Online casinos are generous when it comes to rewarding players with free money to spend on the games. Some of them more, some less generous, but what all have in common is that they impose wagering requirements on the bonuses. The requirements are to secure the casino from the risk its taking when offering bonuses to its players.

Wagering requirements apply to each and every promotion launched by the casino and it is essential to learn them before claiming the bonus. These rules are one of the most complicated when it comes to read terms&conditions, and many players don’t make effort to find them (very often hidden somewhere on the website). However, in evaluating the casino and its bonuses it is essential to get to know about them.

So what it is exactly? Wagering, or play-through requirements is the number of times the bonus money, or the bonus + deposit, has to be wagered before withdrawing the winnings. The number is assigned by each casino individually by its risk management team. The more bigger the bonus, the more severe the requirements will probably be. Usually the number varies between 15 and 50, however some casinos decide to impose different wagering requirements for players from different countries. Additionally, if casinos offer no deposit bonuses, the wagering is usually higher that reload bonuses.

How to count it?

By way of illustration, let’s say that you deposited €100 and obtained €100 match bonus. If the wagering requirements state that you have to wager both the deposit and bonus amount 20 times, you have to wager

(€100 + €100) x 20 = €200 x 20 = €4000

In this case, you will have to place bets worth €4000 before being eligible to withdraw the winnings.

If, in turn, the wagering requirements cover only the bonus, the situation is slightly different. Player’s cash account is in the majority of casinos divided into 2: real money account (with money you deposited) and bonus money account. When you start to play, you play with the money from your real account. When you have wagered all the money from this account, you start to wager with the bonus money. Here starts the mathematics:

€100 x 20 = €2000

So you have to place bets worth €2000, after having used all the deposited money (in this case €100).

Different games contribute differently?

Unfortunately for players – yes. This is due to the belief that in some games it is easier to wager bigger amounts of money than in others. For this reason, in most of the casinos only wagers on slot games will contribute in 100% to the wagering requirements, and other games e.g. 20 or 10%. The differences in the percentage of each game varies from one casino to another and there is no rule about it. Some casinos decide not to impose such differences in contribution, however it is very rare.

Let’s come back to the first example and say that you decide to wager €50 on slots, €50 on roulette, and €50 on Blackjack. The contribution towards wagering requirements for these games is respectively 100%, 25% and 10%. The calculation is as follows:

(€50 x 100%) + (€50 x 25%) + (€50 x 10%) = €50 + €12,5 + €5 = 67,5

In this case you will have place bets worth €67,5.