Thrilling Bonus

Just in the relatively short time that I’ve been writing about these things, we have unfortunately seen Terms & Conditions change for the worse at various casinos. There may have been some casinos that previously implemented some of these measures in the past, but if so, they have certainly become more common in the last two years. Here are a few examples of Terms I see now that I certainly didn’t see as frequently when I started this:

• Blanket restrictions against, “Professional Play,” or, “Advantage Play,” without even explicitly stating what the casino considers either of those things to be.
• Stricter Terms and Conditions related to bet structuring.
• Here’s an entire paragraph from Bovada that makes me puke in my mouth a little:

Bonus programs are intended for recreational players only. Professional players or players considered, in our sole discretion, to be abusing the bonus system by any means may have bonuses revoked and be subject to further sanctions. Bonus abuse may be defined as (but not restricted to) clients cashing out for the purpose of re-depositing, depositing on top of an existing balance, players deemed to be manipulating or otherwise changing wagering or playing behaviour (bet, game type, bet structure or other pattern of betting) for the purposes of circumventing wagering requirements, or creating new Accounts that they are using themselves. Sanctions may be in the form of increased rollover requirements, loss of bonus privileges, balance forfeiture and account closure for the offending Account as well as any linked Accounts. We reserve the right to restrict eligibility for special offers and bonuses when necessary. This includes but is not limited to placing geographic restrictions on match bonuses due to bonus abuse. Bonus funds cannot be used on games that do not contribute to playthrough.

How do I hate thee paragraph? Let me count the ways.

• I don’t like, “Abusing the bonus system by any means,” because they could decide that the mere act of playing with a mathematical advantage (even recreationally) constitutes that.
• I don’t like that they have a problem with BOTH cashing out for the purpose of redepositing AND depositing on top of an existing balance. Basically, they say, “Here, take up to x number of bonuses,” but then they say it’s a problem if you do that, apparently, if you win. If there’s an advantageous bonus at Bovada, then, my advice is to not deposit again if you win...at least not for a long while.
• I don’t like, “Changing playing behavior for the purposes of circumventing wagering requirements.” The casino sets the wagering requirements and decides how much each game contributes, there’s no way to, ‘Circumvent,’ them, but what they’re really saying is they don’t want you going from a high variance game to a low variance one to grind playthrough.

Okay, enough about Bovada, let’s look at the last Term and Condition that is somewhat new that I usually don’t like today:

• Restrictions on Amounts Bet While Playing a Bonus!!!

It’s not often that there is a lucrative bonus with such a wagering restriction in place, and I stumbled on this one while writing an article for another site in the LCB family, so I wanted to share it with everyone here. I suppose the first thing I should point out is this is not a U.S. friendly casino, but if you are in the U.S., I’d recommend you finish reading this anyway just because you will undoubtedly learn some useful concepts for identifying a positive bonus.

For those of you in one of the jurisdictions that this casino serves, this is an excellent bonus for low-medium bankrolled players on a fairly low variance game. The casino is Thrills Casino, and our review can be found here.

With an overall user score of 4.4, Thrills Casino is ranked 29/1316 as of the time of this writing. It’s really difficult to do much better than the top 97.5% in ranking, wouldn’t you agree?

There are two ways to approach this bonus and I am going to save the best one for last.

While I am saving the best way to approach this for last, I do recommend reading the part on the slots because it contains useful concepts for you in the future!

The first one that we are going to look at is for you slot players out there. This is a four-part bonus consisting of the following:

• 100% Deposit Match on Deposits of €20-€100 + 20 Super Spins on Starburst. The bonus has a playthrough requirement of 30x Deposit + Bonus.
• 100% Deposit Match on Deposits of €20-€100 with a 20x playthrough requirement.
• 100% Deposit Match on Deposits of €20-€100 with a 20x playthrough requirement.
• 100% Deposit Match on Deposits of €20-€100 with a 30x playthrough requirement.

The first thing we want to do is take a look at the best returning slot game that can be played according to the Wizard of Odds review of Net Entertainment.

It is Kings of Chicago as Blood Suckers and is not allowed. Kings of Chicago has a very generous RTP of 97.8% according to the review, which corresponds to a house edge of 2.2%. In the case of our lowest playthrough, which is 20x, a player could deposit €100 with a match of €100 and would have €4,000 in playthrough requirements. With (4000*.022) = 88 The expected loss to complete the bonus is €88 with an expected profit of €12 each time.

The 30x playthrough requirement would not be advantageous because the expected loss on the €6,000 to be played would be €132, which is more than the deposit.

Fortunately, you can find an advantage by taking the first, second and third bonuses with this promotion. Now, you might ask, ‘Why would the first bonus with the 30x playthrough be good?’

The value in the first bonus, surprisingly, is in those 20 free spins. Granted, you would not want to make a deposit of €100 because there is no way those free spins are enough to mitigate the expected loss of €32. However, they are enough to mitigate the expected loss on a lower deposit. The reason why is because Thrills Casino is one of the few casinos in which the free spins convert directly to your cash balance with no playthrough requirement as long as you are not already on a bonus!

