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Texas Holdem / Poker Strategy Author
Co-Author of the recently published, 'Poker Mindset' poker Psychology book,, Ian 'Piemaster' Taylor is from London UK and has been playing poker seriously for two years and socially for a number of years before that. Mainly a limit specialist who has enjoyed success at levels up to and including 5/10 and has also dabbled in No-Limit and tournament hold'em as well as Omaha. He is especially well versed in the psychological aspects of the game, and so will often write about the more human elements of the game rather than middle-of-the-road strategy. |
| A Sideways Look at Bonus Chasing |
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The culture of bonus chasing is now a well-established one amongst online poker players. This isn’t an article about how to make the most money while bonus chasing or the best bonuses to go for. I am not well qualified to discuss that subject, plus there is already plenty of information out there on that very topic (for example on the bonus chasing forum on this site). This article is actually about the other side of bonus chasing. The effect it has on the mindset and development of the poker player.
Bonus) (bo-nus) – A cash incentive offered by an online poker site to encourage players to sign up, reload or play more hands at their site. Bonus Chaser (bo-nus chas-er) – An online poker player who moves from site to site in order to take maximum advantage of bonuses offered. Also known as bonus junkies or bonus whores. It is certainly true that bonuses are very attractive to prospective players, especially those that play at lower limits. The way that bonuses usually work is that after playing a certain number of raked hands (what qualifies as a raked hand varies from site to site) you will be awarded a cash sum (the actual amount varies, it is not usually more than $200). Providing that you would have played these hands anyway, this is effectively free money. Not only that, it is a comparatively large amount of free money. For example, if you play at 1/2 limit and have a win rate of 1BB/100 then a $200 bonus represents 10,000 hands worth of profit! Because there are many sites and most offer bonuses, a dedicated bonus chaser can chase different bonuses one after the other, effectively giving them a continuous stream of free money. At the lower limits this will ease or eliminate most downswings and allow the player to rapidly advance through the limits even with quite conservative bankroll management. In fact, on the surface it is difficult to see a downside to bonus chasing at all. How can free money possibly be a bad thing? I would like to say at this juncture that in my opinion free money is never a bad thing. However I would place it alongside such axioms as ‘there is no such thing as bad knowledge’ and ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. It is wholly correct in theory, but if applied carelessly in the real world it can lead to unpredictable and dangerous results. In other words, free money itself is fine, but that doesn’t mean that bonus chasing is harmless. In fact, if a bonus chaser is not careful he will encounter many problems at the table that stem from having the wrong attitude towards bonus chasing: 1. There is no incentive to improve your game Winning money at poker involves playing better (or making less mistakes) than your opponents. In fact, to cover the rake you actually have to make significantly less mistakes than your opponents. A player who doesn’t play well enough to beat the game will lose money, or at best break even, and so will be forced to study and improve if they want to win. If you are being fed a continual diet of bonus money, this no longer holds. You can steadily grow your bankroll by playing break-even or even losing poker and you are never forced to improve your game to make money. It is very easy to slip into a mentality of complacency where you consider your play ‘good enough’ even though you still have planet-sized holes in your game. Obviously this is no good for your game or your bottom line in the long run. 2. You will move up limits too quickly Generally speaking, games get tougher to beat as you move up through the limits. At every new limit you will have to learn new skills, or hone existing ones, in order to beat the game. These skills are cumulative, meaning that while you are working through the limits you are slowly building up a skill set that will eventually allow you to beat the tougher games at the mid-limits and beyond. A dedicated bonus chaser will bypass this process somewhat. They will experience huge win rates in real terms, but what might actually be small or zero win rates padded by bonuses. As a result they can move through the low limits up to 3/6 extremely quickly without actually ‘winning’ the money, which seems like a good thing to the player, but has its problems. The skill difference between the players at 0.5/1 to 3/6 immense, but the player hasn’t gone through the learning process necessary to adapt. Suddenly they will find themselves in a game where they struggle to stay alive. 3. You are shielded from the reality of poker One of the big advantages of bonus chasing is that it smoothes out any downswings that you have. With bonus money, big downswings become little downswings, little downswings become break-even periods and break-even periods become winning periods. This removes (or at worst lessens) two of the biggest issues that poker players have to deal with, namely coping with variance and managing your bankroll through a downswing. But the fact that a bonus chaser will rarely experience significant downswings is itself a problem. How to cope with variance is something that poker players have to learn, and preferably they should learn it at as low a limit as possible for minimum heartache. If a player surfs through the lower limits on bonus money, experiencing a $2000 downswing at 5/10 can be a shock to the system that the player is ill equipped to deal with. 4. Your true ability is clouded Most players lose money at the poker table. Some losing players chase a lot of bonuses and make money (or at least break even) as a result. Underneath they are still a losing player, but if they don’t keep good records of what they are winning and losing in each session, then they could easily be deluded. All they see is a profit at the end of the month, which makes them think they are a winning player rather than a losing player propped up by bonuses. When the bonuses dry up, or when they move to a limit where they are less influential, they will start to lose money. 