When you are betting online, you can expect many fantastic casino bonus offers. Players signing up to a site might get no deposit rewards. Here, you are given free funds without having to put any money of your own into your casino account.
For the most part, however, you will receive match bonuses online. These are awarded when you make more deposits, play specific games, accumulate enough Loyalty Points, or in any other situation operators can think of. Often they are also given as Welcome Packages, in place of no deposit offers.
A lot of people are dazzled by the massive match deals that can be found online. However, their terms and conditions can mean that you actually lose money when you use them. To make sure that you benefit, you need to know how to calculate online casino match bonus offers’ overall worth.
“Expected Values” is a concept that has existed in the fields of Economics and Mathematics for some time. Now it has also made its way into the world of online betting, and is very useful to players. Essentially, the idea is to determine the average you can expect to get out of a series of events. Or, to put it more plainly, to calculate the average profit or loss of a casino bonus.
Of course, match bonuses online definitely do not exist in a vacuum. The house edge of a game can affect whether or not it is worth using your free funds on. If a site stipulates that you need to use your reward on games that will have a negative expected value and therefore cause you to lose money, it is probably not your best option.
The last factor you need to know about regarding how to calculated online match bonus Expected Value, is the Playthrough Requirements. These stipulate how much you need to bet, before you are allowed to cash anything out. For example, if the Playthrough is x20 and the reward amount was $100, you’d need to bet $2,000.
Many establishments apply the Requirements to the total of your reward amount, plus your deposit. In that case, if the initial deposit was $100 and it was matched 100%, the total would be $200. With Playthrough Requirements of x20, you would have to wager $4,000 before requesting any withdrawals.
Armed with all of this information, you can determine whether or not the match bonuses online establishments are offering are indeed worthwhile. The formula is as follows:
Expected Value (EV) = Total Bonus (TB) – [House Edge (HE) x Playthrough Requirement(PR)]
The TB is the amount, in currency rather than expressed as a percentage, that the Playthrough Requirements apply to – either your initial deposit and the extra funds, or just the rewarded amount.
If you had a TB of $200 and a PR of 40, and wanted to bet on a game of Roulette with a HE of 2.5%, the equation would look like this:
EV = TB – (HE x PR)
= $200 – (2.5 x $4000)
= $100
That means the expected value is $100, so the reward is worth claiming and using.
On the other hand, imagine that you wanted to play a slot game with a 3.5% HE, with a TB of $300 and set PR of $10,000. Now the calculation is:
$300 – (3.5 x $10,000)
= $300 - $350
=-$50
Here the EV is a loss, so you should consider avoiding this offer. However, we also want to stress that the Expected Value is an average estimate, to help you make a decision, not a guaranteed amount. There is always the chance that you could be the player who wins a massive return. Decide for yourself what you are willing to agree to, and how much risk you’re prepared to take.