PokerStars Bonus Offers with Rakeback Rates

PokerStars is the world’s largest online poker site with more than 250,000 simultaneous players during peaks hours. If you’re not yet one of those players, you can take advantage of a $600 PokerStars bonus offer just for joining their site and making your first deposit.

Special PokerStars Bonus Offer

Claiming the PokerStars bonus is simple. All you need to do is download the software from PokerStars.com, sign up, and make your first deposit using bonus code ‘STARS600’. PokerStars will match one hundred percent of your initial deposit, and up to two additional deposits made within 90 days, up to the maximum bonus of $600.

Clearing the PokerStars bonus is a little confusing. It is not important you understand all the details; In short, as you play real money games at PokerStars, you’ll earn VIP Play Points (VPP). The PokerStars bonus clears at a rate of 17 VPP’s per bonus dollar, and releases to your real money account in $10.00 increments.

The remainder of this article gets a bit technical. If all you’re looking for is a great online poker bonus offer, you can stop reading now and go grab yourself one at PokerStars.com.

VPP Points Explained

If you’re looking to evaluate the value of the PokerStars.com bonus yourself, then it is important that you understand how to earn VIP Player Points (VPP). Details on earning these are as follows:

5.5 VPP’s are earned for each $1 paid in tournament entry fees. For example, a $20+$2 tournament will earn a player 11 VPP points.

In ring games, 6 VPPs points are awarded when the pot is raked $1. The total VPPs for the hand that has just been played are then split equally among all players who were dealt into the hand. If the pot doesn’t reach a $1 in rake then fractional VPPs will be awarded. This makes it even easier than ever for lower stakes players to clear the Pokerstars bonus quickly.

PokerStars Bonus Value

The value of the PokerStars bonus will vary greatly from player to player. In tournaments this is easy to calculate: 17 VPPs are needed to clear a bonus dollar, so at 5.5 VPP per $1 in entries paid, it will cost $3 in tournament entry fees to clear a single bonus dollar. 1/3 = 0.33333 so simply put, in tournaments the bonus clears at 33% rakeback. It is cash games where the calculation gets more difficult.

It is technically possible to clear the PokerStars bonus at a rate of 36% rakeback. We came up with this by taking the maximum number of players at a PL or NL table (9 players) and dividing this by the minimum rake required for a pot to earn each player a VPP ($1.5). This left each player paying 16 cents in rake to earn a VPP point on average. It takes 17 VPP points to earn a bonus dollar, so if a player could get each VPP point by playing 9 handed pots with $1 being the exact rake each and every time, it would end up costing him (17 x 0.16) $2.72 cents to earn a single bonus dollar. This is an amazing 36% rake back.

This scenario is, of course, unlikely, and the PokerStars.com bonus will clear lower, such as 30% rakeback for many players.

For those gurus adept at crunching rakeback numbers, see our page PokerStars Rakeback for more details on what is available.