If you are new to the world of casinos and advantage play it can be confusing deciphering the difference between no-risk casino offers, low-risk and then high-risk casino offers. So I thought I would put together a short guide to help you understand the fundamental differences between the three.
If you have no clue what I’m talking about it may be best to head to the Advantage Play explainer page first to familiarise yourself with the key concepts.
This guide will hopefully help to steer you when you start to dip your toe into the increasingly popular casino offers.
So without further ado, let’s jump right in.
What are no-risk casino offers?
Perhaps the lowest in supply of the three types of offers are no-risk casino offers. These do exactly what they say on the tin, they allow you to play with some sort of bonus without risking any of your own money.
Why do they do this?
Well the whole point is to get you spinning in the hope that you carry on after you finish your free spins, thus making them back their money (and more) from their offer to you.
Most slots are designed to make you think you are just one spin away from a bonus/wild/freebie and therefore many punters carry on for a few more spins in the hope they win even more.
We retain our advantage (know as advantage play) by stopping when the bonus/free spins runs out, not risking any of our own money. These promos will never make you rich but they can provide a nice unexpected profit boost when you’re least expecting it.
It’s also totally risk free so why would you not do these offers?
These freebies tend to come in two guises: Free Spins or Cash Bonuses (with wagering attached).
Free Spins
These are probably the most common offers in the no-risk arena. Most bookmakers and online casinos will offer you anywhere from 1-20 spins completely free of charge.
Again, in order to retain our advantage, we immediately stop with whatever profit we have gained from the free spins (sometimes nothing!) and move on to another offer.
Free Cash Bonuses
These once more do exactly what they say on the tin, with one caveat, wagering requirements. Obviously a casino isn’t just going to give you free money!
Usually you will get a low cash value amount which you will have to wager anywhere from 10 to 40 times.
So, for example, in this William Hill offer you are given a £5 bonus on the slot “Rainbow Riches”. In order to turn this bonus into cash you need to wager this bonus 30 times. That’s £150 worth of spins. As you can see the chance of you making it through the wagering are slim.
However, if you manage to get a big win early on then you will be able to get through with ease.
This is the hope with these types of offers (free spins too), that you hit a big win and then then walk away with a tasty risk-free profit.
This is exactly what happened with my biggest casino win to date. I took 5 free 10p spins on Laser Fruit at William Hill and walked away with a cool £108.24 without risking a penny of my own money.
Read my detailed post on where to find free spins and risk-free casino bonuses to find out more.
Freeplay
This is something that is championed by 888 and a select bunch of other casinos. This is where you get a set cash value of “free-play”.
But it works out the same as the other cash bonuses because anything you win is turned into a bonus which needs to be wagering anywhere from 30 to 50 times. Making profiting difficult but not impossible.
Now we’ve covered the easy no-risk casino offers, it’s time to move up a level to the low risk offers.
Low-Risk Casino Offers
Low-risk casino offers mark the step from not using our cash to try and make profits to risking our own money to make potentially much more.
There are various different types of low risk offers but the key element to remember with these offers is that your money is not tied in (or “stuck’) to the offer. Should you wish to withdraw, you can at any time.
They usually take the format of “wager X get X free spins” or “wager X get X bonus”.
The other low-risk offers tend to revolve around depositing e.g. “deposit £50 for 50 free spins”.
Wager X for X Spins/Bonus
These offers are fairly self-explanatory. The online casino or bookmaker expect you to wager a set amount for a pre-determined amount of free spins which are usually only available to use on the same game you were wagering on initially.
Sometimes winnings from these free spins will be subject to wagering, other times they won’t. It depends on the amount of spins and which casino/bookie you are using.
Likewise for the “wager £10 for £5 bonus” style offers, however there will always be wagering on that bonus. If it’s a good offer it may only be 5-10 times the bonus amount.
A newer trend is giving you time instead of a bonus or spins.
For example, “wager £20 get 1 minute of unlimited spins”. I personally do not like these offers because all it takes is one poor bonus round/time-consuming wild spin to use up all of your time and your left with hardly anything to show for your minute of unlimited spins.
Of course the risk you run with low-risk casino offers is that you lose money on the initial wagering and even though nearly all casino slots are over 90% RTP (Return to Player) you’ll be amazed by the amount of dead spins/poor winning spins.
