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Deposit Bonuses - Slots
There's no denying that online video slots are the most popular genre of games in the online casino world. Because of this, there are a lot of opportunities to cash in on a slots deposit bonus in today's industry. The top casinos running today will have a welcome bonus slots players will want to flock to. If you don't know how to check out the Terms and Conditions, then you'll have a hard time knowing if you're actually getting good value or not. We want to help you to learn everything you need to learn to evaluate quickly and effectively slot deposit bonuses. Then you will know if what you're getting is worth it.
Slot Deposit Bonuses
The Basic Premise of a Slot Deposit Bonus
Aside from learning all the different available slots deposit methods, one of the most important things you have to know about is the slot deposit bonus. To give players an incentive to deposit, many online casinos will have a deposit bonus slots players will find appealing. This is normally a percentage match based on your deposit up to a certain maximum amount. For example, you might get a 150% match on your deposit worth up to a maximum of €300. If you were to deposit €60 with this offer, then you would pick up a bonus of €90 and have a total of €150 to play with.
There are a few different terms for some of the most popular styles of slot deposit bonuses out there. We're going to quickly describe a few of them here for you:
- Slots Welcome Bonus: This is an offer for a new player to welcome them to the casino.
- Slots Sign Up Bonus: This can mean the same thing as a welcome bonus. It can also be a special offer for signing up for an optional program like a mailing list.
- Reload Bonuses: This is a promotion for adding a deposit to an existing account.
Overall, all three of these types of slots deposit bonuses are the same thing in as far as how they're claimed and how they work. However, sometimes it's useful to have different names for them based on the occasion for claiming them. That's the convention that's used at this point in the industry as you can see in above.
The Need to Prevent Abuse
Imagine that you're a casino wanting to offer a good slots sign up bonus to take care of your players. Some people want just to create an account to pick up the bonus and leave without actually playing. Soon enough, you won't be able to offer the deal anymore because of the abuse of the promotion. To this end, there are certain protections in place when you claim a slot deposit bonus in the form of various terms and conditions.
While these terms and conditions can seem annoying at first, it helps to realise that the promotions couldn't exist without them.
We're going to cover a handful of the different types of terms, conditions and restrictions that you see for a deposit bonus slots players might find available.
Wagering (or Play-Through) Requirements
Wagering requirements (also known as play-through requirements) are the most common type of protection that an online casino has against slots deposit bonus abuse. They want to offer these deals for people who actually want to play the games. To this end, they enforce a minimum amount of wagering that has to happen before you can cash out.
These play-through requirements are virtually always based on a multiple of the size of the deposit and/or bonus itself. Most slots deposit bonuses will have a play-through in the range of 25x the total of the deposit and the bonus. For example, if you had a 125 percent slots welcome bonus with a 20x play-through on the bonus and deposit, and you deposited €50, you'd receive a bonus worth €12.50. Then you'd need to make a total of 20 * €62.50 in wagers, which comes to €1,250 before you could request a withdrawal.
Cashable vs. Non-Cashable
Sometimes you might run into a big welcome bonus slots players would love with a particularly high match percentage. Typically these ultra-large bonuses have a line in their Terms and Conditions that states that the bonus cannot be withdrawn. Instead, it can only be used for wagering, and any winnings you pick up over the size of the original bonus can be withdrawn. Additionally, once you request a cashout, the bonus amount is removed from your account.
This is an example of a non-cashable slots deposit bonus. The opposite is a cashable deal that releases to your account just like cash money once you've cleared the wagering requirements. Cashable bonuses are preferable, but they're typically balanced with smaller match percentages. There's a bit of a trade-off.
Maximum Cashout Amounts
Another way that casinos can restrict how slots deposit bonuses are handled is through the use of maximum amounts that you can cash out after claiming a specific promotion. For example, you might get a 100 percent match worth up to €500 with a €1,500 maximum cashout. While this type of restriction isn't as popular as the others, it does affect your play a lot, and it's extremely important to know about.
Consider the following. Imagine you have claimed a slot deposit bonus that has a maximum payout of €1,000. If you sit down to play a game at stakes that would make the top jackpot €5,000, then you're missing out on value. This effectively cuts the top jackpot down to a value of €1,000. This means you miss out on 80% of the value that you would get if you hit this top payout.
You have to be mindful of the top jackpots in your game. What they will be respective to the maximum cashout amount that you're allowed for the slot deposit bonuses you play with will affect your game selection and bet sizing strategies.
