The Worst Online Casino Bonus Terms and Conditions You Should Avoid Like the Plague
We live in a golden age of online casino gambling. Players from all over the globe have access to tens of thousands of high-quality online casinos. And all these casinos have one thing in common – they offer lucrative promotional offers like welcome bonuses, no deposit bonuses and free spins.
While most of these bonuses are worth your time, there are quite a few that should be avoided at all costs. These are shady offers with one-sided terms that solely benefit the casinos. In this guide, you will learn how to quickly identify such bonuses and pick the right offers that benefit you, not the casino.
What are Bad Bonus Terms?
A casino bonus is like a freebie designed to encourage players to do certain things. Some bonuses are given as a reward for signing up at the casino. Others are designed to encourage players to make deposits and play real money games.
So, how can any free gift be bad? It all begins with the central premise of a cash bonus or free spins offer – your ability to use them to place wagers and win money. A good bonus gives you a fair chance to win real money at the casino.
In contrast, a bad bonus would reduce your odds of success, often drastically to the point of zero. How do casinos achieve this? They do it by framing a set of one-sided and unfair bonus terms.
How to Spot a Bad Bonus
Spotting a bad bonus is not an easy task. Unfortunately, this involves reading the bonus terms in full. We know it is a deeply boring and tiresome task. But if you want to stop a casino from taking advantage of you, reading the fine print is essential!
Online casinos are legally required to provide fully transparent bonus terms. This can often involve long pages of boring, complex walls of text. Finding the relevant bonus terms to look for may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack!
This is where we can help you out – in the next section, we will provide detailed descriptions of all the bonus terms that help create a bad casino bonus.
If you want to become an expert at online casino bonuses, look out for these shady bonus terms in particular:
Excessively High Wagering Requirements
All online casino bonuses come with wagering requirements. If this number is above 60 -70x, it is a sure sign of an atrocious casino bonus. Avoid bonus offers with high wagering requirements at all costs, even if they promise hundreds of dollars in bonus cash/benefits!- Murky Game Eligibility Rules
Does the terms clearly specify a list of games that are NOT eligible for bonus play? If not, then think twice before using the bonus. Casinos can void winnings if you play ineligible games with bonus funds. If such games are not clearly listed, you could end up losing your bonus/winnings and wasting your valuable time. - Vague, Open-ended Terms
Bonus terms should be clear cut and easy to understand, with no grey areas. If any of the rules sound deliberately ambiguous, giving the casino the freedom to interpret certain outcomes at its discretion, is a clear red flag. Such terms are designed to give casinos the power to void bonuses and winnings. - Harsh Penalties for Early Cashout
Early withdrawal of bonuses is not permitted at most casinos. However, the good ones often offer a chance at early cashout of winnings, provided you are willing to forsake some of the bonus benefits. Instead, if a casino imposes harsh penalties for early cashout (account bans and confiscation of winnings) it is not a good sign.
Excessively High Wagering RequirementsFace Value vs “Actual Value”: How to Calculate the Bonus Estimated Value
Many rookie players make the common mistake of picking a bonus based on its face value. They see a “$500 bonus” or “200% bonus” offer and immediately jump in to claim such offers. This is a bad move that could end in disappointment.
By reading the casino bonus terms, you can take a wiser, more cautious approach. The bonus terms often hide a lot of interesting aspects about a bonus. You can easily find the real or estimated value of any casino bonus if you take the time to read its bonus terms.
You just need to find the following things to assess the true value of a casino bonus:
Bonus Amount
Don’t look just at percentages. Find out the exact amount you will receive as a bonus. For example, in a 200% deposit match bonus, if you plan to deposit $20, you will get $40 as your bonus amount.
If the 200% bonus from the previous example came with a 10x wagering requirement on bonus, you will have to use the $40 to place bets worth $400 before you become eligible to make a withdrawal request on your bonus funds.
House Edge (RTP)
The house edge is the percentage that a casino is expected to retain from your wagers in the long run. It is the mathematical advantage built into all gambling games to ensure that casinos make a steady profit.
In online casino games, this is represented as Return to Player, or RTP. If a slot has an RTP of 96%, it means that the house edge is 4%. Just subtract the stated RTP of any game from 100 to find the house edge.
Armed with these three variables, you can calculate the estimated value of any casino bonus using the following simple formula:
Estimated Value = (Wagering requirement x House Edge) – Bonus Amount.
If the result is a positive number, the bonus is good. However, if the result from this formula is a negative number, it indicates that the bonus is not worth taking. It is a bad bonus that has a high chance of wasting your hard-earned money.
Check out the examples below to learn how to evaluate a casino bonus in simple steps:
- If you deposit $100, you will get an extra $200 as a bonus
- Consider that you will use the bonus on a slot with RTP 97%, or house edge 3%
- First, multiply the 40x wagering requirement with the house edge to get 120
- Subtract bonus amount $200 from 120 and you get -80.
- This is not a great bonus.
- You deposit $50 and get a $50 bonus
- Multiplying 20 wagering by the same 3% house edge, we get 60.
- Subtracting the $50 bonus from 60, we get a +10.
- This means that the bonus has a high chance of netting you winners.
