Casino offers can be a great way to boost your profits alongside sports offers such as free bets and refunds. However, it's important to understand how casino offers work so that you don't make mistakes that could cost you money and that you're able to extract the maximum amount of value from each and every one.
This guide is aimed at individuals who are considering getting into casino offers and will cover the following topics:
What are casino offers?
There are various types of casino offers. Some of the most common types are:
- Deposit bonuses for new players
- No-Deposit bonuses for new players
- Reload offers
- Free Spins
Deposit Bonuses
These are the most common type of casino offer and consist of a bonus being awarded when a new player registers and makes their first deposit. The amount of bonus you receive will vary depending on the casino and are usually a percentage of your initial deposit up to a maximum amount.
For example, a 100% deposit bonus up to £300 would mean that if you made a deposit of £100, you'd receive a £100 bonus on top of your deposit. If you deposited £300, you would receive a £300 bonus. However, if you deposited more than £300, you would only receive the maximum bonus of £300.
No-Deposit Bonuses
These are bonuses which are given to new players without the need to make a deposit. You simply register an account and a bonus will be credited. As you'd expect, no-deposit bonuses are usually of a much smaller value than deposit bonuses as there is no risk involved. They also generally come with much higher wagering requirements.
Reload Offers
If you've done matched betting before with bookmaker offers then you'll be familiar with reload offers. These are offers which can be claimed by existing customers. They are usually deposit bonuses or free spin offers.
Free Spins
Some casinos offer customers free spins on selected slots instead of bonuses. There isn't much difference between free spins and bonuses except that you are limited to what games you can play.
Wagering requirements
The majority of casino bonuses come with wagering requirements. As you are usually given a bonus simply for making a deposit, wagering requirements are applied so that you can't simply withdraw your deposit & bonus without placing any bets.
The level of wagering requirements vary between bonuses. Some bonuses have high wagering requirements up to x99 and some have low wagering of x1.
If a bonus has a wagering requirement of x50, it means that you must wager 50 times the amount of the bonus before you can withdraw the bonus and any winnings. For example, if you received a £10 bonus, you would have to place £500 worth of bets to withdraw your bonus + winnings.
Free spin offers also sometimes come with wagering requirements and the wagering amount is applied to the amount you win from using the free spins. For example, if you received 20 free spins with x5 wagering and won £20 from using them, you would have to wager a further £100 (5 x £20) in order to withdraw your winnings.
Don't let the above put you off casino offers as there are many which have x1 - x5 wagering which you'll find you can make a profit on a lot more often. The offers with high wagering are known as high-risk casino offers and those with low wagering are low-risk offers. We'll be taking a look at the difference between them along with some examples below.
low-risk casino offers
If you're just starting out with casino offers then low-risk offers is what you should be focusing on. These are offers which usually require you to deposit or wager a relatively small amount in order to receive a bonus or free spins which have low wagering requirements.
EXAMPLES
Offer: Deposit & wager £10 to receive a £10 bonus with x3 wagering
This offer requires you to wager £10 to receive a £10 bonus. Once your bonus has been credited, you need to place £30 (3 x £10) of bets in order to withdraw your bonus + winnings.
Offer: Wager £10 on slots and get 10 free spins with no wagering
This offer requires you to wager £10 to receive a 10 free spins. Anything you win from the free spins will be added to your cash balance and can be withdrawn.
As you can see from the above, you are not risking much money and have a relatively good chance of making a profit.
In order to stand the best chance of making a profit and ensuring that you're getting the most value out of a casino offer, you need to make sure that every offer you do has a positive expected value. You'll see this labelled on matched betting sites as 'EV'. We'll discuss Estimated Value more further into this article but in brief, expected value is the amount you can expect to earn from an offer on average. The returns from casino offers vary and so you won't make the expected value every time you play an offer. Sometime it will be more, sometimes less and the EV is the average should you play the offer an infinite amount of times.
You'll find a number of low-risk casino offers on many matched betting sites. Profit Squad are perhaps the best site for casino offers and generally list a lot more than other sites which mainly focus on sports offers.
high-risk casino offers
High-risk casino offers should only be attempted by those who have a lot of experience in casino offers already and who have a relatively large sized bank (£5000+).
High-risk casino offers can be extremely profitable but as the name suggests, they come with a high level of risk. The risk comes from having to deposit relatively large amounts of money to receive large bonuses which have high wagering requirements attached to them.
EXAMPLE
Offer: Deposit £300 to receive a £300 bonus with x40 wagering
This offer requires you to deposit up to £300 to receive a £300 bonus. Once your bonus has been credited, you need to place £12,000 (40 x £300) of bets in order to withdraw your bonus + winnings.
£12,000 worth of bets seems like a lot and it is. However, there is a lot of value in these offers when they're played correctly. Stake sizes, bonus type, wagering requirements and more all play a role in the overall EV of a high-risk casino offer. You can't calculate the EV of a high-risk offer with an EV formula or a standard EV calculator which you may find on many matched betting sites or across the internet as this formula assumes that you'll complete the wagering every time. However, with high-risk offers, it's possible to bust out and lose your deposit & bonus before wagering is complete. Therefore, in order to determine an accurate EV for these kind of offers, you need to use an advanced casino calculator. There are not many worthy ones around with the exception of ProfitSquad, EV Maximiser and CasinoCalculator.co.uk. These calculators run hundreds of thousands of simulations based on a number of variables to give you a near-accurate EV of almost any casino offer. If you're serious about casino offers and are considering attempting high-risk offers, we strong advise you to check out the tools, strategies and guides Profit Squad offer.