5. You start to play at bad times and in bad games One of the problems with bonus chasing is that it propagates different objectives at the table. Rather than just trying to make the best decisions in terms of game selection, poker decisions and session time/length, you are also trying to clear a bonus. Many bonuses have time limits that require a certain number of hands to be played by a certain time, while others are structured in such a way that you need to play at a certain limit or type of game to clear them efficiently. At the very least you will have to play at a specific site. As soon as you introduce other objectives into your game then you start to get conflicts. Maybe you know you are tired or on tilt but need to play a certain number of hands by the end of the night in order to clear a bonus. Maybe you are stuck playing at a site with very bad games just because they have a juicy bonus. Maybe you know you should drop a limit, but don’t because it would make it much harder to clear the bonus. The thing is, sometimes you are correct in making these decisions because what you lose in your expectation you gain from the bonus. However, it makes poker a hell of a lot more complicated and you can pick up bad habits for later on. The end result of the above five factors is that you get a lot of players who tear through the lower limits but then get into difficulties. You will hit a certain limit (usually 3/6, 5/10 or the equivalent NL game) where the bonuses you are earning are no longer sufficient to paper over the cracks. All the problems that you have been neatly able to avoid will suddenly catch up with you and hit all at once, causing problems. You are suddenly playing in tougher games, but your own game is full of holes. You start to experience downswings that your bonus money can’t hope to cover. You make the problem worse by playing in bad games, or refusing to quit when you are tired, bored or on tilt just so you can clear those last few hundred hands. Of course this doesn’t happen to everyone, but I am sure it is no coincidence that at these limits you encounter many players with a very poor attitude towards the game. They will moan endlessly about their bad luck, make wild accusations about sites being rigged and berate the play of what they perceive as weaker players, even though their own game is highly questionable. It is a fair assumption that a lot of these players are bonus chasers who are now out of their depth in a game they have no hope of beating. Responsible bonus chasing This article may be coming over as unduly negative about bonus chasing, but this is not the message I want you to come away with. All the problems with bonus chasing arise not from the bonuses themselves, but from the attitude and behaviour of the players chasing them. In fact, bonuses are a great thing for a poker player providing that bonus chasing is done responsibly and with the correct mindset. If you are a bonus chaser (or are planning to start bonus chasing) then you need to ensure that you avoid the mental pitfalls of doing so. You can get a head start on this by learning and applying the following mantras to your game right from the start. Mantra #1 – My primary goal will be to play good poker Your goal is not to clear the biggest and best bonuses, it is to play good poker. At all times try to make the best decisions both at the table and away from the table and concentrate all your energy on that. If you can clear bonuses at the same time then so much the better. Mantra #2 – I will never be satisfied with my game You should constantly be improving your game. Read, study, discuss, post, analyse. Never be satisfied with your game, even if you appear to be winning a lot of money. There is always something else to learn and something you need to improve. Remember it will get harder and harder to win as you move up the limits. Mantra #3 – I will not get carried away with bonus-fuelled results Keep good records of how much you are winning at the table and a separate record of how much you are making through bonuses. If you are breaking even or losing at the table but making money overall due to bonuses, then this is cause for alarm, not satisfaction. Mantra #4 – I will beat every limit Don’t move up a limit until you have proven that you can beat your current limit. You shouldn’t move up a limit until you have played a large number of hands (10,000 plus) at your current limit and proved to yourself that you can beat it, even if bonus money means you have the bankroll to move up a limit faster than this. Mantra #5 – I will not take bonuses for granted Bonuses are exactly that, a bonus. Don’t assume they will always be around or that they will always be as good. As the poker industry shakes out it may well be that bonuses will become thin on the ground or even disappear altogether. You must be prepared for this time, and the best way of doing so is to be able to beat the games legitimately. Certainly don’t do anything stupid like give up your day job based on how much money you can make from bonuses. If you take heed of these mantras then there is nothing wrong with bonus chasing to your heart’s content. Take advantage of what is on offer. Make the most of your time at the table, using bonuses to maximise your win rate, smooth out your downswings and hasten your advance through the lower limits Free money is good if you don’t abuse it. For more discussion on this article, please visit our ITH Poker Articles forum. For more information on online poker bonuses, please visit the ITH Bonus Chasing Forum. |
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