NO DEPOSIT POKER

Understanding the Basics of No Deposit Poker

The world of no deposit poker is a little strange to some people.  Given that online poker rooms are businesses looking to turn a profit, how can they provide customers with free money?  At first glance, it seems like a business model destined for failure, but a slightly closer analysis reveals that there’s more to the model than meets the eye.

Almost all online poker players are familiar with the deposit bonus; it’s a staple of online poker.  You’ll see big deposit bonus numbers posted at poker room review sites like PokerListings or PokerEverything for rooms such as Bodog Poker, Lock Poker and others.  The concept of the deposit bonus is pretty simple: If you give players a bonus that they can only earn via playing poker, you’ll get them to play more poker than they would otherwise.

The no deposit bonus takes this logic a step further and seeks to motivate players to try the room in the first place.  How can rooms afford it?  Well, like anything “free” in life, there are some catches.  The first is that you can’t just take the no deposit bonus and cash it out.  Sorry if that was your plan, but no room is going to let that happen.  They want you to try their room with that bonus, not take it and use it for groceries.  A second catch is that you will sometimes need to make a small deposit in order to cash out any of your winnings from the no deposit bonus –  that’s another step rooms take to prevent fraud.

Besides those two caveats, there’s not a lot of fine print to no deposit bonuses.  In many ways, it’s just a standard marketing tool; rooms are already spending money in an attempt to attract players, so why not just cut out the middleman and give the cash right to their bankrolls?