Making Money from Bonus Hunting and How the Casinos are Fighting Back
Bonus hunting has become a major headache for the online casinos. Some countries have been banned from receiving the special promotion offers available to new customers because the online casino simply could not sustain the losses that they were incurring. But what is this so called bonus abuse? How does it work? And what are the casinos doing to combat it?
All casino games have a house edge built into them. This is how they manage to make money. The advantage the casino has over the player varies from game to game. Blackjack and baccarat have the lowest edge and so the average player will lose less money than they would if they played other games such as slots or keno for example. There is usually a correlation between the house edge and the “size of the jackpot”. Players are more than willing to sacrifice a low house edge in return for the chance to win a larger prize. This is how progressive slots work. The jackpot is very rarely won, but when it is won the jackpot can be anywhere from $10,000 to over $1 million.
Online casinos offer the only real incentive available to them to entice new players, cold hard cash. Unlike their land based equivalents they are unable to tempt customers with free drinks, hotel stays and beautiful women, so the usual offer is get $X free when you deposit $X. By taking a bonus it is possible for the player to overcome the house edge and create advantageous playing conditions.
Bonus abusers go from online casino to online casino extracting the largest bonus amount possible, then playing through the wagering requirements by playing games with very low house edge and then withdrawing both their deposit and the bonus amount. A lot of people will be sat there thinking “that’s okay; the casinos offer a bonus so that’s the risk they take”. Well for a long time that was the case, but now the casinos are fighting back.
If you care to read the small print of many online casinos you will see that many organisations have excluded low wagering games such as blackjack, roulette and baccarat. Others have gone one step further and only offer bonuses for wagering on slot machines. This has the net result of preventing any of the bonus abusers from signing up. But what about those legitimate players who like to play these low wagering games but are not bonus abusers? The answer is tough cookies.
Another method to deter bonus abusers is to introduce the “sticky” bonus. A sticky bonus is a bonus offered to a player for wagering purposes only. This means that when you come to withdraw your winnings, the bonus amount offered is withdrawn from your total. There are often less stringent wagering requirements associated with these bonuses; however they are less rewarding for players.
There are still opportunities available to bonus abusers and some still continue to generate a healthy income by doing, but the opportunities are becoming less frequent. So if you are interested in becoming a full time abuser you need to act fast.
Mark Hirst is an experienced online gambler. You can visit his website for honest online casino reviews To learn more about bonus abuse please visit the online gambling directory
