One of the greatest factors about the explosive expansion of the online betting market is the competition between online casinos. This completion is excellent for consumers as the way casinos fight for your attention is by offering ever more generous bonuses and welcome promotions! Who doesn’t love having a flutter with free money or playing with complimentary spins?
These big, bold flashing adverts offering staggering amounts of ‘free money’ can be rather overwhelming to the untrained eye, we are here to break it down for you so you know how to identify the best bonuses on the market.
Our number one top tip: if a deal seems too good to be true, there is probably a catch so read the T&Cs before handing over any of your cash or personal information.
Casino Bonuses: The Basics
Experienced online gamblers will already know that there are two major types of online gaming bonus: deposit bonuses and no deposit bonuses. No deposit bonuses are ideal if you’re just testing the waters of a casino, whereas deposit bonuses are excellent for players wishing to invest a decent amount of time at their chosen casino.
• No Deposit Bonuses: No deposit bonuses are amazing because when you sign up to the casino, they give you free funds to play at the casino with. This means you get to sample the site before investing your hard-earned cash, you can look at important factors such as site navigation and what games they have on offer. This is great for finding out if it’s the right casino for you.
These bonuses may sound like a dream come true, and they are great, but often the amounts will be far less generous than deposit bonuses and frequently casinos will give out the bonuses in the form of free spins instead of actually crediting cash to your account.
• Deposit Bonuses: The clue is in the name! Deposit bonuses are only credited to your account once you have deposited some of your own funds into it too. Most casinos only hand out these bonuses to new customers, however, some generous casinos do offer bonuses on second or third deposits to ensure customers keep coming back for more.
Deposit Bonuses Explained
There are two types of deposit bonus: free money bonuses and match bonuses.
• Match bonuses: These are the most common of the two, the amount rewarded to you by the casino varies depending on the amount you deposit, the casino matches whatever amount you deposit up to a certain percentage. For example, if the casino offers a 100% match bonus of up to £500, they will give you and an extra £500 if you deposit £500.
• Free money bonuses: These are a little simpler to understand and slightly rarer, they are simply when the casino adds a set amount of credit to you account when you make your first deposit. For example, if advertised that when you deposit £100 the casino gives you £50 ‘free money ’then that is exactly what will happen.
Wagering Requirements Explained
It’s incredibly important to remember that casinos never hand out ‘free money ’without it having requirements attached to it. Believing that they give out free money is just one of many gambling mistakes that people make. This means before you’re allowed to withdraw it or any winnings you make whilst playing with it, you have to meet some rather complicated wagering requirements. These are also known as playthrough requirements, essentially these requirements mean you have to wager the amount of bonus money twenty or thirty times before being allowed to withdraw the cash.
The wagering requirement will be displayed as a number with an X next to it, for example, a bonus offer may say 100% match bonus up to £250 X40. This may sound rather complicated, but when you break it down what it means is you’ll get a free £250 when you deposit £250 but you have to bet this amount 40 times before being able to withdraw any winnings.
Some internet casinos require you to meet the wagering requirements using your deposit amount, the bonus amount or the depot plus bonus amount.
Another important factor to take into account is what casino games are included in meeting the wagering requirements, many sites only allow you to meet them whilst playing slots or video poker and will exclude games such as poker or roulette from the offer.
Because these requirements vary wildly from casino to casino, it’s vital you read the wagering requirements before signing up to any online casino as some set impossibly high requirements. Failing to do so may sour your casino experience should you win a large sum of money and then be unable to withdraw it.