How To Make Money Gambling Casino
Online gambling has proved to be a legal and easy way to make money from home. Best online gambling sites contain enormous quantity of games for different tastes. This is a real chance of adding real money. Poker has long been one of the top ways to make money with gambling. This reputation has.
Almost every online casino has some sort of welcome bonus to help try and persuade you to sign up and use their website rather than their competitors. With a little bit of thought and cleverness, we can take these new-player casino bonuses and convert them into withdrawable cash.
But before we delve into casino bonuses, let’s talk about sportsbook bonuses. Making money from them is known as matched betting and is pretty easy and may be where you started off?
But right now because of the COVID-19 coronavirus most sports aren’t running so there aren’t that many matched betting offers available. But to try and keep customers casinos are offering better bonuses than normal. Now is a great time to try some casino bonus bagging – especially as we all need to make some more money!
Contents
Unlike Matched Betting, Casino Bonus Bagging Isn’t Risk Free
Unlike matched betting, making money from casino bonuses is not risk-free. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be profitable and worth doing.
We call this notion EV (expected value). By using maths we can work out how much money we will make on average from the bonus. So why is that not risk-free? Because of variance. Each time we make a slightly different amount, but over the long term it averages to the EV.
If you understand what I mean then feel free to skip straight to the how casino bonuses work section.
Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £17.99 a month service.
The Maths – How Casinos Make Money
Let’s say that we are playing a game of flip the coin, and because we’re fun people we’re also betting on it.
If we bet £1 a throw.
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1 and I lose £1 if the coin comes up tails.
That is what we call a fair game.
There is risk – we could play 100 flips and I might lose money, or I might win money. But either way, it is just down to luck. Statistically, I am not more likely to win than to lose.
There is a 50% chance of me winning each throw, and a 50% chance of me losing each throw.
That is not what it is like in a casino. The casino has an edge.
Let’s change the rules slightly:
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1.10 and I lose £1.10 if the coin comes up tails.
That is not a fair a game.
There is still risk – we could play 100 flips and I might make money. But I am more likely to lose.
On each coin toss I expect to lose 5p. We use this word “expect” a lot when it comes to making money from casino bonuses. It means the average in the long-term.
Here is a very simple tree showing you how we worked out that expected loss of 5p.
(0.5 x £1) + (0.5 x -£1.10) = -£0.05
That number becomes what is called the house edge. For every £1 we bet we expect to lose 5p.
If we play 1,000 flips, I will have bet £1,000 and expect to lose £50 (1,000 x 5p).
The More We Play The Closer To Expected We Get
Now we get a bit more complicated. The longer I play, the more likely I am to lose money.
I am not going to explain the maths here (email me if you want to know), but over 1 coin flip my chance of walking away with a profit is 50%. The coin can either come up heads or tails.
Over 100 coin flips my chance of making a profit has dropped to 31.7%, that’s almost a 1/3rd chance which still is quite high. I might decide that I’m feeling especially lucky and take that 1/3rd chance. But over 6,000 coin flips my chance of leaving with a profit drops only 1%.
That is how a casino makes money. If there are 60 people playing at your casino and each plays the coin flip game 100 times, then each person has a 31.7% chance of leaving with a profit. But as the casino is playing 6,000 total flips it only has a 1% chance of not making a profit overall. A pretty clever business model.
What Are The House Edges Of Different Casino Games?
Now you can’t actually play our coin flip game in a casino so let’s apply this concept to two real casino games.
Roulette. Is a very basic game which almost everyone understands.
There are 36 numbers not including the zero. Of those 36 – 18 are red and 18 are black. The number zero is not red or black. Each time the wheel spins there is an equal chance that the ball will land on any of the numbers 0 – 36.
If you bet on red and it comes up, you win your stake back. So a £1 bet would win £1.
There is an 18 out of 37 chance of a red colour coming up. That means that you have a 48.6% chance of winning, and a 51.4% chance of losing.
Can You Make Money Gambling
Let’s draw that same tree we did earlier but this time for roulette:
(0.486 x £1) + (0.514 x -£1) = -£0.028
For ever £1 bet we expect to lose 2.8p. That’s the house edge.
That’s pretty low. But roulette is not the casino game with the lowest house edge. That award goes to….
