I've been playing online poker for the past several months and have done really well at it. The dazzling popularity of poker these days has brought millions of people to start playing poker and there is nowhere as convenient as playing online. Tons of people who think that what they see on the WPT is how the game of poker should be played sit down with large amounts of money convinced that they too can win large amounts of money. Poker is a game of skill. However, the majority of people who play do not gain the skills necessary to win consistently at it. I like to think of a lot of these players as people who are not playing poker, but rather treating the game as a VLT (video lottery terminal). It is many of these players whom I make a fair portion of my money from with my much more solid understanding of the game.

Anyways, that's a short editorial on the state of poker these days. What I'm going to talk about here is the promotions offered by a web site called Poker Source Online. The short story is that this website offers free gifts for signing up for online poker through them. There is no catch to this ... you simply create an online account at PSO, sign up with one of several poker rooms (9 of them in fact) and choose the gift you want. You deposit some money, play the required number of hands and they send you your gift with free shipping to anywhere in the US or Canada.

Pretty sweet deal huh? Here's the list of stuff I've got from their promotions: - 2 five hundred count 11.5 gram clay composite poker chips in aluminum cases - 1 padded rail texas hold'em style poker table top with cup holders - 1 Poker Genie tournament timer - 1 deck of KEM plastic playing cards - Amazon.ca gift certificate worth $90 with which I bought 4 poker books: Theory of poker, small stakes hold'em, internet texas hold'em, and texas hold'em for advanced players. - A couple cut cards and a chip rack to hold some cracked chips (which were replaced) - 1 copy of Poker tracker software

That's right - a pretty nice list of free stuff eh?

The question probably on your mind is how can they do this? Its pretty simple. Online poker rooms make more money by having more people playing on their site (the more tables they have, the more rake they collect, the more money they make). What they do to get people to come in is they pay affiliates to send people to their poker room. Almost every poker room imaginable has affiliate programs - but many of these affiliates simply spam people to get more referrals. PSO does it differently - they offer free gifts to the people they refer and take only a portion of the referral money for themselves. Combine this with excellent customer support and a rapidly growing list of satsified customers, PSO is the most successful online poker affiliate in the business.

So how does the process work? There are several different options for PSO, the main ones being the straight forward promotions. There are a couple of side promotions also that you may be interested in so I will describe each in detail. If you sign up for any of these, please use my referral ID Heraldmk - I'd be very grateful if you did and it makes no difference to the gift that you get.

Instant Bankroll

This promotion is one of the most popular ones. The premise is that you start your first real money poker account at Party Poker and PSO deposits $75 of free money into it for you. Once you've played 500 raked hands, you get another free $25 bonus and are free to do with the money as you please. This is an excellent way to get yourself an initial bankroll to do the rest of the PSO promotions without putting your own money at stake. What's even better is you can start up a Neteller account and transfer that money around without ever needing to provide a credit card number!

Anyways there are a couple caveats to this promotion. First of all, you must not have an existing real money poker account. Secondly, if you want to do the frequent flopper program or one of PSO's normal promotions at party poker (see below), then you can't do this promotion first or you won't be eligible for the other promotion you are interested in. If you want to check it out the web site is http://www.instantbankroll.com.

Normal Promotions

Normal PSO promotions are ones in which you select a gift, deposit some money and play a certain number of raked hands or acquire a certain number of "points" at the poker room before PSO sends you your gift. There are currently 9 poker rooms you can do these promotions at, and if you don't have accounts at any of them yet, you should be eligible to do them all (each for a free gift!). Possible gifts include free poker chips, free poker table tops, free WPT dvds, free KEM cards, free gift certificates, a free copy of poker tracker, or lastly PSO points which you can save up to get even nicer gifts.

The current rooms are: Party Poker, Pacific Poker, Absolute Poker, PokerRoom, Paradise Poker, Bodog, Gaming Club Poker, Golden Palace Poker and Ultimate Bet. These represent almost all of the biggest poker rooms available on the internet right now, and if you're going to play online poker, chances are you'll pick one of these rooms anyway so there is no real reason *not* to go through PSO to get free stuff!

If you want to do one of these promotions, go to http://www.pokersourceonline.com and follow the instructions. Be very sure that you follow all the instructions - and if you have a question, ask it in the forums before you sign up. There are a couple of crucial steps in the process that if you screw up, PSO cannot fix and will not get paid for you so they cannot give you your gift. The process is simple and there shouldn't be any problems if you follow the instructions.

Frequent Flopper Program

This program is for people who plan on playing lots of poker. At several rooms, you can get 27.5% of your rake back in either PSO points, or at some rooms in cash. Sweet deal for those of us who really like online poker and play on a regular basis. PSO point rooms are Party Poker, Ultimate Bet, and Aztec Riches. Cashback sites are Absolute poker and Carribbean Sun. These programs are amazing for people who play a lot of online poker because 27.5% of your rake is a very large amount of money in the long term! To register, go to http://www.frequentflopper.com.

FreeWSOP

How sweet would if be to go to the world series of poker for free? Instead of choosing a free gift, you can get a entry chip into a small freeroll tournament where the 1st place prize is a full paid package to the world series of poker. Yep, you heard me right. They only have one freeroll tournament left so if you want to get in on this, you're going to have to move fast. If you've been dreaming of playing in the WSOP, you should definitely check this out. http://www.freewsop.com.

If you have any questions, the PSO guys are extremely helpful and very good about making sure your questions are answered. So if you are interested in playing online poker, you should definitely check some of these promotions out! You'll be happy you did.

Heraldk