Not every poker fan wants to spend months or years learning and practicing to make a stable income from this game. Many are looking for shortcuts. Among them are outright fraudsters who break all the rules of poker rooms, as well as “freebie” hunters who generally follow the terms of service and don’t break any rules.
Poker players engage in various tactics—from collecting bonuses in all existing rooms to multi-accounting or even hacking accounts to withdraw funds. Poker rooms have learned to stop major scams, but minor tricks are still possible. This article will explore one such method, known as bonus hunting.
Legal Bonus Hunting in Poker
The term “hunting” comes from the English word “to hunt.” So, literally, this refers to hunting for bonuses in poker. Just like in real hunting, where some hunters are licensed and others are poachers, poker has both legal and illegal bonus hunters.
What does “legal” mean? These are players who don’t violate poker room rules, the rights of other players, or any laws. Legal bonus hunting involves finding rooms with attractive bonuses and signing up. For many, this might seem like a waste of time, but at micro-limits, a few extra bucks can actually help, especially if it only takes a couple of minutes to earn them.
Legal bonus hunting requires regularly searching for rooms offering promotions, like no-deposit bonuses, first-deposit bonuses, or other special offers.
Bonus Hunting for High-Stakes Players
Bonus hunting isn’t just for beginners. Even regulars, especially high-stakes players, participate. Their bonuses come through loyalty systems or VIP programs where they can receive a portion of their rake (the poker room’s commission) as cashback.
Each room’s rakeback terms differ. Some rooms might offer just 10%, while others could go up to 90%, usually if players meet certain high-rake conditions. The higher the rake, the higher the cashback percentage.
For high-stakes players, bonus hunting means finding rooms with the best loyalty programs. This also involves accumulating enough bonus points to reach levels with maximum rakeback percentages.
Illegal Bonus Hunting
Note: The methods below can lead to serious consequences, such as account bans and funds confiscation. We strongly advise against illegal bonus hunting.
Here’s the basic scheme: multiple accounts are created with fake personal data in a room offering generous bonuses. Each account claims the bonus. This process can even be automated with programs creating hundreds or thousands of fake accounts to collect bonuses.
However, poker rooms are usually able to catch this quickly. They require identity verification, like document scans, before issuing bonuses. Fraudsters are tracked by IP, computer data, and other identifiers, which are cross-checked in a shared database. Matching data across accounts typically prevents new registrations.
Fraudsters counter these measures by creating fake ID scans in Photoshop or purchasing databases of real IDs. IP addresses are hidden using anonymizers or VPNs to mask locations.
For device data, fraudsters use virtual machines. Poker clients are installed on these virtual machines, accounts are created, bonuses are collected, and funds are withdrawn. Then, the virtual machine is wiped, and the process is repeated.
Poker rooms still manage to catch these tactics, although innocent players occasionally get blocked. Support teams usually review and restore legitimate accounts after verification.
Spotting Bonus Hunters
Fraudsters often can’t withdraw bonus money due to verification requirements matching payment details with the registered account name. While technically possible, this is complex, so they use another tactic.
Bonus hunters, after getting funds in their accounts, transfer them to an accomplice (or even themselves) who can cash out. In the past, players would play heads-up sessions to lose their stack to a partner. Over time, these moves were detected, and guilty accounts were banned.
Today, bonus hunters join 6-max or 9-max cash tables, making their schemes less obvious. They’ll still try to funnel funds into the right hands, though other players might notice suspicious behavior.
If you see two players consistently losing chips to each other in heads-up pots, they might be colluding. You can leave the table or report it to support.
Conclusion
Bonus hunting in poker can be both legal and illegal. Legal hunting is often not worth the effort; you could likely earn more at micro-limits instead of searching and signing up in different rooms. Illegal hunting, while tempting for some, comes with significant risks. Even if you dodge a ban once, sooner or later, your schemes will be uncovered.
