Best Poker Bonuses for 2022

On this page you’ll find a list of the best poker bonuses available. To get started, simply click on the link to visit the poker site of your choice and then go through the signup process. Alternatively, you can read our reviews to find the room that will best suit your needs.

Top USA Real Money Poker Sites

Rank	Poker Site	USA	Bonus	Bonus Code	Play Now
#1			$2500	N/A	Visit BetOnline Poker
#2			$2000	N/A	Visit Ignition Poker
#3			$500	N/A	Visit Bovada Poker

If you’re new to online poker and bonuses, then I suggest that you read the information below the table, as that covers all the basics.

What Are the Best Poker Bonuses?

Bonuses are incentives offered by poker sites to get players interested in their room (again). Here is an overview of the different deposit bonuses poker sites (and casinos) offer their players.

• Deposit Bonus – Deposit bonuses are incentives for first time accounts. Poker sites offer free money or will match a player’s first deposit up to so many dollars. It gives you a little extra bankroll to try new games.
• No Deposit Bonus – This is a smaller bonus for new accounts that doesn’t require a deposit.
• Reload Bonus – Reload bonuses are for existing players. Sometimes these bonuses are offered to everyone, and other times they’re offered on a player-by-player basis. Reload bonuses require that players deposit money in order to take advantage of them.
• Refer-a-Friend – A refer-a-friend bonus is a small bonus given to anyone that refers someone else to a poker site. These bonuses are usually small in nature. But for many sites there isn’t a limit as to how many friends you can send.

Bonuses will vary in size from $5 all the way to $5,000. There are sites that offer more, but the most common bonus size is right around the $600-$750 mark. And more isn’t always better or more optimal, which I’ll explain here in a second.

Another thing to be aware of is that most bonuses will be match bonuses. What this means is that the poker site of your choice will match a percentage of your deposit up to so many dollars. For example, a common match is 100%.

So if a poker site has an offer for a 100% match up to $600, that means that for every dollar you deposit they will match you (dollar for dollar) up to a maximum of $600. If you deposit $600 you will receive $600. That said, not every room will offer a 100% match. Some rooms will offer 25%, 50%, 150% or 200%.

How Do Bonuses Work?

How bonuses work is very simple.

To take advantage of a bonus offer, click on the link that we provide you for the poker room of your choice. Then you go through the process of downloading the software, creating an account and then making your first deposit. Some rooms also asked for, or require, a bonus code (also known as a promo, coupon, discount, marketing or sign up code).

How do bonus codes work?

These codes aren’t always required, but if they are available (and if they are, they’ll be in our table) it’s a good idea to use them. The reason for this is in case you’re not tracked using our link, you will be using our code. This will make sure that you get the deposit bonus and other benefits.

Once you go through the process of signing up and making a deposit, your next step is to clear your bonus. In other words you need to earn your bonus. Poker sites don’t just give you the money because it would be way too easy for people to cheat the system. So they require that you play so many hands or pay so much in rake before they release your bonus to you.

This is done in numerous ways. But the most common is generating rake based on a percentage or dollar amount. For example, a poker site might require you to generate five dollars in rake for every one dollar of your deposit bonus that you want to collect.

What are rules around bonus offers?

Some poker sites will release your money as you earn it, others will release your bonus in increments of $5 or $10. And other sites will release your bonus in its entirety once you clear it. Each site is different, so you’ll want to read their terms and conditions to make sure their bonus (and terms) is a good match for you.

Here’s an example to show you exactly what I mean.

Example: Say you wanted to make your deposit at Ignition Poker Room. They offer a deposit bonus of 100% up to $600. So you make your deposit of $300. Their requirements are that you collect VPP’s equal to 17 times your deposit amount. So in your case you will need to earn 5100 VPP’s (300*17). VPP’s are earned at the rate of 5.5 VPP’s for every dollar paid in rake. When you do the math (5100/5.5) you’ll know that you will have to spend $927.27 in order to clear your $300 bonus.

Also, it’s important to keep in mind that every poker site will have an expiration date. This means that you might have 30 days, 3 months or as long as 6 months to clear your bonus. If you don’t clear your bonus within this time frame, you forfeit what you didn’t clear (and in some cases, all of it). Along with the clearing requirements, the expiration date is a huge consideration when choosing a poker site based on the bonus it offers.

Taking Advantage of Bonuses

Before you jump at the first deposit bonus you see, I wanted to provide you some tips on how to get the most out of each bonus and take advantage of.

First, some practise bonus hunting. Bonus hunting is taking advantage of more than one bonus before eventually settling down to play at one poker site. The idea behind this is to compound the deposit bonuses you earn into a massive bankroll.

For example, you might start with a $100 bankroll. The first deposit bonus you would want to take advantage of is a smaller one ($100 or $200). Once you clear that bonus you’ll have $200 or so that you can use to take advantage of another deposit bonus at another site. You continue like this until you’ve taken advantage of every deposit bonus available.

What’s the best way to maximize a bonus?

The ideal way to go about it is to start at the very bottom to take advantage of the smaller deposit bonuses, and then work your way up to the larger ones as your bankroll increases. The reason why you do this so that you can make the maximum deposit allowed for each deposit bonus. Most sites will only allow you to make one deposit to take advantage of the deposit bonus, so you want to make sure it counts.

Another thing you want to keep in mind is to avoid the bad bonuses. These bonuses are much more difficult to clear, are smaller and have restrictions in place. Those include limited games you can play or that certain games pay out smaller amounts of VPPs. The best poker bonuses are going to be the ones that have fewer restrictions in place to earn the most money possible.

Final Words on Poker Bonuses

It’s important to keep in mind that poker bonuses will not make you winning player. However, poker bonuses can keep you afloat long enough so that you can become a winning player. 

That said, if you go that route, you will want to make sure that you play ABC poker and try to stay as close to break-even or slightly profitable as possible so that when you are done clearing your bonus you come out ahead.

Should I look for big upfront bonus or smaller perks over time?

Last, keep in mind that you don’t want to use just the size of a poker bonus when determining what room to sign up to (especially long term). You might want to if you are bonus hunting and you don’t plan on staying at a room long enough for it to matter. But there may be other incentives or benefits they have, such as how often their games run, what games they have, limits, VIP, etc.

However, if you plan on staying at the site long term, then those things will matter along with trust, safety and security. Because no matter how big a bonus a site might offer, it will not make a difference to you if they can’t or are unwilling to pay it out. So you miss out on the bonus, not to mention your initial bankroll. So be sure to do your due diligence before signing up to a site, or just refer to the room reviews that we list on our site.