One of the nice things about the boom in online poker is that with various poker sites competing for your hard earned dollars, promotions and bonuses are plentiful. A deposit bonus in online poker is a certain amount of money that is added to your poker account when you use the bonus. When you deposit money into your account, there will be a field for you to input the bonus code.

Bonuses are generally a percentage of the amount you are depositing, although some can be a flat amount such as $25 or $50 when you deposit at least that much. In the past, some sites offered sticky bonuses, meaning the amount of the bonus could never be cashed out, only used for wagering purposes. These were, unsurprisingly, not that popular and this type of bonus is no longer seen very frequently. What most sites do offer is restricted bonuses. What this means is that the amount of the bonus is not released into your account until you have played a prescribed number of hands. The amount of hands vary depending on the site but it is usually no more than one would expect to play in a few sessions. An option on the site (usually clicking on account info or something of that nature) will tell you how many hands you have left to play before your bonus kicks in.

How do you find these bonuses? As you might expect, the internet is your best resource. A site called www.internettexasholdem.com offers a featured bonuses section, which tells you what the hot new bonuses are. www.pokerlistings.com has an impressive array of bonuses for you to check out. www.frontmagazine.com and www.bonustracker.com are also great places to find bonuses. Poker newsgroups can be a nice source of bonus information. Try hanging out at Rec.Games.Poker or Rec.Gambling.Poker for some bonus info. Want more? Try popular poker information sites like www.cardplayer.com or www.pokerpages.com which feature many advertisements with bonuses.

You can also get bonus information from the sites themselves. As a new player signing up for a site you will certainly get some bonus offers right away. Advertisements for a specific site or sites that are linked to a specific poker site often have bonuses listed. When you play on a site frequently, from time to time a pop up window will appear when you log on. Check it out; it often is alerting you to a significant bonus.

Finally, poker magazines are a great source of bonuses. Magazines like Cardplayer and Bluff are chock full of advertisements for poker sites which often include some juicy bonuses. If you live near a casino, you are in great shape; casinos often offer complimentary copies of said magazines. If not and youre not a subscriber, just leafing through a newsstand copy will probably enable you to pick up some nice bonus codes.

Now that you know how to get those bonus codes, get out there and use them to build a bankroll any poker player would envy. Happy hunting!