Many long-time gamblers will say “casino offers are rarely worth it”. They will point to wagering requirements as the reason most bonuses and promos are not the sweet deal they appear to be. Some of those gamblers also point out that betting strategies don’t work… something about the house always wins.
When it comes to casino bonuses and promotions at venues like Hollywood Casino, you can use a strategy to make a profit… and it works! No tricks, no hidden costs, only plain old making a profit from casino bonuses. If you want to know more, this guide provides all the answers.
What Are Casino Bonuses?
Several types of casino offers are available. For example, welcome offers, deposit promotions, no-deposit bonuses, and reload offers.
- Welcome Bonus: The casino will reward you with some free money when you sign up. A welcome bonus is usually tied to a deposit bonus, such as deposit $50 and receive a 100% match.
- Deposit Bonus: When you make a deposit, the online casino will match and multiply that amount. So, if you make a $10 deposit and the casino matches it 100%, you would receive $20 from the casino.
- No Deposit Bonus: These are the closest thing you will get to a freebie in the casino realm. Casinos use no-deposit promos with welcome bonuses, such as “sign-up and receive $10 for free”.
- Reload Bonus: A reload bonus is one of the promos casinos use to get people to keep playing.
On paper, all these bonuses look amazing. They offer to give you some free money to play online casino games and potentially win. When you dig into the terms and conditions of a bonus, you will find the dreaded wagering requirement.
The wagering requirement is the amount of money you will need to spend before the bonus is triggered. This wagering requirement can be anywhere from 10x to 50x the original deposit.
Let’s look at the familiar 100% deposit match welcome bonus as an example. If you deposit $100, the casino says you will receive an extra £100 and essentially have $200 to spend. However, if the wagering requirement is 30x, you must spend 30 times your original deposit to access the bonus money.
In this example, 30x $100 would mean you need to spend $3,000 on casino games before triggering the bonus. Ouch.
Getting Familiar with House Edge
Have you heard the term “the house always wins”? Well, that’s not quite true as the house does not always win… although the odds are stacked in its favor. This essentially means games are skewed in favor of the casino. This can be best demonstrated by looking at the Return to Player (RTP) of an online slot game.
Return to Player means how much a casino game will return to the player over a long period of playing. For example, if you play a game with a 95% RTP and spend $10,000 on it over a year, the RTP would suggest the casino would pay-back $9,500 and keep $500 as profit. In other words, you would lose $500 over that period.
That said, all casino games are based on luck. You could play 100 spins on an online slot and win 100 times and return the next day, play 100 spins and lose 100 times. Laws of averages make both those scenarios unlikely, but the point is you are more likely to lose than you are to win… that’s the house edge.
When looking at casino games and bonuses, we must use the expected value (EV)
Understanding the expected value of a casino game or bonus is an important first step to making a profit. There are expected value (EV) calculators available developed by software companies, but many are not good enough because they don’t simulate based on previous bonuses.
Importantly, the house edge swings further towards the casino the more you play a game.
Casinos make money off long terms players, those who spend thousands over many years, which allows the house edge to be more obvious. Certainly, you could go to an online casino, spend $100 and walk away with a $10,000 slot jackpot and never play again. If this happened, you would have made a profit on the casino. However, that rarely happens, and people almost always lose eventually… it may happen fast, or it may take years, but it will happen.
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos.
