2009      Feb 25

A sticky bonus, quite simply put, is a bonus that cannot be withdrawn. People that have been in line with online casino websites for sometime are probably used to the old style of bonuses in which you would deposit money into your online real money casino account and then have a bonus added to your account based on whatever percentage and maximum the online casino was offering at that time. Then, you would go ahead and start wagering money at the different games in an attempt to get to the wagering requirements that had been set forth by the casino to begin with. Then, when all was said and done, you would be able to extract the money and the bonus from the casino account once the wagering requirements had been met.

Some online casinos have determined that such an arrangement is highly detrimental to them in the future and for that reason have decided to remove those normal bonuses from consideration and instead introduce something that they are calling a sticky bonus. Instead of being allowed to withdraw the bonus, the sticky bonus effectively sticks to your account. There are no wagering requirements and no withdrawals of this bonus allowed. Essentially, it is added to your account in the same way a normal bonus would be, but you can only utilize this bonus to wager at the tables. Any amount of money that you win through the wagering of the bonus money then counts as a normal bonus that can be withdrawn after wagering requirements are met. Also, you lose your money before you lose the sticky bonus, meaning that if you wager and lose more money than your deposit, you will then have nothing left to withdraw.

The basic premise of the sticky bonus is intended to take the initiative away from the player and give it to the online casino, essentially allowing them to run the show as they see fit. Considering the fact that casinos already have the advantage in any game that you sit down to play, such actions are morally dubious at best and have the risk of hurting the casino/player relationship at worst. This is why many online casinos have categorically rejected sticky bonuses and why many players refuse to play at online casinos that offer them.

In the end, deciding whether you will go after a sticky bonus and try to use it to your advantage is a personal decision that only you can make. There are strategies that players have come up with as an attempt to utilize the sticky bonus to their advantage, but they are much more long term in nature than normal bonus strategies. They can be done however, which is why most professional online bonus collectors collect sticky bonuses anyway.

Are you interested in more Casino Bonus information? For information on many different casino bonus aspects such as where the best No Deposit Bonus locations are, visit our website.

2009      Feb 25

Rake is how online poker rooms make their money. Instead of you playing against the house at a statistical disadvantage or having the odds manipulated by bookies in order to ensure that they never lose money over the long term, rake is essentially taking money out of the pot rather than the person. This means that the winner of the pot essentially has some of their money taken from them in order to cover the costs of running the poker room.

However, this does not mean that the winner alone pays the rake. Rake is calculated based on contributions to the pot and because of that you are paying rake whenever you put something into the pot. The rake is taken in real time as the hand is played, meaning that the money was still yours at the time the rake was taken. Because of this, it is possible to take a look at the rake schedule of a particular online website and combine that information with information about your bets in order to calculate the amount of rake you contribute over the course of your entire session and indeed many online poker software packages such as Poker Tracker do have this functionality built in for you to utilize. To most people, the answers are shocking.

There are a number of things that influence the amount of rake that gets collected from a pot. Most significantly, the limit that you are playing at influences the rake greatly. Playing at smaller limits will generate smaller rake amounts and rake maximums, but the percentage of rake taken might be higher. Similarly, playing at higher limits will generate higher rake amounts and maximums, but you will be paying a lower percentage of the overall pot in the long term. This is why even though you pay more absolute rake amounts at higher limits, you end up saving money in the long term because you are giving up a smaller percentage to do so.

Other factors that influence the amount of rake taken from a pot include the betting structure utilized and the number of players that are dealt cards in the hand. Betting structures of limit usually have a more complicated rake schedule because of their more rigid form, whilst their pot limit and no limit counterparts usually have very simple rake schedules for the opposite reason. In regards to number of players, the more players that see cards in a hand, the higher the amount of maximum rake taken from that hand will be.

Hopefully, the above discourse has allowed you to see the basics of how rakes are supposed to work. This in turn should lead you to an understanding of why a significant amount of money is taken from you as a rake. Once you know about that information, understanding how important rake promotions from different websites can be should be a lot easier to do.

Paynorake is an interesting program. For more information on Paynorake and other Rake Free Poker opportunities, visit our website.

2009      Feb 25

When you are playing limit poker, many online poker rooms will clump more than one limit together within the same rake category. This means that you might end up in a situation where $1/$2 and $2/$4 games are raked the same way. Suppose the rake for these games is a 10% rake that is taken at the rate of $1 for every $10 in the pot up to a maximum amount of $3 in rake from each hand. This is a reasonable rake structure and one that you will see time and time again in the online world. You will even see it in the offline world sometimes, although it would be below average in terms of the offline world of poker.

Taking a look at the $1/$2 and the $2/$4 games reveals the fact that the latter is twice the size of the former. This means that all other things being equal, a pot in $2/$4 will be twice the size of a pot in $1/$2. In actuality this usually does not happen in the online world as tables at the higher limit will have a larger selection of tight players that do not play as aggressively at the higher limit as they would at the lower limit. But if the players were to play the same, a $30 pot in $1/$2 would be a $60 pot in $2/$4.

If the rake is the same for these two games however, the $1/$2 game would be raked at a total of $3 for a $30 pot. But what about the $2/$4 game? The maximum take that is taken from the hand is $3, which essentially means that there is no rake above $30 in any pot from either of those two games. So a $30 pot and a $60 pot would both have a $3 rake, allowing the larger pot to essentially play to an extra $30 in the pot for free.