Some Other Notable Bad Bonus Terms
A sticky bonus is one where the actual bonus amount always stays with the casino, no matter how much you win. The bonus amount is “stuck” to the casino, hence the quirky name. Sticky bonuses are bad because they give you a false impression of a large bonus.
Here is how a sticky bonus works. Imagine that you get $200 as a sticky bonus. After using the bonus and completing your wagering requirement, say you have $400 left. If it was a normal bonus, you could have cashed out the entire amount.
However, since it is a sticky bonus, the original $200 will stay with the casino. That sounds incredibly disappointing, right? Players always have bad feelings towards casinos that offer such bonuses. These days, many casinos have started offering fresh new versions of sticky bonuses to remove the stigma.
For example, some sites allow players to continue using a sticky bonus for a limited time even after the withdrawal of original winnings. Still, if you have the option between a sticky and non-sticky bonus, we recommend that you pick the non-sticky variant.
This is a bonus term that flies under the radar of many new players. You don’t have time on your side for the completion of bonus wagering requirements. All wagering formalities have to be completed before the end of the bonus validity period.
Depending on the type of the bonus and the casino’s discretion, the time available could be anywhere from 24 hours to a week, or even a month. When claiming larger bonuses that go into the hundreds of dollars, always take a good look at the expiry period.
Avoid such bonuses if you have to complete high wagering requirements within 24-48 hours. It is often humanly impossible to fulfil such terms. And if you fail to do it, the casino will coolly cancel everything! Better opt-out of such bonuses than waste your money and time, we always say!
A bonus may have incredibly attractive wagering terms, but it will still be a bad bonus if the cashout limit is kept too low. With this bonus term, the casino decides in advance how much you can legally withdraw from your bonus winnings.
With free, 100% no deposit bonuses, the cashout limit is usually an as small number like $100. Even if you have $150 or $200 in your account after the bonus wagering a no deposit offer, you will still be allowed to withdraw up to the cashout limit of $100.
The cashout limit tends to be higher with paid/deposit bonuses. Usually, the casino will set the limit as a multiplier on your original deposit. For example, if the cashout limit is 10x your deposit and you deposited $100 to claim the bonus, you can expect to withdraw $1000 from the bonus.
Always check the cashout limit and decide if you are comfortable with that number. Also, check if other casinos have similar limits. If the cashout limit is too low, especially on deposit bonuses, it is a sign of a bad bonus.
At some casinos, you are free to withdraw any amount from your available balance, so long as all wagering requirements are fulfilled. However, such casinos are few and far between. The majority of sites have capped withdrawals, with daily, weekly, and monthly restrictions.
Just as in the cashout limits, you have to decide for yourself if the payout limits are acceptable to your tastes. Again, compare the figures to limits from other casinos to see if the restrictions seem too high. Always try to pick bonuses from casinos that provide players more freedom for quick and easy cashouts.
Not all casino bonuses have this restriction, but it is still fairly common in the industry these days. The casino will specify that players who use certain payment methods like e-wallets for deposits will not able to claim a particular bonus. We prefer bonus offers that don’t care which payment method you use.
Do keep in mind that this rule is not a deal-breaker, but more of an inconvenience. If you are joining a casino for the first time, you might end up feeling disappointed to find that you can’t claim that tasty welcome bonus due to your preferred payment method! Spotting this rule early will help you avoid such situations.
Ideally, you want to finish the wagering requirements as quickly as possible, while causing minimal damage to your casino balance. The rule related to game weightage for wagering contributions is a huge hurdle here, especially if you don’t know how this rule works.
The simple explanation is this – all game categories at the casinos are ranked or weighted differently as far as bonus wagering is concerned.
Here is a sample of a weight distribution:
- Slots – 100% (always)
- Roulette, Video Poker – 10%
- Blackjack, Baccarat – 5%
- Craps, Progressive jackpots – 0%
If you want to clear the wagering requirement quickly, you have to rely almost exclusively on video slots. A $100 bet on slots will reflect as $100 for wagering purposes. But if you use the same $100 on roulette, it will only count as $10 for the purpose of clearing your wagering target.
The percentages for roulette, blackjack, poker and other table games may vary at different sites. But they all usually stay well below 25%. Likewise, slots, lotto games, scratch cards and bingo titles usually have 100% contribution, since they have lower RTPs than the other categories.
Conclusion – Do These Things to Get the Best Bonus Offers
At online casinos, the smart thing to do is to try and squeeze the maximum value out of freebies and bonuses. As long as you stay within the rules, you can avoid the penalties of “bonus abuse.” There is a line between that and using bonus terms to your advantage.
Use the following standard policies and precautions to use bonuses like a pro:
- Always read the fine print (bonus T&C) before claiming any promotional offer.
- If you have any doubts, contact casino support and seek answers.
- Focus on specific terms like wagering requirements and cashout limits to decide if a bonus is worth your time.
- Use all bonuses without delay after claiming and try to complete the wagering requirements as soon as possible.
- Compare bonus terms at different online casinos to understand the “normal” range of acceptable bonus restrictions and find good/bad offers.
- Withdraw your bonus winnings as soon as the casino allows you!
