Casino bonuses are a dime a dozen. It is not likely for you to find an online casino that does not offer any form of bonus. The real question is what bonuses are being offered, and what the quality of these bonuses are. Today, we will walk you through several types of bonuses, how they work, and what a wagering requirement means.
There are several types of bonuses, all of which are meant to give a player more money. This is money that the player cannot easily withdraw, except for a few types. Let us take a look at the best online casino bonuses one by one.
A welcome package is given to new players only. Most of the time, this is the kind of promotional offer that has the biggest possible benefit. The most common bonus is a match-up, which is expressed in percentages and used against your deposit. For example, a casino may offer a 100% deposit match-up.
If you deposited £200, 100% of that is £200, so now you have a total playing money of £400—your original deposit and the £200 that the casino gave you. A welcome bonus has a cap. You cannot deposit £1,000,000 and expect to get a bonus of the same amount.
Usually, these bonuses are capped at £1,000. If you deposit £1,000 with a 100% welcome bonus, the casino will give you £1,000. But if you deposit £2,000, the casino will not give you £2,000 because the promotion is capped at £1,000. What this means is that for a £2,000 deposit, you will still receive £1,000 extra money and nothing more.
Casinos also have a multiple deposit bonus done in tranches. Usually, the first deposit has the highest match-up percentage.
Here is an example: 100% deposit capped at £1,000 up to five deposits. Here, you do not get £1,000 on your first deposit. It is divided into five tranches. A sample table is shown below.
| Deposit | Matchup % | Capped At | You Must Deposit |
| First | 100% | £500 | £500 |
| Second | 50% | £200 | £400 |
| Third | 25% | £100 | £400 |
| Fourth | 50% | £100 | £200 |
| Fifth | 25% | £100 | £400 |
As you can see, you have to deposit a total of £1,900 to be able to get a total bonus of £1,000. Why? Because not each bonus is at 100% match-up on every deposit. The second to the fifth deposits are ranging only between 25% and 100%.
This is one of the best casino bonuses that is commonly offered to both new and regular players. In it, you do not have to shell out money. All you need to do is to register. The bonus may come in the form of money or free spins. But in most cases, it can never be withdrawn. You can only withdraw the winnings from it and only after you have met several conditions.
Casinos do this to attract new players or to keep existing players loyal to the company. Despite so many rules, a no deposit bonus is still one of the most wonderful things that can happen to a player. It is like being lent money with no liability.
If you win, you get to withdraw the winnings. If you lose, you did not shell out money from your pocket. Take note, however, that you cannot game the system. You cannot sign up for bogus accounts. A casino can detect your IP address and will ban you if you attempt to create two accounts just to get more of the free bonuses.
A deposit or reload bonus is offered to existing members. You can avail of this once you have already used up what you got in the Welcome Package. Like other promotional offers, this one comes with several rules, which you will further understand in the Wagering Requirements section.
In a reload bonus, you only receive free money after you made a deposit. The amount varies from one casino to another, and the bonus is often expressed in percentages. If it is, then the mathematics is the same as the welcome package.
Some casinos, however, use currencies. For example, a casino may offer a reload bonus of £5 for every deposit of £20. What this means is that if you deposit anything less than £20, you do not get an extra £5.
If you deposit £25, you still get only £5 extra. Some casinos will give you twice the offer if you deposit twice the minimum, like £10 if you deposited £40. Some, however, keep the £5 constant no matter how much you exceed the minimum deposit requirement of £20.
Free spins are commonly given to new players, too. Some VIPs also receive them only a weekly basis. With this type of bonus, you are given a fixed amount of slot machine spins, and only on certain slot machines.
For example, a casino may give you 20 free spins on Starburst. In this case, you can only spin the reels of the Starburst slot machine. The cost of each spin is also explained in the Terms and Conditions. Usually, the cost of each spin is the lowest possible bet for around. However, this spin already accounts for wagering on all the slot’s pay lines.
If we take Starburst as an example, the game’s lowest possible wager is £0.01 per line, and it has ten fixed pay lines. If you received 20 free spins for this game, each of your free spins is worth £0.01 X 10 pay lines = £0.10. Multiply £0.10 by 20 free spins and the total amount is £2.
Like other bonuses, there are rules that you have to meet before you can withdraw your winnings. Also, you can’t win any jackpot prize because your spin is worth the least bet amount.
The cashback is given to players who lost. The most common is 5% of your net losses, and you will get this cashback every week.
What is a net loss? Let us say that you wagered £10 yesterday and lost it, but today you deposited £10 and ended up having £60. You have no net loss. But if you lost both £10, your net loss is £20, and 5% of £20 is £1.
