The casino bonus is one of the best features the online casinos have. But making sure you know the basics of it and how to cash out the winnings stemming from the bonus is very important. Withdrawing a casino bonus is not a complicated procedure, it’s actually very easy, but certain rules must be followed and pitfalls avoided. In the long run it may save you some headache, not to mention heartache.
Understanding the bonus
A brief sidestep here, before we get to how to withdraw the casino bonus. The first step, even before thinking about withdrawing the bonus, the player must have an understanding of the bonus in question. Just because you saw an ad that a casino is offering $1,000 free to new players, it doesn’t mean that $1,000 will magically appear in your account as soon as you open it. The bonus is often a percentage of the deposit you make – 150%, 200%, 400%, and so on. We tend to assume that the player is aware of these facts, but a lot of newbies may not be, so it’s worth making this point at the start of this guide. Always know exactly what you will get and how you will get it before claiming the casino bonus.
Wagering Requirements
Perhaps the main reason why so many players fail to cash out their bonus is either forgetting about the wagering requirements or outright don’t know about them. Sometimes referred to as playthrough requirements, they are the most important condition to cashing out your bonus winnings. As such, one should never overlook them and the first step should always be making sure that the wagering requirements have been satisfied.
What are those requirements? Well, it is ridiculous to think that any online casino would simply give you a bonus in the form of match to your deposit, which you could just turn around and withdraw instantly. This would bankrupt the casino in a matter of hours. The casino wants you to play with the bonus, and if you are lucky to win, you can cash out your winnings. Of course, they hope that you’d lose, which is how the casinos stay in business in the first place.
So in order to make sure you don’t just withdraw the free bonus money, without spinning the reels of a slot even once, the casinos have attached the wagering requirements to the bonus. They simply show how many times you have to wager the bonus, before you can withdraw it.
The wagering requirements vary from bonus to bonus
A point that needs to be underlined here is that the wagering requirements will not be the same, not only between casinos, but also among the different casino bonuses offered at the same casino.For example, some bonus offers could count the wagering requirements against just the bonus amount itself, which others could be calculated based on the total amount of the bonus and deposit combined. Some casinos have low wagering requirements, others have high ones, and the player can make their own decision which they should chose. But the fact remains that you must satisfy the wagering requirements before you can withdraw the bonus.
Make sure you play the right games
Since there are many different casino bonuses, one should be mindful of which casino games are allowed to be played with the bonus and which are not. In most cases, the games which are not allowed under the bonus terms will not be unavailable, and you can certainly try your luck with them, but any wagers you make on those games will not count towards your wagering requirements and you won’t be able to withdraw the bonus before you meet those, usually by playing at the allowed games. So you could be in a situation where you spent hours playing at a certain game, winning money, excited to cash out the winnings, only to find out that not a penny of those wagers have been counted towards your playthrough requirements. And then you’d have to start pretty much from scratch, albeit with a bit more in your bankroll.
As a general rule of thumb, all table games play will not count towards your bonus wagering requirements. Sometime the casino may offer a bonus that can be used on table games, so if they are your favorite part of the casino – keep an eye on these offers. But bonuses that are geared towards blackjack, for example, are few and far between.
Other times, a bonus may be offered on only one specific game, even one specific slot, as is the case with free spins casino bonus. When withdrawing this type of bonus, you must play only at that particular slot machine. Some online casinos have made it easier on the player by simply making the bonus balance available only when you load that video slot, but one should not count on this every time.
Know if there is a maximum cashout amount for the bonus
This issue is most often raised if your bonus is of the no-deposit variety, but this is not always the case, so keep an eye on it, even if your bonus is not that type. Some bonus offers will indeed have a maximum amount you can cash out using the bonus money. If this is the case, regardless of how much money you won playing with the bonus, you would only be able to withdraw up to the amount indicated by the bonus terms. To better illustrate this point, here is an example of a free spins bonus offered by the Miami Club casino:
40 Free Spins on Cherry Blossoms
Code: CBMO13 / No deposit required / WGR: 40x / Max Cashout $150 / New Players
As you can see, if you take the 40 free spins bonus, the maximum amount you can cash out in real money is $150. So if you hit big and let’s say after satisfying the wagering requirements you are sitting on $1,000, when you withdraw the winnings only $150 would come your way, the rest being removed from the account. A very important point to be mindful of when claiming no-deposit bonuses.
Don’t stack bonuses
Another important rule of thumb to follow is not to stack bonuses. Claiming more than one bonus offer at the same time, whether accidental or on purpose could lead to a big mess at the end, when you go to withdraw you casino bonus. Claiming a second bonus on purpose is easy to understand, but how could you do it accidentally? This most often happens when the player fails to fully complete, i.e. play, the free money from the current bonus offer. You may have a few cents left from the bonus, maybe not enough to complete a spin at your current bet level, so you just head on to the cashier to make another deposit and claim a different bonus.
But the fact is that those few cents remaining from the first bonus are still there. So in essence you stack the bonuses, without even realizing it. This is something that should be avoided at all costs. How the casinos will handle it depends entirely on the casino management, since every casino will have different rules. But most frown upon such bonus stacking and will likely result in removing the bonus and its winnings from your account when you try to withdraw.
To avoid such possible quagmire, should you find yourself in similar situation – always make sure that you wager every single cent. You could lower the bet or move to another slot machine with lower bet levels, just so you could lose those final few cents before claiming another bonus.