Online Casino Bonuses

Gambling Guide > Beginners Guide > Online Casino Bonuses

Traditional land-based casinos, like the ones found in Vegas or Atlantic City, have lots of ways to attract and hold on to customers: fancy buildings, sexy staff, music and lights, food and drinks, comps, and much more.

Internet casinos have...a website. Not quite as exciting, is it? This is why online casinos offer such generous casino bonuses, promotions, and loyalty programs - they help bring in new players, and they work to keep players happy and entice them to stick around.

There are as many different bonuses as there are casinos, so we'll just cover the big ones:

Deposit Bonus
The casino credits a bonus to a player's account after a deposit has been made, making the bankroll bigger.
High Roller Bonus
A special sign up deposit bonus for extra-large deposits.
No Deposit Bonus
A free gift from the casino with no deposit required awarded for opening a casino account.
Freeplay Bonus
Another form of a no deposit bonus that credits a new player's account big money and lets them play for a limited time period.
Referral Bonus
A bonus given to players who refer another player to a casino.

These are just the main categories, but they give an idea of the variety of bonuses that are out there. But just as important as the kind of bonuses a casino offers is the small print that comes with the bonus!

Bonuses are never free, but need to be paid off - or "played through" as it's called in this business. Almost every bonus has a "playthrough" requirement that has to be fulfilled before the bonus money can be withdrawn. Let's look at an example:

Imagine that a casino gives a 100% match bonus on a deposit of $100, and the bonus has a playthrough requirement of 10x. This means that after the bonus is accepted, the player has to gamble 10x the amount of the deposit and the bonus before a withdrawal can be made - that's $2000 ($100 deposit + $100 bonus X 10 playtrhough = $2000). On top of that, not all games count the same towards a bonus' playthrough requirements, so be careful.

One final distinction should be made. Bonuses that can be cashed out, like the one in the example above, are called "cashable bonuses". But there is another kind called "sticky bonuses" that can't be cashed out. With sticky bonuses, the bonus money can be used to win more money, but the bonus amount is subtracted from the total when the player withdraws the winnings. As a rule of thumb, sticky bonuses tend to be bigger than cashable bonuses and have smaller playthrough requirements. It all depends on the bonus size, casino in question, betting currency and even player's country of origin.

It's all a bit complicated, we know. The best thing to do is to read the small print and understand the terms of a bonus before accepting it. That way, there are no surprises, other than the one you get when you hit a huge Progressive Jackpot and win enough money to retire and live happily ever after!

For a list of various casino bonuses please see our latest casino bonuses section that includes all of the abovementioned varieties of bonuses.