When you play online poker the most interesting part is not the game itself but the free cash that comes with it. For a number of people it amounts to collecting the free cash from the poker sites as much as possible and building up of a bankroll. The free cash comes from poker bonuses which the poker sites give for signing up with them. There is another type of incentive which is offered by the poker sites called promotional offers. Though most of them still give away cash money, these offers are not permanent and are offered by the poker sites from time to time.

Poker bonus is something which is offered by the poker site permanently. For example there can be deposit poker bonus which the poker site will deposit into your account when you make a cash deposit. The sum and percentage will vary from poker site to poker site but these offers are of permanent nature and will be given to you any time you decide to sign up with a particular poker site.

The promotional offers are not permanent. Though they are also given by the poker sites to attract players to sign up with them but most of the time these are time bound and expire after a particular period. With the lucrative poker promotions offers poker sites try to attract new players to sign up with them and also keep the regular players from leaving the poker site to join elsewhere.

A poker site which is offering a decent amount of poker bonus for joining up, like  100% matching amount may offer an all paid trip to some famous location for two days with free hotel accommodation and free entry to a night club for the player who wins maximum number of hands that month. This offer would be for a particular month and not of a permanent nature. They will come up with something new the next month. These kinds of promotional offers make the players to play aggressively thus investing higher amounts in every hand.

There are other promotional offers where the poker sites give out poker bonuses for a limited time. For example some sites will give a bonus to you for referring a friend to sign up with the particular site. Sometimes the poker sites will double the player’s points each month for sometime. The player may be required to earn a particular amount of points and the poker site doubles the amount and gets it deposited into the player’s account. Sometime the poker sites would announce happy hours just like brick and mortar casinos. But here the poker site would let the players to earn double or triple points during the happy hour each day which may be for two hours or three hours.

By Dan Brown
Dan is an expert poker writer