The Single Most Important Online Casino Selection Factor
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Online casinos draw in customers through a variety of different means. They feature life-like games with state of the art graphics and sounds, they create large game selections, dazzling players with the variety, they run various promotions encouraging existing players to re-deposit and to bet more. Still, the cornerstone of every online casino’s player-magnet is its bonus system. I’m saying ‘bonus system’ and not ‘sign-up bonus’ because most casinos do not stop at rewarding their players for their registration. They go on to give them various loyalty bonuses (which work the same way rakeback does in online poker), re-deposit bonuses and other such perks to keep them hanging around.
Everything accounted for, it’s safe to say that online casino bonuses are the biggest factor in casino selection for experienced gamblers. Experienced online gamblers do not fall for the pretty blinking lights and impressive sounds. They’re mostly only interested in the payout percentages and in the impact the various bonuses can have on the house edge and the house drop. The rest is truly filler as far as these guys are concerned.
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What all this translates to, is that if you’re someone looking to possibly make a buck or two gambling online, you have to learn to properly evaluate online casino bonus deals. The amount of the bonus is the most superficial yet in the same time highly visible part of it, therefore most casinos go to great lengths to slap a massive bonus amount all over their homepages and it does work indeed. Those who don’t know how to evaluate a bonus will indeed fall for it. Those knowledgeable enough though know that while the bonus amount as well as the match % (if it is a match bonus we’re talking about) is important, the trigger factor is buried deeper within the fine-print.
The bonus redemption requirements. This is where the true colors of a bonus deal are shown. Bonuses can be marred by countless pitfalls and underhanded moves on the part of the casino to make it difficult and often impossible for players to actually get their hands on any of the “free money” being dangled in front of them. Only by reading through the bonus redemption requirements will you be able to determine whether or not a bonus carries any value for you.
There are online casinos out there which will not allow players to redeem their bonuses unless they play one of the games approved for this purpose, and games that are indeed approved are usually the ones with the biggest house edge/house drop. The roulette, on which near 50-50 bets can be placed is usually excluded from among the qualifying games, therefore – for a roulette player – the bonus offered by one such casino carries no value whatsoever, regardless of how generous it appears to be. Other casinos may accept certain games for bonus redemption, but they will only count money turned over on them in a reduced proportion. An example would be a 50% bonus redemption rate on roulette. All these moves siphon the value away from the bonus. Savvy online gamblers know that the margin of profitability on a bonus is extremely thin, and that the whole concept can be turned upside down by a few apparently minor tweaks in the right places.
The bottom line: make 100% sure you read and understand all the terms and conditions binding your bonus before you register on its account. Also try to pick a casino which tends to reward loyalty one way or another. In such casinos, high rollers are treated like poker props. Propping sites pay their props outstanding rakeback, so it’s no wonder that poker props hired by such sites can indeed feel like true VIPs.
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