With a huge percentage of the UK population cooped up inside and the government pleading the public to stay indoors, there’s never been a better time to get involved with online casinos with no deposit bonuses.
No deposit bonuses work as incentives for new players to sign up to a particular casino. Since there are so many companies offering iGaming services these days, each operator is willing to spend a little to stand out from the crowd. Thanks to Britain’s progressive iGaming regulations, UK casinos have great offerings too!
This exciting, risk free type of bonus provides the perfect marketing tool. Not only does the player get the opportunity to actually try the games on offer but the casino benefits from having a direct channel of communication with the player. Once they have completed the registration, the player is much more likely to return the next time they fancy a punt too. To do so, they will need to deposit. For the casino, that’s the aim of the game.
Since casinos aren’t in the business of handing out money to every new player, they employ various terms and conditions that make it considerably less likely they will lose money to those claiming these offers. Each different promotion will have its own stipulations. These work to make offers either more or less lucrative for the player. Understanding the important terms is key if players are wanting to maximise their chances of winning.
Wagering
Perhaps most important to any no deposit casino bonus is the number of times a player needs to wager the bonus and/or winnings from it. The first thing to check when looking for the perfect promotion is the playthrough requirement. You will find this somewhere near the top of the bonus’s terms and conditions document.
You’re usually looking for a number followed by an “X”. Common wagering requirements might be 20x, 30x, 50x, or even more. A wagering requirement of 20x on £10 worth of winnings would require players to bet a total of £200 through eligible games. This doesn’t need to be in one go – you can break it up however best you see fit.
With no deposit free spins, you’ll find that wagering requirements always refer to any winnings you might have taken from the promotion. However, you should pay close attention to wagering relating to no deposit bonus cash promotions. For example, some casinos might refer to 30x wagering requirements on just the bonus amount. Others might require players to bet through both their deposit and any winnings that number of times. Finally, it’s possible that only winnings will be subject to wagering too.
When considering wagering requirements, lower is always better. The more times you need to bet your bonus funds through the casino’s games, the greater the likelihood of you losing money (thanks to the house edge). Eventually, the casino is hoping that you bust out and they don’t need to pay anything. Any no deposit bonus with wagering lower than 20x is almost certainly worth your time.
Time Restrictions
Another little trick that casinos pull to make it less likely that you’ll be making a withdrawal from their no deposit bonus offers is placing time restrictions on the use of them. These days, almost all casino bonuses need using within a set amount of time. This could be any period between an hour and a couple of months. The longer the period, the more likely you are to actually complete the wagering requirements and make a withdrawal.
Time restrictions on the use of bonus funds can mean that a player is forced to up their stakes to complete wagering. This invites greater variance (larger swings both up and down) and, therefore, they’re much more likely to bust out. If they do bust out, the casino doesn’t pay out!
Try to avoid no deposit bonuses with overly tight time limitations. You ideally want a few days to complete wagering. Imagine you hit a £1,000 jackpot using your free spins only to find you had 45 minutes to complete £30,000 worth of wagering. You’ll find yourself putting larger bets on to meet the requirements and this invites a much greater likelihood of busting out.
Cash Out Limitations
Perhaps the sneakiest clause of a no deposit bonus is the cash out limitation. Some casinos will enforce a hard cap on the amount of money you can actually take from their bonuses. In such cases, even when you manage to get through the often-mammoth wagering requirements with a big part of your bonus intact, you will often surrender all but a small portion of it after completion.
Limitations on the amount you can cash out are often the stumbling block for many newbies to the casino bonus world. There really is nothing more frustrating than making that last 50p spin of a bonus that you took £100+ from and seeing all but £5 disappear.
Obviously, the higher the cash out limit on a bonus, the more likely you are to walk away with some reasonable winnings. Given the other terms and conditions, this is still anything but a certainty. However, you definitely can’t win big if the cap is small!
Game Selection
Finally, there’s game selection. Since different casino games have different average return to player ratings, some are more likely to result in profits from playing them with or without a bonus. The casino is, of course, well aware of this, and will often exclude you from playing their most lucrative games with promotional cash.
The perfect no deposit bonus would allow you to play through your bonus on whatever game you like. An experienced bonus hunter will automatically gravitate towards blackjack in such a situation. By playing perfect strategy and losing just 0.5% to the casino over the course of their gameplay, they would stand a much greater chance of winning than if they were to play a 90% RTP slot, for example.
Play Blood Suckers for high RTP
That said, almost all casinos these days exclude or limit some games from their promotions. It’s incredibly rare to see blackjack contribute more than 20% to wagering requirements. You may also find that popular high RTP slots, like BloodSuckers by Playtech, will have their contributions limited.
The Perfect No Deposit Bonus?
The perfect no deposit bonus probably doesn’t exist. However, there are some that are obviously better than others. Since different casinos mix up their offers regularly and new operators come to market, it’s difficult to say which is actually the very best at any given time.
Fortunately, it’s really not difficult for players themselves to assess the profitability of a no deposit bonus. By looking at terms and conditions such as wagering requirements, eligible games, cash out limitations, and time restrictions, they can quickly tell if a no deposit bonus is going to be worth their time. That said, you’ve probably got a lot more time right now that you’re accustomed to and, being entirely risk free, there’s not a lot to lose by taking on a load of different offers, good and bad, during your isolation!