What you need to know about wagering requirements

Many online casinos have generous bonus offers to encourage new players to sign up. To offset the risk that the casino takes by giving these bonuses, they often have wagering requirements (or play-through requirements) in place. Here are the things you need to know about wagering requirements.

Wagering requirements basically mean that after claiming a bonus, you need to keep playing at that casino for a certain amount before you can cash out. You cannot just claim the bonus, and immediately take your money out. Instead, you need to keep playing. The specifics are different on different bonus offers. Typically, you would need to “play through” an amount of betting anywhere between 15 and 40 times the bonus amount before you can withdraw any winnings.

As an example, say that you sign up for a $100 bonus offer, with a 25x wagering requirement. That would mean that you have to play $2,500 worth of bets before you can cash out and withdraw money from your account. Your playthrough amount would be $2500.

A complication with this is that some casinos give you different amounts of credit for your bets, depending on what game you play. For instance, a casino could give you credit for 100% of your bets on the slots, but only 25% of your bets on roulette, and 10% of your bets on blackjack. Meeting your wagering requirements would mean you’d need to make ten times the bets on blackjack, as you would playing slots.

Often, the information you need about wagering requirements is not made obvious on the casino site. You may need to look for a small link to find the terms and conditions, or all of the details on a particular bonus offer. There should be a link somewhere near the bonus offer that will take you to a different page on the site that explains the associated requirements.