In essence, this is exactly why playing higher is cheaper in online poker. When you are playing at higher limits, you still benefit from the overall maximum rake rule, allowing you to actually pay a much lower percentage in rake than you would under other circumstances. Essentially, if you can play normal winning poker at a higher limit, you should graduate upwards and play at that limit in order to get the benefit of the lower rake payments over the long term. As long as you make sure that the limit is your highest winning limit rather than your lowest losing limit, you will be able to gain some extra cash through this method over the long term.

The Poker Rake Race within the online world is quite spectacular to behold and for more information on ways that you can become a participant rather than a spectator in this Rake Race, visit our website.

2009      Feb 25

For those of us that want to delve in to spread betting but have absolutely no idea how this works - it’s a good idea to read whatever you can. You would be really surprised as to the amount of websites available online.

These websites have all kinds of informational blogs including; how spread betting works, basic principles, difference between spread betting and forex, etc. They even have hints and tips for the market which will be useful to you in the present or future once you really start getting into this. Here are a few blog titles I found on one website I found recently:

LS Trader: The Week Ahead

Currency CFDs: U.S. Dollar in Forex Trading

Financial Spread Betting Strategy: Oil Prices

These aren’t huge boring blogs like the ones you usually find online. Instead, they are very simple to understand with no hogwash included. Simply visit the blog of your choice and take a look at the “recent posts” or the “categories”. There will probably be a few different blog posts for each level of person - newbie or advanced spread better.

Personally, I would recommend looking at all the information on these websites. You never know what new and interesting tips and or tricks you might find out about!

Also, if you are interested in reading a few books (non ebooks) you might want to check out these: Successful Spread Betting (Paperback) by Geoff Harvey, The Beginner’s Guide to Financial Spread Betting, 2nd Edition: Step-by-step Instructions and Winning Strategies (Paperback) by Michelle Baltazar, The Financial Spread Betting Handbook: A Guide to Making Money Trading Spread Bets by Malcolm Pryor, Bets and the City: Sally Nicoll’s Spread Betting Diary by Sally Nicoll, Come into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading by Alexander Elder or Technical Analysis for Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback)) (Paperback) by Barbara Rockefeller.

I’m more of a reader when it comes to physical books. I don’t really like to read online, although you will find a lot of, how shall I say, unknown tactics on websites more so than in actual books. It really depends on what you want and what you are comfortable with.

In the end it’s all about learning everything you can. This type of betting can be incredibly lucrative but it’s also important to realize that its also risky. You need to learn the guidelines, rules and tactics but also the standard techniques of how spread betting works and what things you should or shouldn’t do.

A lot of these websites and books will also teach you about things that maybe some bookmakers wouldn’t tell you about such as the fee for Interest Rates. Of course it’s in their best interest to not to tell you something like this, which is why you need to take it upon yourself to learn anything and everything you can! Those little tidbits of info could save you a lot of money in the end and that is what spread betting is all about.

This Author is a huge fan of Spread Betting

2009      Feb 25

Spread betting is an easy means to benefit from the foreign exchange (forex) market. The forex market is highly liquid (turnover has skyrocketed from approximately 5 billion USD in 1977 to a staggering 1.5 trillion US dollars today).

Its price drives are not dependent to bull and bear markets. From what I can tell after reading up over the Forex a few months ago, this stuff can become quite confusing if you have never done it before.

In this case, I would suggest hiring on a broker of some sort of a consultant that can help guide you through the way. One thing you are going to want to be knowledgeable about it the “hidden charge” that a lot of brokers don’t tell you about which is called - the interest rate. When your positions roll over it is done automatically so that’s nice but you really need to watch out for the interest rate because its fluctuation can be incredibly high.

Maybe it’s best to straight up ask the broker what he or she charges for the interest rate, this could probably end up helping you make a better decision as to who to go with. On most of the websites you can check out today you will find rates so that you can compare spreads but it’s also important to check if the spread is variable or fixed.

A fixed spread means precisely that - it will always be the identical no matter what time of day or night it is. Some brokers use a variable spread, which may seem to be nice and small when the market is quiet, but when things get busy they can broaden the spread which means the market must move more in your favor before you start to make a profit.

Fixed spreads are generally slightly wider than the variable spreads are when at their narrowest, but over the long-term fixed can be safer. In the case of spread betting, you really can’t have the best of both worlds. All you can do is study up and try to find out everything you possibly can about fixed, variables, forex, spread betting, positioning, etc.

Personally, it wouldn’t matter if I was betting $10 or $10,000,000 I would want to find out everything I could beforehand because, no one likes losing money! In the end, it seems that both spread betting and Forex both have their benefits and disadvantages. But I think the choice really depends on the person spending the money - you. Both of these options are medium to high risk, but if you do it correctly you could have a large return on investment.

One thing is for sure, neither of these options is for the faint of heart. The “numbers” seem to always be fluctuating. Just remember, in the end, it’s important that you don’t bite off more than you can chew. In other words, - if you can’t risk it, don’t!

This Author is a huge fan of Spread Betting

Copyright 2009 ©  Gambling Information