Understand what is on offer in an online casino bonus

All online casinos offer a casino bonus for new players but it is a good idea to understand what is on offer in that casino bonus to avoid disappointment. The important thing to remember about a casino bonus is that it is designed to enable you to play casino games for longer at your chosen online casino, it is not intended to be free money that you can withdraw from your account after playing a couple of hands or having a few spins at the casino slots. Most of the casino bonuses at online casinos are what are called matching deposit bonuses whereby the online casino will match your first deposit and sometimes your second or even third deposits into your online casino account. Generally the match for a first deposit will be 100% which means effectively that you have twice as much money to play with but the casino bonus money will not appear in your cash account but rather in your bonus account which is non withdrawable. In order to withdraw the casino bonus as cash you will need to fulfill certain requirements which are usually expressed as the play through requirement. The play through requirement of a casino bonus is the number of times that the bonus must be staked before it can be withdrawn but here again there are things to watch out for; some play through requirements are expressed as the number of times the casino bonus must be staked but others are the number of times that the casino bonus plus the original stake must be staked. It is also the case that not all casino games count towards the staking requirement for the casino bonus. Often casino games such as roulette will either not count at all towards the play through requirement or only for a very small percentage. Casino bonuses are great but to avoid disappointment you need to understand what is on offer.