The reason you will need a large bank to attempt high-risk casino offers is that you will go through good and bad streaks. As you are depositing relatively large sums of money, the bad streaks can deplete your bank quite fast. However, so long as the offers you are doing have a positive expected value, you will see a positive return in the long term.
EXPECTED VALUE (EV)
Expected value is the most important aspect of playing casino offers. If an offer has a -EV, it means that the casino has the edge and if an offer has a +EV, it means that you, the player has the edge.
You should only participate in offers which have a Positive Expected Value (+EV)!
If you only play casino offers which are +EV, then you will make a profit in the long term. You may lose money on some of the offers but over time, you will make more than you lose.
The Expected Value of an offer is how much you can expect to make on average if you played the offer an infinite number of times. For example, if the EV of a particular casino offer was £5, you may win £20 one time, lose £5 another time, win £17 the next time and so on, but on average, you will make £5 profit.
Remember to always use an appropriate casino calculator when deciding whether or not to do a casino offer. Thankfully, many casino sites will display the EV of an offer which can help but if you come across an offer which isn't listed on the site, you may have to calculate it yourself.
VARIANCE
We've discussed that EV is the amount you will make from an offer on average. This is because with casino offers, sometimes you will win money and sometimes you will lose money and the amount of money that you win and lose will vary each time.
This is called Variance.
Consider betting on the toss of a coin where you double your money if it lands on heads and lose your stake if it lands on tails. On average, you could expect to break even as there is an equal chance of the coin landing on either side. However, it may land on heads ten times in a row which would mean that you have made ten times your stake. If you kept betting however, eventually, you would break even. This is down to the law of averages. The fact that you won't break even every two tosses is down to variance.
Below is a typical profit chart from someone who does both sports and casino offers. You'll notice that the blue line (sports offers profit) is consistent as you generally shouldn't be losing money on them. However, the red line (casino offers) goes up and down. This is because of variance. However, you'll also notice that despite having some losing periods, the general direction of the red line is upwards. This shows us that if you only play casino offers which have a +EV, you will make a profit over time.
Experiencing losing streaks is not pleasant and it can take it's toll of you mentally. This is why it is an extremely good idea to record all of your profit alongside the EV of the offers so that when you do incur some losses, you can look at your chart and view the bigger picture and be confident that you will eventually be heading in the right direction.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM CASINO OFFERS
We've explained how profiting from casino offers is possible and that so long as you stick with offers which have a +EV, you will make a profit over time. The only thing left to do is find the offers which have a +EV.
Many matched betting sites list a number of +EV casino offers on a daily basis. Most sites focus on sports offers but there are some which also focus heavily on casino offers. Profit Squad is one of those sites and regularly list more casino offers on their daily calendar than any other matched betting site. They also have excellent training for those who wish to venture into high-risk casino offers and provide one of the best and most advanced casino calculators available. If you're considering trying casino offers, we strongly recommend you check them out.
Here at MatchedBettingSites.com, we also have some guides for casino offers which have a +EV. We're adding to this list on a regular basis and so please check back regularly.
RETURN TO PLAYER (RTP)
Every game at a casino has an RTP, which stands for 'Return To Player' and is the amount of money the game will pay out to players based on the amount that is put in.
For example, blackjack has an RTP of around 99.5% which means that on average, for every £100 which is bet, £99.50 is returned to the player. The additional 0.5% is the casinos edge, also known as 'the house edge'.
All casino games have an RTP of below 100% as if they were over 100%, the game would be paying out more than is put in and the casino would lose money. The casinos having an edge on every game is how they make money. However, by factoring in things like casino bonuses and free spins, it's possible to turn things around so that we, the players, have the edge.
Casino games have different RTP's and so to ensure that we are getting the best value, we should play the one's with the highest payouts. Usually, this is blackjack, providing you play it correctly. See our perfect blackjack strategy guide for more information.
Sometimes, casinos restrict you to specific games or types of games for bonuses. The most common game used for casino bonuses are slots. The RTP of each slot differs and so you need to make sure that you are playing on a slot which has a high RTP as these pay out more than ones with a lower RTP. Choosing the right game to play on while using your bonus can have a dramatic affect on the EV of the bonus.
You can usually find the RTP of any slot with a simple Google search. However, some matched betting sites such as ProfitSquad have a slots list where you can search for the RTP of a slot or view the slots with the highest RTP.
HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU MAKE FROM CASINO OFFERS?
Just like with sports offers, the amount of profit you will make depends on the number of offers you do and the EV of each of those offers and so no accurate figure can be given as to the level of profit you will make. However, what we can say is that there are a lot of casino offers available on a daily basis. By claiming these offers alongside sports offers, you should be able to significantly increase you monthly earnings.
Take a look at the screenshot below from the ProfitSquad daily calendar from today.
Just today, there are 24 casino offers listed, each with in EV of between £1 - £35 and totaling a whopping £111!
This alone shows us the potential profits which you can make from casino offers.
conclusion
Casino offers can be extremely profitable and add to your overall profits each month. There usually is some risk involved with them which is why you should start off with low-risk casino offers until you are comfortable trusting the EV of the offers before considering higher-risk offers.
To summarise:
Wagering Requirements - The amount you must wager to be able to withdraw your bonus and/or winnings. These are usually a multiple of the bonus amount, deposit amount or both.
Low-Risk Offers - Casino offers which require a relatively small deposit or wager and/or have low wagering requirements.
High-Risk Offers - Casino offers which require a large deposit or wager and/or have high wagering requirements.
Expected Value (EV) - How much you can expected to make from the offer on average. It is not a guarantee of how much profit you will make each and every time.
Variance - The fact that you will profit from some offers and lose on others.
Return To Player (RTP) - How much on average a casino game will return to the player based on how much is staked.