Blackjack. Forget card counting or anything you’ve seen in the films, your basic blackjack is the casino game with the smallest house edge.
There are many different rule sets for blackjack, and the house edge depends both on those rules and also on how close to perfect strategy the player is playing. But most games of blackjack have a house edge of about 0.5p per £1 bet (0.5%).
Let’s just think about that, 0.5%. That’s so low! It’s the equivalent of playing the coin flip game with the rules:
- I win £1 and you lose £1 if the coin comes up heads.
- You win £1.01 and I lose £1.01 if the coin comes up tails.
If we played 1,000 hands of blackjack at £1 a bet, we would have staked £1,000 and expect to lose just £5.
How Casino Bonuses Work
Thank you for sitting through all of that. Now that the basics are out the way let’s talk about the juicy stuff. How we can actually make some money from casino bonuses.
Just like with matched betting, most casinos offer new players an incentive to sign up and play at their casino.
Unfortunately, unlike with matched betting, there is no way we can hedge out our bets. But we can use this knowledge of the house edge to turn things in our favour. Provided the bonus is good, we can expect to make money.
Let’s take a look at one bonus that is currently offered by William Hill on their live casino.
To get the bonus, we need to deposit £25 and then place a series of bets that total at least £200. When we have reached that target and we contact customer service, a bonus of £25 will be added which we are then free to withdraw along with whatever is left of our initial deposit.
How We Make Money From Casino Bonuses
£200 sounds like a lot, but after what we’ve learnt about house edges and blackjack it shouldn’t sound so bad. Remember blackjack has a house edge of 0.5%.
Over £200 staked we expect to lose only £1. That means we expect to keep £24 of the bonus!
This is what we expect to happen.
- We deposit £25 into William Hill Live casino.
- We place 200 £1 bets. At the end, we have lost £1 and have £24 left.
- A £25 bonus is added to our balance.
- We withdraw our balance of £49 (£24+£25).
- We have made a profit of £24.
But, there is risk.
There is a chance we will lose more than just £1. There is even a chance of us losing more money than the bonus is worth. If we use up all of that £25 we would need to deposit more in order to finish the staking.
We won’t go into the maths on variance. But understand this. Blackjack has a house edge of 0.5% and a standard deviation of 1.15.
That means that at a £1 bet size there is a 95% chance we will make somewhere between £7.75 and £40.25. But it also means there is a 7% chance of making a small loss.
That is the essence of making money from casino bonuses. You are simply moving the odds to your favour.
Websites like Oddsmonkey and Profit Accumulator (more on them later) have calculators for working out your variance and house edge from different casino games. They also have strategy calculators to help you play the games optimally.
Whew. So after all that explaining, the actual steps were very simple.
But we had to go into all that details because it will enable you to look at more advanced offers and take advantage of them as well. Every casino bonus has different terms and you need to be able to work out what strategy to follow to get the highest ‘expected profit’ or ev from the bonus.
Which brings us on to the hardest part of making money from casino bonuses.
Where To Find The Best Casino Bonuses
You can only do that William Hill Live casino offer once, so to continue making money you need to find some more offers.
And the unfortunate truth is for more casino bonuses it is not profitable to make money from them. You need to find the diamonds in the rough.
You can do this in exactly the same way as you would when sports matched betting. And in fact, if you have done matched betting before you will probably already know the following two choices:
- Look through casino terms and conditions manually.
95% of people pay for a service. Compared to the EV you can make the services are cheap, they give you a curated list of offers to work through, and they point out any dangerous loopholes in the terms and conditions.
My two favourite paid for services for casino bonuses are:
- Profit Accumulator. Free for your first few bonuses, then £19.99 a month.
- Oddsmonkey. Free for your first few bonuses, £19.99 a month.
Nowadays they are both pretty similar with largely the same offers but different communities, website feel and customer service. They each have free accounts you can try out so I suggest signing up to both and then choosing which one you like the most.
Note: this can get quite complicated. If you want someone to explain it to you one-to-one then Oddsmonkey have an onboarding coach who will hold your hand when you sign up to their £19.99 a month service.
There Are Lots Of Different Types Of Casino Bonuses
Wow what a beast of a post!
