and at the highest level it could be 33 loyalty points per level of buy-in.

The loyalty points can be redeemed for cash. There are other benefits of the V.I.P. Club as well. The percent of the reload bonus goes up, as also does the maximum eligibility criterion as the player moves to a higher level. The monthly cash bonus is also higher at the higher club levels. At the higher lever more freerolls are available to the player. The basic fact is that more you wager the more freebies you will earn.