Game Restrictions
Sometimes you'll be allowed to play titles other than slots with certain types of bonuses. It's important to realise that the wagering requirements will usually be different for the non-slot games. That's really important to understand for players who like switching back and forth between different types of games. The difference is usually expressed as a percentage of the value of your bets that will count for the play-through requirements.
To give a quick example, suppose that you have a play-through requirement of 20x for slots, but your wagers only count as 10 percent of their face value for table games. A total of €200 in wagers would then count as €20 of the wagering requirement for these table games. €200 in play on slots would still count as €200 as usual.
This isn't typically a big deal for some players, but what's critical to realise is that just about every good deposit bonus slots players will like can also have another type of game restriction where you're only allowed to play certain titles. For example, many slots offers do not allow you to play other games at all. If you do so, then you'll forfeit your bonus and/or any winnings you've received from your play. This is a critical piece of information to look for if you're the type of player who likes playing non-slot games.
Calculating the Value of a Slot Deposit Bonus
If you want to take a few moments to do some basic mathematical analysis using simple addition, subtraction and multiplication, then you can figure out the total value of slots deposit bonuses fairly quickly. All you need to do is figure out your total wagering requirement as a monetary value and decide how much of that you'll be expected to lose on average. This will be based on the average house advantage of the games you'll be playing. This will tell you your average loss for completing the requirements. This, in turn, can be compared to the value of the bonus itself to decide if it's a good deal or not.
An Example Calculation
Suppose you have a 150% match on a deposit of €100 with a 20x play-through requirement on both the deposit and bonus. For the sake of this example, suppose that this offer is cashable, and the average house advantage of the slots you'll play is about 2.5%.
Your total play-through will be 20 * €250 for a total of €5,000. If we take 2.5% of that €5,000 in wagers that we'll make, then we see that we'll be expected to lose €125 on average over that time. Since we're picking up a €150 bonus for that same period, we expect to profit €25 overall from completing the wagering requirements. As you can see, this is a pretty good deal.
It's critical to realise that this type of calculation is really only good for slot deposit bonuses that are cashable. Non-cashable bonuses don't quite work this way as you'll be left with cash losses once the play-through is complete. You'll have to make these up from winnings from your bonus.
Instructive Slots Deposit Bonus Examples
All of these terms, conditions and calculations can be tricky to catch at first, so we're going to give you some specific examples of bonuses. Keep in mind that we're only going to be looking for a handful of things that we can use to decide if a bonus is a good deal or not. Consider the following items:
- The match percentage
- The maximum bonus amount
- The wagering requirements
- Whether the bonus is cashable or not
- The maximum cashout amount (if applicable)
- Any game restrictions for non-slot titles
Keeping this simple list of six items in mind will make it much easier to navigate the terms, conditions and fine print that come along with these deals. Now let's look at some examples.
Example 1: Big bonus, big requirements
As we mentioned earlier, the biggest offers out there in terms of pure match percentages are typically the ones that have the largest wagering requirements. They also tend to have more restrictive terms overall.
For this example, we'll look at a deal for a 300% match worth up to €1,500. The play-through is 30 times the bonus and deposit, and it's non-cashable. This is pretty typical for a slots sign up bonus, and it will have no maximum cashout though it's only allowed for slots play.
If we go point by point, we'll see that the match percentage is average, the maximum bonus amount is okay, and the wagering requirements are high (which is very bad). The bonus not being cashable is a negative, and though it's cool that it doesn't have a maximum cashout, it's more of a neutral feature instead of being an outstanding advantage. When you add in the fact that you can't play any other titles than slots with this offer, we can say that it's not a great deal overall.
Example 2: Simple terms for a small bonus
Most modern online casinos have reload bonuses with terms like the following. We'll look at a 50% match bonus worth up to €100 with a 20x play-through on the bonus only (not the deposit). Suppose it can only be used for slots, and it's completely cashable with no maximum cashout.
The match percentage is low, and the maximum bonus amount is low. That's not as much of a factor here since these reloads are typically given weekly or monthly, so you can cash in on it over and over again. The wagering requirements are exceptionally good, and so is the fact that there is no maximum cashout amount. Only being able to play for slots is a little bit of a drag, but overall, this is a very favourable deal for the players.
Overview
The key thing to realise with the analysis of these deals is that a deposit bonus slots players want, will have to balance out the most important of the six items we discussed above. Good wagering requirements are typically the most important though an offer being non-cashable can really put a dampener on things, and everything else comes into play after you consider that. If you follow this guide, then you'll have no problem navigating the fine print that comes along with slots bonuses in today's industry.