If you are badly down after the initial wagering you can still make it all back with a bonus round or wild spin once you are using your bonus so don’t give up hope until it’s over!
As the majority of slot picked for these offers are medium to high variance you tend to either end wagering quite a bit up or a similar amount down.
The key is volume, just keep ploughing through the offers to maximise your EV (expected value) and make a rule about what you are happy to commit (and possibly lose) to the initial wagering of an offer.
If an offer is wager £100 get 50 free spins and you’ve set your limit at £20 then don’t attempt this offer. Although incredibly unlikely, you could lose a huge chunk of that £100, which will be more than your bank (and conscious) can afford.
Deposit for X free spins
This are in essence a simpler offer, but can become quite complicated in practice.
The method is supposedly simple: deposit the amount, and click/accept/find your free spins and play them. However, that rarely tends to be the case.
Although it usually doesn’t say anywhere specifically, you should wager your deposit for account health. If you just deposit, play your free spins and then withdraw your deposit and your winnings you’ll find the offers quickly dry up.
Try to use very low variance/house edge games such as Blackjack so you retain as much of your deposit as possible. I find Blackjack far too tedious so I tend to use speed roulette.
Always check the terms to see what you can/can’t wager your deposit on.
Casino quirks and the “dance”
For other casinos you will have to complete what is known as the “dance” because they use cash first (yours) on their promos. This is basically, deposit, wager deposit, activate free spins, withdraw, play free spins, reverse withdrawal and then finally withdraw everything.
Did you get all of that?
Luckily there is a way round this for those casinos that operate a sports book.
After you’ve:
- Wagered your deposit you can place a sports book bet with your cash to get it out of the way whilst your play your free spins.
- Completed you initial wagering on a “wager X get X” offer you can do the same process, making sure that the event you have bet on settles after you think you will have completed wagering your bonus/spins.
With a bit of luck your sports book bet will be lost into the exchange and you can just withdraw your bonus/spin winnings or use that to fund future offers.
Otherwise you can just withdraw the lot if the sport bet wins.
Be wary of any minimum withdrawal limits/charges and deposit fees. Always take these into consideration before undertaking an offer.
Is there such thing as medium-risk casino offers?
I’ve already alluded to this but I’ll restate it here. Yes I think there is a category that could be classed as medium-risk casino offer.
Basically, they are fundamentally a low-risk offer, with the exception that the qualifying stakes are so high that they become medium risk.
For example, instead of the simple “Stake £10 for 10 Free Spins” it would read something more like “Stake £100 for 100 Free Spins” or “Stake £500 for 500 Free Spins”.
The increase in stakes greatly increases the risk and therefore I would class that as “medium-risk” even though it follows the low-risk formula.
High-Risk Casino Offers
First off, let me start by saying I don’t touch high-risk casino offers, mainly because I don’t have the bank or the balls.
These are mainly high stakes deposit match offers with usually quite high wagering requirements. The casino will match your deposit and tie it together meaning your money is trapped as a bonus until you complete the wagering requirements.
This tends you mean you more often than not lose your entire deposit.
I simply couldn’t stomach that.
The idea is that you lose most of the time but when you win, you win big time, covering all of your previous losses and then some. But I couldn’t take continually losing time after time.
They are also time consuming. For example, a 100% £100 deposit match offer (£200 total) with 30 times wagering, would need you to put £6000 through their slots. I just don’t have that kind of time.
The gambling authorities have tried to put a stop these offers on the grounds that you should always be able to withdraw your money. But after a quick browse, you’ll quickly find a bunch of them. We will have to wait and see if they get eradicated. For further reading on the action by the CMA have a read here.
Conclusion
Hopefully this short guide will help you understand the risks involved and how you can start to dip your toe in the world of casino offers.
If you spend any time in the Oddsmonkey forums you will have seen hundreds of members showing you the profits they make from low-risk casino offers, often in the thousands of pounds per month.
So even if you’re not quite ready for risking your money, it’s something you should certainly start thinking about.
Why not make a start with no-risk casino offers, get comfortable, and then move up from there?
If you want to learn more about strategy when attacking some of these casino offers, why not have a read of my roulette strategy post.