Various bonuses (sign up or loyalty ones) have represented the backbone of the online casino marketing industry for years. Savvy online casino players know exactly how to take advantage of such bonuses, although that doesn’t mean you have to be one of them to benefit. Knowing a couple of things about where you need to look to properly gauge the true value of a bonus will certainly help you get some real extra value out of your winnings.
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Online casino bonus redemption
Being the main marketing weapon of all online casinos, the sign-up bonus is always advertised in a prominent spot everywhere, even on affiliate websites. Obviously, the bigger the advertised bonus is, the more players it’s supposed to draw in. Does that mean that size is everything when it comes to online casino bonuses? Not by a long-shot. As a matter of fact, the advertised size of the bonus may not even begin to tell the story behind it.
First of all, whenever a bonus is advertised, you can be pretty certain it’s the maximum amount that’s on display. Most sign-up bonuses are match bonuses, meaning that they represent a set percentage of the player’s deposit. A 100% match bonus will give you exactly as much bonus money as you deposit. A 1000% match, will give you ten times as much.
The bottom line is, it’s the % match that really determines the initial size of your bonus and not the maximum attainable amount. If a site tells you that you can get $1,000 on your first deposit, but in order to get that, you need to deposit $2,000, you may not be prepared to go through with it, so there isn’t really any sort of value in that offer for you.
Once you clear away the percentage match issue, it’s time to look deeper. Simply getting a decent size match on your deposit doesn’t mean the bonus carries good value either, it’s just one more hurdle out of the way, nothing more and nothing less.
The true measure of the value of a bonus is given by its redemption requirements. Although some NZ casinos online sometimes advertise them as ‘free’ money, there is no such thing in the online casino (or online poker) industry.
A site may give you money upfront that you can play with at the real money tables, but rest assured, you will not be allowed to cash that money out until you fulfill the redemption requirements. Redemption requirements (also known as play through or turn-over requirements in casino gambling), are basically about real money play: players are only allowed to cash out (or only granted their bonuses) when they’ve wagered enough money at the tables, exposing it to the effects of the house edge.
The turn-over requirements can be lax or harsh, depending on the policies of the casino you’re playing at. As a matter of fact, some bonuses are damn near impossible to unlock on account of the harshness of the redemption requirements.
While poker bonus redemption requirements are relatively straightforward, casino bonuses can be quite tricky in this respect. Most casinos do not allow bonus redemption on games with extremely tiny house edges and bets that carry close to 50-50 odds (like the red/black in roulette). That can be quite a problem if the very reason you sign up is to play roulette. Fortunately, there are always alternatives and casinos which allow bonus redemption on all sorts of games.
Our Recommended Casino Sites that offer decent bonuses are:
Guts Casino and Buzzluck
