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Online Casino Bonuses Explained 
 
Online casino gambling is a past time that has never been more popular and the search for your first online casino or a switch to another one will inevitably present you with choices, most obviously concerning what the bonus offerings actually mean. These are important to understand because most come with terms and conditions that will be strictly applied and can result in the forfeit of any bonus money that you are awarded by the casino operator. But they are easy to get a handle on.

Sign-up Casino Cash Bonus

When you first take a looking for a new casino to play at you will see a great number of well known and new casinos offering to give you money once you've signed up and deposited some money. Most will be in the form of 100% of whatever you deposit up to their own defined limit and this could be up to £500 and even more.

This is great but you should remember it will be in your account as “bonus cash” which will be separate from your real money balance. It will remain bonus money until you complete the steps outlined in the T&Cs and will likely be removed if you don't. Once you have it will become usable as real money.

Reload Bonus

After your initial deposit you will be offered from time to time by individual operators a reload bonus. This just means you'll get another cash bonus that matches part or all of your top-up deposit. Same rules will apply to these as the original deposit.

Bonus Money Wagering Requirements

Your sign-up bonus cash becoming real money will depend on what is called “wagering requirements”. The most important thing to understand is the detail involved in these. Nearly all will involve you having to bet, or wager, a multiple of your bonus, say 30 times (30x). So if you get given a £10 bonus for a £10 deposit then it will become available to you once you have bet £300 on the site. So its really useful as a time saving process to take a look at UK casino review sites like SuperLenny where you can see a full appraisal with their wagering requirements of many casinos in one place.

Wagering Requirement Contributions

Following on from above which is easy to understand things get a bit more complicated. The good old fashioned casino games like blackjack and craps have quite small advantages for the house, indeed if you play Blackjack Surrender really well there is no house edge at all. Therefore it makes sense that the contribution from the really low house advantage games is lower than other games like slots.

When you prepare to sign-up you will be offered the list of games and their contributions. There is no trickery here and as you play your progress towards receiving your full bonus will be displayed in your account details but it is important to know what is going on so you are apprised of how the T&Cs are performing.

Time Limits

Meeting the conditions of your bonus will always be time limited which is going to vary from 7 days to a month. You will have a count down in your account page.

Fair Play

Of course people will try and come up with ideas of how to play a game to bet the most, lose the least, and pick up their bonus as quickly as possible. There are many of these like playing Red and Black at the same time on a roulette game. This type of play will just be ignored by the software used to process your bonus and so there is no point doing it. Each casino operator will have a few of these rules so just take a quick look if you are particularly concerned but really most people won't fall foul of them.

Free Spins

Many online gambling sites also offer free spins as well as a deposit bonus. This means you can play set slots (outlined in the T&Cs) with free spins of a set value. Winnings from these spins will then have wagering requirements just as above for the bonus cash.

Bonus Abuse

There are some relatively new companies out on the internet who are offering money to people for their security details and photo ID so that they can have multiple accounts at one casino or on a software platform that runs multiple casinos. They then manipulate the games in-order to collect the bonuses. This may or may not be legal but it certainly is a risky thing for you give away all you security facts. The advice is not to do it.

Are Cash Bonuses For You?

Most importantly for every player is to think about agreeing to sign-up bonuses or other types of bonuses in terms purely of does it make sense to you. If you are a regular player who knows that you are going play enough to earn your bonus through your normal activity then it makes sense to pick that extra cash. But the really sensible advice if you are an occasional player is to ignore the bonus and just sign-up as a regular player. You don't need the pressure in time or money to try and gamble more than you intended just to pick up a bonus. This is never the right thing to do.

Safety

Always try to gamble responsibly. Not just in the amount of time and money you are devoting to your casino action but that the casino operator you choose has a license from the United Kingdom Gambling Commission. At the bottom of the home page of every site there will be a link to their current license. It just takes a few seconds to click on it and check.
 

 
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