Cashback bonuses have a cap. You cannot lose £1 million and expect the casino to give you a cashback of £50,000. Also, the cashback is only based on what you deposited, not the amount of money you won and lost.
A birthday bonus is commonly given to VIPs on their birthday. There is no standard for this bonus—it can come in cash form, free spins, or VIP points.
A referral bonus is money you receive if you succeed in inviting friends to register with a casino. It is like affiliate marketing but only for existing members. In it, you will receive a link from the casino. You need to invite friends to sign up using this link. If they do, you get the bonus after their first deposit.
All bonuses have rules, caps, and requirements. You cannot just withdraw the money unless the casinos say it is allowed. Attempting to do so would invalidate the bonus and the winnings from it.
A wagering requirement is a condition that is expressed as a multiplier. Some casinos impose this on the bonus, and some impose this on the bonus and the deposit you made.
Here is a theoretical scenario: let us say that you deposited £10 and you received a bonus of £20. Now, your total play money is £30.
The casino may impose a wagering requirement of 35x on the £20 that it gave you. What does this mean? It means that you have to bet £20 35 times. £20 x 35 = £700, and this means that you have to wager a total of £700 before the casino can allow you to cash out. The £700 must not come from your deposit. It must come from the original £20 that the casino gave you.
How can this even happen? This can happen only if you consistently win money from £20. You bet and win, and then you keep betting and winning. Over time, you accumulate enough money to keep on betting until you have wagered a total of £700. After that, you can cash out whatever you have won from £700.
So how does this all work? If your target is £700, and you wagered £20 out of the £20 you received, now you have to bet £680 more. Once that target is £0, you can withdraw. If you lost the £20 bet, then your bonus is gone. This is the reason why you have to keep on winning. You need to maintain funds from the bonus to meet this playthrough requirement. You cannot deposit £700 from your pocket; it is not allowed.
Wagering requirements have many rules. Below are the most common ones to get you warmed up.
However, most casinos reduce the wagering contribution of other games, like blackjack or roulette. It is not unusual for a casino to assign a 10% wagering contribution for these games. If you wager £20, 10% of that is only £2. Therefore, only £2 will be taken off the £700 target. Now, you still have to bet £698 more.
Why do they do this?
Casinos want to make sure that you meet the rollover requirement based on random results, not on your skill. After all, they gave you that money. For a casino to have fair chances to get it back, the contributions are higher on games of chance like slot machines. In this case, you are likely to bet more on slots and reduce your wagering requirement faster, but the results of your bets are 100% random.
If you think about it, some players can deposit £1,000. If they receive a 10% match-up of £1,000, and bet £1,000 and win, it puts the casino in financial trouble. This is why they control the maximum bet. Clients who participate in the promotion have no chance to win a major jackpot because their max bet is limited to £5 per round.
At some online casinos, the maximum bet is not £5, but rather a percentage of your existing balance. For example, some casinos allow you to bet as high as 30% of your existing bonus balance. If you have £20 to begin with, 30% of that is £6. You can bet £6 for that round instead of the common limit of £5. If you win £6, your balance is now £26. 30% of £26 is £7.8, so you can bet that much for this round.
Many casinos impose a maximum withdrawal limit of £100. This means that from the bonus of £20, you grew it to £1,200, but you can only cash out £100 to your bank account.
Why? Casinos use bonuses to give you a chance to win money from nothing. But they cannot let you use the bonus as a means for you to get rich. Casinos will go bankrupt if they do this. Some gambling operators today do not impose this limit. Many of them are gearing away from this rule, but they are carefully selective about the games that you can play.
An expiration date means that you should meet the wagering requirement before the time expires. If you fail to do so, the casino will forfeit the bonus and all winnings from it. The time starts ticking the moment the casino deposits your bonus balance to your account.
If you break these rules, even just one, your bonus, along with your winnings, will be forfeited. If the wagering requirement includes your original deposit, all winnings from that deposit will also be forfeited.
Read the Terms and Conditions of a bonus before committing to it. Casinos have different rules. Some casinos seem not to want you to win, and some do not put any limit at all except that you meet the wagering requirement.
Before you join a casino, browse through the casino’s Promotions page or the top casino bonus list. Every casino has this. After that, read the Terms and Conditions, so that you know what is expected of you as a player. The last thing you want is to forfeit your bonus and the winnings from them.
Once you have selected a casino, you can opt to be a regular customer and climb the VIP ranks. The higher you go, the more perks you would receive. Always remember, all bonuses have a catch. It is very rare to find a casino that allows you to withdraw your bonus and your winnings without complying with some rules.