Sun Poker offers a 100% matching bonus up to $500 on all first deposits that use Sun Poker coupon code PBSBONUS. For example, if you make an initial deposit of $250, you will get a pending bonus amount of $250. To release your bonus into your real money account you must earn Sun Points by playing in Sun Poker tournaments and cash games. Every thousand Sun Points you accumulated clears $1 of your bonus.
Every dollar that you pay in tournament entry fees at Sun Poker earns you 150 Sun Points. For example, if you entered a $20 + $2 tournament you would earn 300 Sun Points. The fact that 1000 points clears $1 of your bonus means that you clear $0.15 of your bonus for every $1 you spend in tournament fees. This ratio is not very good, especially when you compare it to Full Tilt Poker and all Cake Poker network rooms, which clear their bonus at a rate of $0.42 per $1 paid in fees. The ratio is better than a few online poker rooms, such as Aced and CD Poker, but not by much.
In Sun Poker cash games you earn Sun Points based on the amount of rake taken from a hand. The amount of points earned can be as little as 0.15 points for rakes below $0.10 and as much as 45 Sun Points for rakes above $3. If we look at a middle amount, a $1 rake earns you 15 Sun Points. If we use the $1 rake amount of 15 Sun Points and assume that at a 10-handed table you contribute an average of $0.10 to the $1 rake, we realize that in cash games you are also clearing the bonus at a rate of $0.15 per $1 paid to the house. If you are going to play cash games to clear the bonus it is better to play 10-handed tables because you will be earning Sun Points even when you aren’t in the action as much.
Your pending bonus is released into your Sun Poker real money account in increments of $1 each time you earn another 1000 Sun Points. This is good because a steady supply of bonus money is constantly being added to your account. You are given 90 days to clear your bonus and any amount that isn’t cleared by this time will be forfeit.
The clearing requirements for this welcome bonus might not look so good at first but once you start playing at Sun Poker there are many advantages. After the first 7500 points earned players start to collect points at a rate of $0.225 per dollar raked, and after 75000 points the rate goes up to $0.25. The highest rate to collect the Sunpoints is all the way up to $0.45 per $1 in rake.
It should also be mentioned that these earned SunPoints stays in your player account and can later be cashed in at a rate of 1 dollar for 1000 points. This makes the Sun Poker deposit bonus highly competitive compared to many other sign up bonuses.