Paddy Power Poker offers a 150% matching bonus up to $600 on all initial deposit bonuses that use Paddy Power promotional code “XXXX”. For example, if you make a $400 initial deposit using the Paddy Power promotional code you will receive a $600 bonus added to your pending bonus account. In order to release the bonus into your real Paddy Power Poker account you must earn Paddy Points by playing in Paddy Power Poker cash games and tournaments. Every Paddy Point you earn is worth the equivalent of $0.0111 towards clearing your bonus.
You earn 20 Paddy Points for each $1 you spend in tournament fees at Paddy Power Poker. For example, if you play a $10 + $1 tournament you would earn 20 Paddy Points. The amount of Paddy Points per dollar goes up as you increase your Paddy Power level, but since you would be a new player clearing your initial deposit bonus you will just be at the “Private” level earning 20 points per $1 paid. Since every $1 you pay in tournament fees earns you 20 Paddy Points, and each Paddy Point is worth $0.0111 that means that every $1 you spend in tournament fees clears $0.22 of your bonus. This ratio is worse than you find at Full Tilt Poker and on the Cake Poker network, but much better than the Merge Poker room and even better than fellow iPoker network room CD Poker, where every dollar spent only clears $0.12.
In cash games you earn Paddy Points based on the amount of rake for each hand. The amount you earn varies from 0.3 points for rakes below $0.10 up to a massive 13 points for rakes above $3. An example of a middle amount would be earning 4.75 Paddy Points from a $1.30 raked hand. The amount of Paddy Points you are awarded doesn’t change depending on how many players are at the table. This means a $3 raked pot at a 9-handed table would award (13x9) 117 Paddy Points, whereas a $3 raked pot at a 6-handed table would only award (13x6) 78 points. For this reason it is better to play 9-handed tables if you are hoping to clear your bonus. Playing cash games at Paddy Power Poker will be better than playing tournaments in terms of clearing your bonus quickly.
Every time you earn an additional 450 Paddy Points, $5 is released from your pending bonus amount into your real money account. You have 90 days to clear your bonus. Any amount that has not been cleared after this time will be forfeit.
The Paddy Power Poker initial deposit bonus is a solid deposit bonus with a good matching percentage of 150% and the fairly average maximum amount of $600. The tournament clearing rate isn’t as good as some other room, but then again it is better than another of the more popular iPoker rooms, CD Poker. Playing cash games to clear your bonus is much better at Paddy Power Poker than playing tournaments because the amount of money you are contributing to the poker room is much less from cash games relative to the amount of Paddy Points you earn. For example, in a 9-handed game you will on average contribute $0.33 of rake to a $3 pot that awards 13 Paddy Points. As you can see paying $0.33 for 13 points is much better than paying $1 for 20. If you play the cash games the 90 days should be plenty of time for you to clear the bonus. Paddy Power Poker has one of the best initial deposit bonuses for all iPoker network skins.
