Revisiting an abandoned bonus - good idea?

[OldYoda]

In late February PokerRoom was offering a 30% reload and I decided to take advantage of it and put in $660 for a $200 bonus. After 5 days of the type of horrific beats we've all seen I decided that PokerRoom was not the course for this horse and that I should simply take my beating and move on, leaving the bonus on the table. Sitting here today putting my game plan together for April I believe I may have been too hasty. Since I really don't mind the game at PokerRoom at all, rather like the site in fact, isn't it smarter to put a few hundred in and grind away to get the bonus. I still have till April 23rd which should be ample time to collect the required points. Has anyone else had this experience, reconsidering a bonus, and how did it go. Just curious.

[playersare]

well, the pokerroom bonus isn't particularly lucrative compared to ones on other sites. consider the following:

1) to earn the most player points towards clearing the bonus, you want to play at least $2/4 fixed limits and up so your pots get raked at least $1 worth a full player point. At $1/2 limits, most of your hands will only earn 0.5 points and 50c/$1 you might as well forget it. I know you deposited over $600 just to get the pending bonus, but I don't know what limit you play in order to clear.

2) against the rake you pay to pokerroom in order to earn the bonus, you don't get that much in return for your action (again, in comparison to other sites). since you need a dollar rake to earn a full player point (with 14 cents), the minimum rake revenue attributed directly to you would be 10 cents (assuming a 10-max table). So the maximum rakeback value of the bonus on pokerroom is 140%, which is in the lower half of what's available out there. In comparison, a signup bonus on party poker pays 20 cents of bonus for a minimum attributed rake of 5c per player (LHE), for a maximum rakeback of 400%. Generally most of the good bonuses pay between 200-800% of rakeback equivalent.

so with 140% rakeback you would probably have to be somewhat of a long-term profitable player in order to make it worthwhile. complaining about "horrific beats" is generally a sign of inexperience, so perhaps you could manage better at sites like Absolute and Paradise which pay 10 cents of bonus for hands raked 25c or more (worth 360-400% in maximum rakeback value). plus you'll get a larger pending bonus on absolute relative to the amount you deposit, and it will be released to you in $10 increments. Though I could warn you that you may not like the software as much.

don't clear bonuses just for the sake of clearing them. you generally want to already be a winning player at that site, and then you want to maximize the amount they are giving back to you in return for the rake that you pay them in the process.

[bonanz]

i remember i gave you a hard time when you started some rakeback profitability thread back in the day, but I just gotta give you props because you are on top of this bonus shlt and always helpful answering even the most noobish (and somewhat redundant) questions about bonuses.