Bonuses are the one area where slot players have it good in addition to comps. Slots have a high profit margin so casinos prefer that players clear their bonuses at slots rather than at table games, for example.
This means two things:
- Casinos compete intensively for slot players.
- Casinos create bonus offers with slot players in mind.
Slots bonuses are essentially free money if you’re going to play slot machines anyway. However, usually you don’t actually get to keep the bonus money – just the money you won using it.
Online casinos rarely give the players an edge with bonuses though. House edge in slots is high enough to keep the advantage on the casino’s side regardless of how generous the bonus offer may seem. With that said, there are significant differences between online slot machine bonus offers and some of them are much better for the player than others.
Slots Bonuses Compared
Slot bonuses are awarded based on how much players wager so they’re easy to analyze; the requirement varies between 2x to 100x the size of the wager, although 2x would be an unusually low requirement and 100x a ridiculously high.
| Casino | Bonus | Bonus Req. |
|---|---|---|
Slotland  |
100% / $100 | 12x |
| Loco Panda Casino |
400% / $4,000 | 30x |
| Spin Palace Casino | 100% / $150 | 40x |
In addition to deposit bonuses, casinos offer other extras for signing-up, such as free spins, cashback or free money. Casinos may also have a Player’s Club which provides its members with additional benefits.
If you decide to use online slots bonuses outside of what’s been mentioned here, pay close attention to terms and conditions; specifically which games can be played for the bonus and how many times the bonus has to be wagered.
Finally, as you can see, the biggest bonus is not always (or even often) the best one. Size matters, absolutely, but clearing terms matter the most. A huge bonus with impossible terms is worse than a small bonus that’s easy to clear.
Getting Bonuses Without Depositing
Every now and then online casinos decide to offer no-deposit slots bonuses, which are hard to come by at casinos with strong track records. I assume this is because a player interested in a no-deposit offer is unlikely to make a deposit, which in turn means little money for the casino.
I don’t recommend no-deposit bonus offers to anyone simply because they usually require a deposit at some point anyway. The “no-deposit” is misleading since most of the time you’ll find the mention of a deposit requirement somewhere “hidden” in the terms and conditions of the offer.
Not to mention, most of the casinos with no-deposit offers are small and have just recently started in the business — those are the kind that you should avoid depositing money into (suggesting you want to get it back).
Bonuses After Depositing
Online casinos are well aware of that you may be interested in joining another site to take advantage of a new bonus offer, so every now and then they offer reload bonuses to encourage you to keep on playing (or perhaps to get back to playing in case you’ve been gone for a while).
Another popular way is to offer bonuses for the first X amount of deposits. For example, you may get a 100% deposit bonus for the first three deposits with a maximum limit of $1,000 in bonus money.
Either way, the same applies to slots reload bonuses as deposit offers: reload bonuses are good for you if you’re going to play anyway, however, they’re never a good enough reason to start playing. They’ll simply help you to lose less.
But Remember…
Look at the slot payout comparison as well when choosing a casino since it’s easy for online casinos to offer big slot machine bonuses if their slot payouts are low.
For example, if casino A returns 94% instead of casino B’s 96%, it doesn’t take much for casino A to offer slightly better clearing terms for a slots deposit bonus. (In the long run, payout percentages should be the most important consideration anyway.)
I recommend the following sites for more about casino bonuses:
- Beating Bonuses – A comprehensive list of casino bonuses of all kinds although I wish the site was a little easier on the eye.
- Casino Bonuses – I know the owner of Casino-Bonuses.org and he builds terrific websites – this is another one in the making.