If we take a look at Kings of Chicago game with the RTP of 97.8%, then, we automatically know we are going to maximize our value on those free spins by making the lowest deposit possible. In this case, that would be a deposit of €20.

We are going to deposit €20, get a deposit match of €20 and have a playthrough requirement of €1200. With a 2.2% house edge: 1200 * .022 = 26.4.

That means we are expected to lose €26.4 of the total balance by playing that game. However, that would leave us with a cash balance of €13.6 if it happens that way which would enable us to take our twenty free spins on Starburst which can then be immediately put in our cash balance. The key here is that you want to make sure to either bust out or complete the 30x playthrough requirements first before taking any free spins because those spins would be added to your cash balance which gets played first when you are on a bonus if not.

The Starburst game has an RTP of 96.1%, which means a 3.9% House Edge and you are going to get twenty, ‘Super Spins,’ (four per day starting with the first day) which are at €1 each. Effectively, you get €20 worth of free spins with an expected return of €19.22.

When you combine this with the €13.6 you are expected to have left after playing Kings of Chicago; you end up with an overall expectation of €32.82, or an expected profit of €12.82.

Ultimately, we would expect to profit €12.82 on the first bonus, to profit €12 on each of the next two and the fourth is not profitable if you are playing slots. Ultimately, the total expected profit is €36.82 across the three bonuses with a combined deposit of €220. That represents a total expected profit of about 16.74% relative to your total deposit. Not bad for slots.

The next thing that I want to say is that the expected value is the expected value regardless of the amount bet, so how much you want to bet is up to you. I would encourage you to keep in mind (especially on the first deposit) that the minimum balance to cash out is €20 and you are not expected to do that on the 20 Starburst spins alone, so how aggressive or conservative you want to be with that one is up to you. In the interest of saving time, I would personally be aggressive and bet €5 per spin until I either hit for at least €100 (then drop to €1 per spin) or busted out. At that point, I would play my five Starburst spins per day for each of the next four days and see if I finish with €20 or more. If not, then I would just try to get my balance there for a withdrawal.

Some might ask whether the casino will tolerate dropping bets from €5 to €1 and my answer is, “I would certainly like to think so.” I could see them having a problem with dropping from €5 to €0.10 for the purpose of completing playthrough because that is just egregious. Besides, it would take forever to do that!

With the second two bonuses, you have a pretty small positive expectation, so again, I say play it however you would like. You could bet small and reduce your variance, but is it worth it? Let’s take a look at your hourly expectation given two extremes and one in the middle. For this table, assume that you play each bonus to completion, and we are going to assume 800 spins per hour:

Therefore, there is no way I would personally play this at a bet level of less than €5 on the second and third bonuses. I would have to be pretty bored for €12 an hour to be worth my time, but if you like slots, then play it however you want if you just want to play at an advantage for fun, anyway. Granted, if I hit something really good on those €5 bets, then I might reevaluate my hourly rate based on my new balance and consider slowing down a little bit.

Now, let’s get to what I actually would do with this bonus:

TX Hold ‘Em

The first thing that we want to do is determine if there is a game with a lower house edge that will give us an even greater advantage and more in expected profits, even if that means dealing with greater wagering requirements. The first thing we should do is learn what those wagering requirements are:

• Other table games: 40%:
• All Roulette 5%:
• All Video Poker: 5%:
• All Black Jack games & Baccarat including Punto Banco: 5%:
• 3-card Poker and Oasis Poker: 5%:

Here’s the thing: It’s kind of tough to beat a 97.8% RTP on slots given the Wagering Requirements on the other games, but in this case, there is one big exception.

TX Hold ‘EM, as NetEnt calls it, which is the same thing as its more common name, ‘Texas Hold ‘Em Bonus,’ would apparently qualify as, ‘Other table games,’ and has an extremely low EoR (Element of Risk). House Edge is based on an initial bet, but EoR is the total average bet in games with different raising levels, and TX Hold Em has an EoR of 0.53%!

How do we know what the wagering requirements are? Simple, same as the slot wagering requirements, just divide by 0.4 and you’ll have it. Let’s look at our expected losses and total wagering requirements on the slot games compared to TX Hold Em:

Okay, so now let’s compare our expected profits for each bonus:

*Don’t forget about the $19.22 from the free spins.

The first thing that you should notice is that the fourth bonus now also has a positive expectation with TX Hold Em whereas it has an expected loss with the slots. In fact, your expected loss on the slots is almost equal to the total gained from the first three bonuses, so you definitely do not want to go that route.

Another thing that you might notice is that TX Hold Em has a positive expectation even with the 30x playthrough requirements, so you might want to go ahead and deposit €100 the first time around on that, here’s what happens:

*Again, we have to add the value of those free spins.

