How to Identify Bad Bonuses

Bad Bonuses Have Unreasonable Wagering Requirements

Before you can find out what makes a wagering requirement unreasonable, you must understand the concept of wagering requirements.

To put it very simply, a wagering requirement is a multiplier value, which indicates the number of times you have to play through your bonus amount or your bonus plus deposit amount before you can cash out your bonus winnings. Wagering requirements are also known as playthrough or rollover requirements.
Here is an example to help you understand this.

Let’s say that an online casino is giving away a bonus of 100% up to $100 on your first deposit amount. You deposit $50 into your account and receive a bonus of $50. This bonus has a wagering requirement of 40x. This means that you have to playthrough your bonus amount of $50 forty times or wager $2000 on the games before you can cash out your winnings.

Before you claim a bonus offer, you must ask yourself whether you can satisfy those wagering requirements. This is important because you cannot take your own sweet time to do it. Online casinos give you deadlines within which you have to either clear your bonus and cash out your winnings or lose whatever is left of your bonus and bonus winnings.

If a bonus has a wagering requirement that is too high, you have to bet more money to clear the bonus and you may find this very difficult to do.
Let us try to understand this with the help of the following two examples:

Example 1: $100 bonus with a 40x playthrough requirement

You have to wager $4000 to clear your bonus. You try to do this by playing a game with a house edge of 4% and suffer a theoretical loss of $160. If you remove this amount from the bonus you received, you would have theoretically lost $60.

Example 2: $100 bonus with a 50x playthrough requirement

You have to wager $5000 to clear your bonus. You try to do this by playing a game with a house edge of 4% and suffer a theoretical loss of $200. If you remove this from your bonus amount, your theoretical loss will be $100.

You lose money in the long run if you claim either of the above mentioned bonuses. But you will lose more if you claim a bonus with a higher wagering requirement.

So avoid bonuses with high wagering requirements.

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Restrictions on Too Many Games

As already mentioned above, all the online casino games do not contribute equally to satisfying the wagering requirements. Usually, games with a high house edge contribute more and games with a low house edge contribute less, which is quite reasonable. But some online casinos take this a bit too far by excluding several games or drastically reducing game contributions.

Why do online casinos impose game restrictions? The following example gives the answer to this question.

You claim a $50 bonus with a wagering requirement of 40x. You have to play through $2000 before cashing out your bonus winnings. You try to do this by playing a game with an RTP of 99.5% and suffer a theoretical loss of $10. If you deduct this from your bonus amount, you would be making a profit of $40.

Naturally, your gain is the casino’s loss. And the casino will lose a lot of money if it allows you to unlock your bonus by playing games with high RTPs. So it’s reasonable for the online casino to restrict a few high RTP games.

The problem arises when an online casino goes too far and restricts too many games, literally forcing you to play only games with a low RTP and unfairly reducing your chance of making a profit from the bonus.

Considering the fact that online casinos profit from bonus offers in the long run, they ought to give players a reasonable chance of making a profit too.

Welcome Packages with Multiple Bonuses Are Best Avoided

A large first deposit bonus is always better than a welcome package spread over several initial deposits.

Let us try to understand this with examples.

A 100% or a 150% match bonus with a wagering requirement of 40x is a great deal compared to a welcome package comprising the following offers:

• 100% up to $300 on first deposit
• 75% up to $300 on second deposit
• 50% up to $300 on third deposit

The first deposit bonus is quite good, but the second and the third deposit bonuses are not that good because of the lower match percentage, especially when they have wagering requirements as high as 40x.

If you come across such welcome packages, check their wagering requirements. If the wagering requirement is as low as 10x or even 20x, you may consider it to be a great deal.

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Too Many Player Complaints

Do not accept a bonus if there are too many player complaints about the online casino offering it.

To find out if there are any player complaints about a particular online casino, you have to talk about it on social networking sites or online gambling forums. You can read multiple reviews about an online casino to find out if there are any complaints such as unreasonable or vague bonus terms, poor customer service, and delayed payouts.

If you sign up at an online casino that has clearly upset many players, you are in for a disappointment. Avoid such casinos and save your time and money.