What Are Casino Bonuses?
In his article, we will briefly outline the types of casino bonus available to you as a player in your chosen online casino site or app.
What are casino bonuses?
There are several types of casino bonuses from online casinos. The most common type of bonus you will receive from an online casino is a welcome bonus. Welcome bonuses are offers that online casinos provide to encourage new player sign ups. Other offers online casinos use are top-up bonuses to retain players once they have been active for a time.
The online casino industry is a very competitive space with lots of players having wallets with multiple online casinos. Providers need to encourage players to stbay active on their casino. The way they do this is by providing bonuses to keep players on their casino site or in-app. Players can benefit from taking welcome offers from casinos through comparing the best casino offers. A Casino bonus can be a great way to increase your bankroll and land the next big payout.
Types of casino bonuses
Free Spins and Free Chips
The oldest casino bonuses that have been around even longer than online casinos has been Free Spins or Free Chips. You join a casino and get free spins or free ships that you can play with. This is a very simple to understand benefit. You know you will get 50 or 100 Free spins on a certain slots game or roulette wheel. If you win, you pocket the winnings. If you lose. No harm as you still have your original deposit in your casino wallet.
New online casinos are more likely to offer Free Spins as a signup offer, as the technical ability to make Free Spins a welcome bonus is significantly easier than providing a bonus in terms of cash. More and more you will see Free Spins be offered as part of a hybrid with Deposit Bonuses but do be aware that the Free Spin bonus is still used frequently as a retention offer, so keep an eye out for those emails from the online casino once you have signed up.
Casino Deposit Bonus
Today, the Casino Deposit Bonus is the staple of online casino providers to attract new players to their website or app in the form of a welcome bonus. Typically, you will have to make a minimum deposit in order to avail of the deposit bonus. Most casinos will advertise a deposit bonus in terms of multiples of your first deposit. An example of this is: 100% Deposit Bonus – Deposit £100 receive £100 in bonus funds into your wallet. Now you have £200 to play with in the casino. Your bankroll has been doubled and your ability to play has thus also been doubled. Do be aware of the small print and read the terms and conditions on signup. Most casinos that offer a deposit bonus will have it staged and attach a time limited wagering requirement. More on that later.
No Deposit Bonus
The gold standard of welcome offers, the No Deposit Bonus. These offers are rare and tend to be on a much smaller scale to the usual welcome offer. Typically you will be able to receive £20 vs the usual £200 bonus but the benefit is you can play the games without depositing. If you don’t win on your slots or card table, no harm, no loss – just move on to the next offer. If you do win, in order to cash out your winnings you will usually be required to make a deposit and comply with a wagering requirement prior to withdrawing your winnings.
Understanding wagering requirements with a casino bonus
A few google searches of casino offers and you will see in the comments the warnings and disgust from regular casino players about wagering requirements. These are typically in the small print of welcome offers for online casinos. More and more gambling regulators are pushing online casinos to better communicate the implications of wagering requirements for you, the player.
A wagering requirement is the amount of times you must turn over your wallet before you can withdraw. If you receive a casino bonus this can have a considerable impact on how much you have to play prior to withdrawing your funds and turning it into hard cash to buy that porsche. You should be able to withdraw your original deposit in most cases but if you do this prior to meeting your wagering requirement you will most definitely forfeit your winnings earned on the casino bonus and the casino bonus in your wallet.
Casino wagering requirements are one of the most important factors you should consider when evaluating offers. Do keep in mind that more and more casino welcome offers have hybrids of Free Spins and Bonuses with wagering offers so comparing offers against each other isn’t a straightforward process.
How to calculate your wagering requirement on a casino bonus
Most reputable online casinos will include examples of how their wagering requirement will work in their terms and conditions of the welcome offer. The basic premise is you must play the funds in your wallet a multiple of times prior to unlocking its value. The best way to explain how a wagering requirement works is with a simple step-by-step example.
- You sign up for a welcome offer with a online casino advertising a 100% matched deposit bonus.
- Scroll down the page and click on the terms and conditions to see the wagering requirement.
- The wagering requirement is 5x with a minimum deposit of £20 and a maximum deposit bonus of £200.
- Now you consider the effect of the casino wagering requirement. If you deposit the minimum of £20 you will have your casino wallet topped up to £40, your £20 deposit in cash + the £20 casino bonus. You will have to wager £200 before you can withdraw your winnings.
- If you deposited the maximum allowed under the casino bonus of £200, you will receive an additional £200 into your wallet in bonus funds. Now you can play with £400. But with the wagering requirement of 5x you must place wagers on games totaling £2000 before you can withdraw your winnings.
- Most wagering requirement have a best before date. It can range from 7 days to a month typically.
That all sounds like a big con when it comes to wagering requirements. But when you consider you can play with these funds on just about all the games the casino has to offer the benefits crystalise. With Free Spins you are usually limited to a small number of games where you can use them. Casino bonuses have the benefit of freedom in that you can play the games you enjoy most.
What are the quickest way to release your casino bonus
Now you are thinking it will take forever to release a casino bonus under a wagering requirement. Not really. You can do so in one of several ways.
- Place very large bets
- Place lots of small bets
The strategy is up to you. If you are a table games player, releasing a casino bonus is very closely related to the speed of the game you choose to play. Playing Live Casino could be the most effect way to release your bonus (if you are a good player).
Most players choose to play slots that have a jackpot associated with them. You place multiple lines at low wagers and auto spin. In a short time you will have reached the wagering requirement. You will have the added benefit of the possibility of unlocking the slots jackpot on your game of choice.
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