Sign-up bonus - I'm confused about the benefit. What am I missing?

Hi simlib - would you be able to let us know which casino you are referring to? I am guessing from the bonus conditions that it is 32 Red?

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They have a sign up offer of 'deposit £20, get £32 bonus.' The wagering requirement on the bonus is 30x.

What that means is you deposit £20, then you have £52 to play with after you are granted the extra £32. But you must wager an accumulated total of 30 x £32 = £960 before you may make a withdrawal. This is so that people can't just sign up, claim the bonus, then withdraw it without playing.

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Only betting from the bonus pot contributes towards the wagering requirement.

That sounds very unusual, I don't believe I have ever seen that condition before. If it is 32 Red then that is not the case at all. You can usually just play and every bet you make accumulates towards meeting the wagering requirements (bear in mind some games accumulate at slower rates than others, depending on their house edge).

At 32 Red, as you play some of that bonus balance will be converted into "cash" balance £10 at a time, but you can't withdraw until you meet the wagering requirements anyway, so you can kind of ignore that conversion process. The reason it does that is years ago they used to let you withdraw the cash balance early, even if you had bonus balance remaining, but they no longer allow it because it was easy for players to exploit it to their advantage.

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So, you have to purposely lose all the money you have just deposited in order to play with free money, on which you may or may not meet the wagering requirement.

No you don't have to lose it all. You can just play and if you have money in your account when you have completed the wagering requirements you can withdraw it. Thats the main thing you need to know.

The benefit of bonuses are:

• You have more money to play with than you otherwise would have.
• You can make bigger bets than you otherwise would have.
• If a bonus is "cashable" (32 Red's is) then you can withdraw whatever bonus money you have when you complete the wagering requirements. e.g. Deposit £20 + £32 bonus = £52. Then when you finish the wagering you have say £50, you can withdraw the full £50. If the bonus was "non-cashable" you would only be able to withdraw £18 (£50 - £32).
• If the wagering requirements are very low, there can actually be an advantage to the player in mathematical terms (not in your case here).

The drawbacks to bonuses are:

• You are almost always prevented from withdrawing before you have met the wagering requirements, which are usually set high enough to negate any player advantage.
• You are almost always restricted in your game choice - either some games are not allowed to be played, or they carry different weightings in terms of clearing the bonus requirements. For example, blackjack is a very low house edge game, so most casinos either disallow you from playing it to clear wagering requirements, or set the weighting for it very low.

If you don't like having your money "locked in" and want to play for shorter sessions, then by all means play without claiming a bonus. That is what I do most of the time these days, unless I find a bonus with extra low wagering requirements (lower than 30x is a good rule of thumb).

You're welcome. There must have been some confusion along the way. You don't actually get to choose whether you are betting with cash or bonus funds. From memory they just use the cash funds first then the bonus funds if you run out of cash balance. So like you say it would make no sense if only betting with the bonus funds counted.

The vast majority of casinos don't even bother with that separate cash / bonus balances thing - they just put it all in one balance then work it out when you make a withdrawal. As I say its a bit of a leftover from a time when they let players withdraw early without completing the full wagering requirements.

One tip for if you decide to play without a bonus - a lot of casinos will give you a bonus automatically when you first deposit. If that happens and you don't want it, just contact their support and ask to have the bonus removed before you start playing. If you wait until after you have played a bit, most won't remove the bonus!

The only advice I can give to a newbie is to always read each casinos T&C carefully. Some can be down right shifty.

And do a little research about casino's reputation , search it with SCAM or PROBLEMS in Google to find out what one may encounter...