Internet Bonuses
When you play at a typical land-based casino, the casino rewards your play through comps. They will give you free food and sometimes free accomodation. This is more common in the United States; European casinos are much cheaper in how they comp their regulars. Many of the European casinos do not comp at all since they are government monopolies. Nevertheless, comping is very standard in America.
Internet casinos and poker rooms take the ‘American’ approach. Since the online gambling sphere is very competitive, they have to offer nice rewards to their players if they expect to retain them. Not only do internet casinos/poker rooms charge lower fees (the rules tend to be more favorable to the player and the poker rooms charge less rake), the internet sites also offer cash bonuses to players.
Land-based casinos can comp players with food and hotel rooms. Since an internet casino cannot give you a free room in internet land and they are not going to mail you a free sandwich, their only way they to comp you is in cash. There are two ways internet gambling sites comp: their new players and existing players.
New Player Bonuses
Most internet sites will give users a bonus of some sort. Most of the time, they will advertise it on their homepage, but sometimes you have to get a bonus code. For example, to get a bonus at Party Poker, you need to have a Party Poker Bonus Code. In this case, use code TIPS500 to get a 100% up to $500 bonus. There are playthrough requirements (like all sites have). Point is, this bonus is better than getting squat, which is what you would get if you didn’t have a bonus code.
Don’t be fooled too much just by the signup bonus. With the poker sites, it’s always nice to have a poker bonus code, but be sure to read the rules. Sometimes, it may take forever to clear the bonus; they may expect you to play 100 hands for every $1 in bonus or something nutty like that. The better bonuses generally end up requiring 10 raked hands or less for $1 in bonus; Party Poker’s bonus is among the most favorable in the industry.
For the online casinos, the signup bonuses tend to be lavish as well. However, there is most often a catch. Most of the time, you are required to play ’sucker’ games to clear the bonus. For example, a lot of places will only let you clear the bonus if you play slots. Other times, if you choose to play a game like blackjack, it will take so long to clear the bonus and you’d have to bet so much that the bonus isn’t really that big of a deal to begin with.
Existing Player Bonuses
Sites tend to give bonuses to their existing players to retain them. They are most often not as nice as the new bonuses, but they are there from time to time. Some sites, especially the poker sites, have periodic reload bonuses for all players. Other sites tailor their bonuses more towards the specific players. This is especially the case with the online casinos, at least the casinos that know what they’re doing.