The one thing that we notice is that we are going to be playing longer on the TX Hold Em because of the increased wagering requirements, again, if you’re mainly playing just for fun it doesn’t matter. In my case, or for anyone who basically wants to play this for profit purposes, I preach hourly expected profits!

The first thing that we want to go ahead and do is compare our total expected profits each way, and we can clearly see that the overall expected earnings are much better with TX Hold Em. What we are now going to do is look at the total expected profits combined with the amount of time played for both initial bets of five units and one unit.

*With a deposit of €20 on the first bonus.

**With a deposit of €100 on the first bonus.

The slot bonuses only have a better profit expectation per hour if you are going to do the €5 bet level, even with the increased wagering requirements, you have a better hourly expectation with TX Hold Em. In fact, just by bumping up your initial bet to €2, you will double your hourly profit expectation and it will then be better than every slot bonus except the first one.

Things To Do:

There are going to be a couple of things you will want to do if you intend to play this promotion with TX Hold Em, and here they are:

• There is no excuse not to play the game flawlessly because here is a calculator that does it for you:
• Contact live chat and make sure that the €5 max bet allowed only applies to the initial bet. In TX Hold Em you will very frequently (more often than not) be adding €5 bets as the hand goes on. If they say that the TOTAL amount bet in a hand cannot exceed €5, then €1 is the only amount you can bet as it will often result in a total bet of €5. Granted, that hurts the expected profit per hour, but if you are mainly playing for fun, then you should care most about the dollars and cents expected profit that TX Hold Em is going to offer.
• Finally, ask live chat if you deposit €20 the first time if you will still be able to deposit €100 on the other three deposits and get the full bonus. If not, then you DEFINITELY want to deposit the full €100 if you are going to play TX Hold Em. And probably only want to play the first slot bonus unless you’re going to bet the full €5 per spin on the second two bonuses (only depositing €20) to try to take advantage of the variance. I’m fairly confident that would give you a slight positive expectation, but I can neither guarantee nor quantify it.

Conclusion:

If you are a casual slot player and think you will be bored with TX Hold Em, despite the much better profit expectation, then the simple advice is to only play the first three bonuses as the fourth has a losing expectation for you. The total expected profit is €36.82 on total deposits of €220 which yields an expected return of +16.74% on your money. In total, you would playthrough €9200 in total bets which yields a player advantage of 2.39% on all monies bet. Make sure to play Kings of Chicago, however, if you have a game you like better, check out the house edge on the Wizard of Odds page.

TIP: On the second and third SLOT bonuses, any game with an RTP of 97.5% with a €4000 playthrough is break-even as the expected loss is €100, which would leave you with €100 balance. Based on the Wizard page, Simsalabim offers a 97.5% RTP, the only game more than that which is allowed is Kings of Chicago. Thus, you can either play Kings of Chicago with a positive expectation or Simsalabim at a break-even one, any other allowed game results in a losing expectation.

The smartest thing to do is play the TX Hold Em and deposit €100 all four times as far as profit expectation is concerned. If time is a consideration for you, then you could justifiably only deposit €20 the first time and perhaps ignore the fourth bonus altogether. Let’s take a look at the expected hourly profits based on that:

I’m not even going to entertain the notion of only playing the first bonus because that would be ridiculous. The value of the second and third bonuses with TX Hold EM is even better because of that low playthrough requirement relative to the EoR, which results in a better-expected profit despite the twenty free spins you get on Starburst. You’re almost playing the first bonus to get to the second and third. The one thing that I will do is look at the expected hourly profit of the first bonus alone so you can decide whether depositing the $100 is worth it to you or if you would rather do the $20:

Remember that everything throughout this has been based upon 800 hands per hour, you may play slower or faster than that. Expect to be much slower if you are unfamiliar with the game and have to look up a ton of strategy decisions.

The house edge being the same, I usually like to give myself a somewhat low risk-of-ruin. I would personally deposit $20 and then the full $100 on each of the next two bonuses. I would tend to bet at the $1 per initial bet level because the combination of those things yields an expected profit of $117.32 and an hourly expectation of $15.58, which is right about the minimum I like to be on the hourly. I would eventually take the fourth bonus (profit expectation of $20.5 taken alone) if I had nothing better to do one day because that is less than $5/hour by itself at the $1 bet level. I might try anywhere between $3-$5 bet levels on the fourth bonus (to speed it up) if I did well on the first three.

If you want to figure out what percentage you have it to the good based on your total deposits, just divide the expected profit by the amount you are depositing UNLESS the expected profit is greater than the deposit amount, then you do it the opposite way. For example, if you do all four $100 deposits with an overall profit expectation of $154.22, you get 154.22/400 = .38555 which means a 38.555% return on your money. You can also add the expected profit to the deposit amount and then divide by the deposit amount; it’s the same thing.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck to you! As I said, it’s somewhat rare to find a decent bonus (percentage-wise and money-wise) with low bet restrictions, so I felt I had to share this one!