Our parent guide to online casino bonuses is an overview of the types of rewards available to  customers signing up to a new venue.  If this is you and you’ve decided to to dip a toe into the virtual world of gaming then you’re probably searching lists of hundreds of casinos trying to find the best ones.  In this article we’re going to look at the New Player Bonus in a bit more detail.

Once you’ve narrowed your choices down in terms of casinos you trust and games available, bonuses are probably the next best way to  make the final choice.  The New Player Bonus is the big carrot for potential sign ups but it’s also variously called a Welcome Bonus or a Sign Up Bonus; it’s the biggest sum of money you’ll get free from a new casino unless you win big on the slots once you start playing.

How It Works

So once you’ve decided on a casino to join, you will note that it offers you something along these lines:

“deposit up to £1000 and receive a bonus of 100% of that amount”

This is fairly straightforward and it obviously means that if you deposit anywhere between £1 and £1000 the casino will match that amount and credit it to your account.

It’s now important to understand how to maximise the benefit of this bonus and the most important thing is to remember that you’ll only get this bonus on your first deposit, so there’s no point spending £5 if you have more available – all you’ll get is a £5 bonus.

Ideally you should try and deposit the maximum amount to get the maximum bonus but if you can’t quite afford that, deposit as much as you can sensibly afford.  At this point there is no reason to deposit more than £1000 because anything over that amount will not be subject to a bonus.

Once you’ve decided on your first deposit amount the casino will credit your account with the appropriate sum.  Unsurprisingly you can’t withdraw this money and it is to be used for gambling at the site only.

Once you start using this money for slots, blackjack or whatever you fancy there will still be what’s called a ‘wagering requirement’ before you can withdraw any money related to that bonus.  This means that you need to lay bets to the value of (for example) 15x the bonus before you can withdraw any money.