The reason why is obviously because they don’t want to get tagged for a huge online casino with instant withdrawal jackpot on a player who is not even risking any of his/her own money.
D.) FINANCIAL TERMS RELEVANT TO BONUSES
Finally, there are some common Financial, (a.k.a. Cashier) terms that may be relevant to bonuses. Conveniently, Bovada puts a Financial Q&A on its own page.
The big one here is the general withdrawal limits. It is important to know that a player often cannot withdraw his entire balance after completing a bonus if the balance exceeds the amount per individual withdrawal allowed. This is something that you will want to understand and be fine with, especially if you are making a large deposit.
For example, the maximum check by courier withdrawal is $3,000 and may be requested only once per seven days. If you deposit $1,000 and have the good fortune, for instance, to run your balance up to $10,000, then it would take four separate withdrawals (which would take about a month in total) to get all of your funds.
2.) UNIQUE BONUS TERMS & CONDITIONS
Certain online casinos will have Bonus Terms & Conditions that are fairly unique to them and will also vary significantly from one casino to another. These are usually just more specific versions of the general conditions that we looked at above.
Believe it or not, Bovada actually has one of the simplest sets of Terms & Conditions for bonuses. While we obviously don’t have the space to look at the Terms & Conditions for each of the hundreds, if not thousands, of online casinos out there, we can highlight a few types of terms that might be unique.
BET LIMITS
As we mentioned in the first section, many online casinos take serious action against players who they consider to be engaging in, “Bet Structuring.” Oftentimes, a casino will not state any specific betting limits whilst playing on a bonus. That is unfortunate because these betting limits will often be less than the table limits for the game in question.
Set by Amount
In most of the cases in which an online casino restricts the amount a player can bet, and actually bothers to have specific restrictions, they will restrict it by amount.
Generally, a casino will say something like, “While playing on a bonus, a player e or greater than $10 on a table game.”
The specific amounts may vary from casino to casino, but they are usually pretty low to prevent players from, “Taking a shot,” on Bonus Funds to then try to, “Grind out,” the wagering requirements with low bets. Advantage players refer to this practice as, “Bet structuring.”
It is important to look for these sorts of terms not only because you will not want to bet more than the casino permits whilst playing on a bonus, but furthermore, you will want to understand how long it’s going to take to play a bonus!
Imagine a bonus has a $50,000 playthrough requirement on slots, with a maximum bet per spin of $5. If you can make 500 spins per hour, ($2500/hour) it is still going to take roughly 20 hours of play time to complete the bonus. That’s a long time to spend playing a slot machine!
If you want to play Video Poker and the contribution is 10%, with a maximum bet of $5, then you are going to be looking at $500,000 in playthrough. Again, at 500 hands per hour, you are able to bet $2,500 per hour and would be looking at approximately 200 playing hours until you complete the Wagering Requirements. That’s a long time!