PokerStars Bonus Clearing
PokerStars is widely considered to be the best online poker room that is currently available, and it is with good reason. PokerStars.com boasts of having a ton of features that are leagues and miles ahead of anything you might encounter in other online poker sites, such as: superb account security options including pins and RSA security tokens; a graphical hand history replayer that allows you to easily review how hands went down; a ton of available games in pretty much all poker variations, both cash games and tournaments, each with excellent traffic; and a customer service which is the benchmark by which all others are measured.
And as a direct consequence of having pretty much the best in all categories that count, PokerStars also has the biggest player base in all of online poker. It trumps the 200,000 players mark on the site every single day. To put this in perspective, Full Tilt Poker, the 2nd largest poker site in the world struggles to reach 100,000 players on its very best day of the week. All this translates to more action at all times on PokerStars.com, which every player appreciates. Oh, and did I mention that they have no problem accepting US Players? They are friendly toward American poker online.
Now all of this sounds good, right? But wait, it gets better! If you are a new player at PokerStars, as in you have never deposited real money into your account before, you are in for a treat, because PokerStars.com will match the first $600 deposited! That’s correct; all you have to do is register a new account with the PokerStars marketing code of “pokermtt” is deposit up to $600 using the PokerStars bonus code “STARS600″ and PokerStars will credit your bonus account with $600 for you to release. PokerStars.com is also the first online poker room to offer a multi deposit system to its players: this system allows you to spread the total amount of your deposit over up to three deposits within a 60 day period, which means you have three chances to deposit the amount to get the full bonus (which is $600) total.
Earning your PokerStars bonus is done quite easily. What you have to do is play in some real money games, and you will be earning VIP Player Points (VPP) in the process. This is a 17x bonus, which means you have to earn 17 times the amount you deposited in VPPs in order to clear the bonus. So, if for instance the amount in question is $300, you have to earn 17 x $300 = 5100 VPP to clear the bonus. If instead the amount deposited is the full $600, 17 x $600 = 10,200 VPPs will be required to clear the whole shebang. The PokerStars bonus will be credited to your account in $10 increments, meaning that for every 170 VPPs a chunk of the bonus will be released into your account. It bears mentioning that points earned in both tournaments and cash games count towards the sign up bonus, so no matter which you play you will be earning VPPs while doing it. The bonus expires in 180 days, so you will have that as the time limit to collect the required amount of VPPs.
Bonus clearing speed is entirely dependent on the games played, and the stakes at which these games are played. Let’s take for example that you decide to play 25NL cash games (which, bankroll-wise, if you deposited only $600 you should not be playing), it will take you approximately 159,376 hands at Full Ring or about 110,870 hands at 6-Max to clear the whole bonus. Notice that these are the approximate maximum playing only the one or the other, and if you mix and match Full Ring and 6-Max games, you will need lower amounts. If you play a higher, for example $50 No Limit, the amounts drop yet again this time to an approximate of 77,273 poker hands for Full Ring and 56,667 hands for 6-Max.
Any other combination will also lead to clearing your bonus, such as playing both cash and tournaments, or playing exclusively tournaments. You will be earning 5.50 VPPs for every $1 paid in tourney fees. Let’s take for example that you play $15+$1 tourneys, you’d have to play 10,200/5.5 = about 1,855 tourneys to release your entire bonus. Raise the stakes to $25+$2, and it would take half as many to clear it. As already thoroughly explained, these are simply the extremes in any one category of games you could play; different combinations of game types and stakes will give you different results.
It’s important to remember that differing combinations of stakes and games will lead to amounts which are different than those extremes. But one thing should be clear to you, and that is that the higher you play the less volume you will need to clear the bonus, and the opposite is also true. One possible scenario in which a player may clear the whole bonus, is to play 50% $10+$1 SNGs, 25% 25NL FR and 25% 50NL 6-max. In that scenario, you would need about 900 SNGs, about 36,000 hands 25NL FR and about 14,500 hands 50NL 6-max.
PokerStars is truly the cream of the crop when it comes to online poker sites. Together with this unbeatable and easily clear-able bonus, it’s unthinkable that you are not playing there right now. So make your account, deposit some cash (make use of the multi deposit system to be able to maximize your sign up bonus), and get the PokerStars download today!