If you’re relatively new to casino gaming, the bonuses offered by the top casinos can look pretty incredible. Depositing an amount of money and seeing it tripled by the casino? Yes please! It’s usually shortly after you sign up for these bonuses that you discover actually the casino wants you to go through something called “wagering requirements”. These can be irritating to a new player, and pretty confusing too. They are, however, ever-present when you sign up and avail of an offer, so they are worth getting to grips with.
If you take a look at any of the casinos on offer at casinoszonder.com, you’ll see that the offers they have in place require you to wager any winnings from the bonuses a set number of times. This can be as low as 35 times – or lower, usually, for a sports betting bonus – and sometimes as high as 70. This can leave you wondering what you need to do to get hold of your winnings, and sometimes if you will even have any winnings left at the end of playing. So it is worth having a look at what these restrictions mean to you, and whether it makes a bonus less worthwhile.
First, why do wagering restrictions even exist?
They didn’t, to begin with, but then people would cash in a bonus at an online casino, put all of that money on one 1:1 bet such as choosing Red at the roulette table. If they lost, no harm, it wasn’t their money anyway. If they won – and 1:1 bets come off pretty often – they had effectively just helped themselves to a bundle of free money. Casinos need to make a profit, so that wasn’t going to fly.
What do my wagering restrictions mean in practice?
So let’s say you bet your bonus money and win $20. Wagering requirements of 35x will mean that you need to bet through as much as $700 to actually withdraw those winnings. Until you have bet that amount, you will have two separate balances – the bonus balance and the “real money”, and any bets you make will come from the bonus amount. If you exhaust the bonus balance before $700 is bet, then you won’t get to withdraw that money.
Isn’t that very restrictive?
Well, it can seem that way, and it really depends on how successful your wagering is. If you win money while betting the bonus balance, it is added to the balance and eligible to be wagered towards that total. So if you are at a casino that lets low-risk bets count towards the requirements – and not all of them do – then you can keep betting on 1:1 bets, and the hope will be that you win enough to see you through the wagering period. Sometimes, you’ll have to wager it all on slots, and that can be riskier, but you should make sure to read the terms and conditions before qualifying for the offer so you know where you stand.
Will I really ever have anything left over after wagering?
You might, and you might not. The best advice is always to give preference to offers with as few caveats as possible. If you can wager that money out on a game like blackjack or roulette, you do stand a good chance of receiving your winnings back, and may even augment them.