Sunday, March 18, 2007

Bonus clearing hurdles are awfully high

I got an e-mail today from FullTilt offering me a "generous" bonus of $50 if I meet the conditions for it. I think I am going to have a hard time doing so.

After activating my bonus, I have 14 days to clear it. That isn't much time for someone like me who only plays a few days a week.

I can earn $0.06 of my bonus for every FullTilt Point I earn. Wow, six whole cents per point! So what does it take to earn a point? According to their webpage about FTPs, you earn one point for every dollar in rake that is dropped, or 7 points for every $1.00 in tournament fees that you pay.

After doing some quick calculations, I find that I would have to play in raked hands that drop $833.33 to earn enough points to clear my $50.00 bonus, or pay $119.05 in tourney fees. All in just 14 days! Considering that I have less than $20.00 in my FT account right now (which surely the FT staff must know), I can't see how I can give them enough action to earn anywhere near the entire bonus. Just to earn $5 in bonus, I would have to pay over half my bankroll in tourney fees, and hope that I cashed enough times to break even so the bonus would give me a profit.

Of course, if I make a deposit for a substantial sum, I could play for higher stakes and earn points faster. But I am not about to do that considering the hassles involved in depositing and withdrawing money from poker sites these days, not to mention that I don't feel comfortable playing much higher than I do now and don't have time to play often enough to get in sufficient games to rack up the points in 14 days.

Basically this bonus, like many I have seen offered, is worthless to a low stakes recreational player like me. It doesn't seem like FullTilt cares very much about my business if the bonus they offer me is virtually impossible for me to achieve. It might just drive me to look elsewhere for more attractive bonus programs. Surely that can't be what they want. What are they thinking?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I once fell for this Poker bonus trick....never again.