Let’s just finish on saying that there are lots of different types of casino bonuses and all have slightly different best ways to exploit them.
By now you should understand the concept of expectedvalue and therefore making money from casino bonuses. You have a guide to tackle your first bonus and you have plenty of resources to help you research and find new offers. Good luck!
USEFUL LINKS
- More details on casino wagering requirements.
- My summer betting diary where I made £250 a week throughout the summer holidays.
FAQ
What happens if I lose all of the £25 before completing the wagering requirement??
This is a very real risk and is also the reason why there is a chance of losing a small amount of money while completing the wagering requirement.
What you need to do is to deposit more money and finish the betting.
I hear people talking about ‘sticky’ bonuses or doubling up. What does that mean?
You should really join a forum and start asking people there. You are getting into some quite complicated areas with the potential to lose some large amounts of money if you make a mistake.
But in short: A sticky bonus is one that you can never withdraw. You can only withdraw the winnings. This means that the tactics we spoke about earlier don’t work. Doubling up is a technique to make money from them. You basically bet the whole bonus on red on roulette. If the bet wins you withdraw the winnings. If you lose you’ve lost the bonus which you couldn’t withdraw anyway.
What are the house odds of some other casino games?
- Baccarat – 1.06%
- 3-card Poker – 2.01%
- Craps – 0.34%
- French Roulette (you get 50% of your stake back if it lands on 0) – 1.35%
- American Roulette (two 0s) – 5.26%
- Slots – 3-10%. Average is about 5%.
Can I card count online blackjack?
No, you cannot. Card counting relies on the contents of the remaining cards changing as the rounds go on. In online blackjack the cards are shuffled every hand so the contents don’t change. You can do it with live blackjack – but I believe they shuffle regularly to make it more difficult. I have never tried.
I have a question that is not answered here?
Drop me an email at hello@sampriestley.com and I will do my best to get back to you.
Can you make money from casino bonuses while self-isolating or under quarantine?
Yes you can! It is actually a very good time to do it because you can do every step of the offer from your home.
I’m like many gamblers when it comes to casinos. I enjoy going to the casino and I like the idea of winning more than I lose at the casino. But I learned several sad things about casinos years ago. And now I look at the casino an entirely different way.
The list of 7 sad facts about casinos in this article isn’t meant to get you to stop playing in casinos. These facts are presented here so you can understand just what you’re dealing with, and hopefully so you can find a better way to play at the casino.
Casinos Are Cash Machines
Two of the most profitable businesses in the world when they’re run correctly are banks and casinos. Banks keep your money and pay you nothing, or a small amount, and then use your money to lend it to other people at a higher rate of interest. As long as a bank is smart in how it operates, it cranks out a constant profit.
All casino need to do is offer games that have an edge and make sure that they don’t get cheated. The only other ingredient a casino needs for profits is gamblers willing to place wagers. It’s almost impossible for individual gamblers to overcome the casino profit machine.
Rewards Clubs Aren’t Designed to Help You
I want to make something clear before you read the rest of this section. If you’re gambling in a casino and they offer any type of VIP program, no matter what it’s called, you should be a member. You should earn every perk and comp that you can when you gamble.
But you also need to understand that rewards clubs are not there to help you. The only reason why rewards clubs exist is because casinos determined that if they offer a rewards program that gamblers who belong to the club gamble more often and they gamble longer when they play.
The key to using a rewards program is to sign up and take what they give you, but to never gambler more often or longer than you intended to because of the club.
Casinos Are Designed With a Purpose
The sole purpose of every casino in the world is to make money. Casinos don’t exist to give you a chance to win money and they don’t exist to entertain you. These are just the marketing vehicles use to make money.
The most profitable casinos use psychological tricks on everything from where games are placed to where people walk to get to different places to maximize profits. You can’t change the way casinos are designed, but you can be aware of it to avoid them taking advantage of you.
You Have No Great Options
When you walk into a big casino it looks like you have plenty of options. You can play on many different types of slot machines or grab a seat at many different table games. You might be able to find a poker on or a place to make a sports wager.
But all of these options have one thing in common, and you already learned what this is. Every option in the casino is designed to make money for the casino at your expense. You can do some things to change how much you lose, but there are few things that you can do that put the edge in your favor.
You can learn more about a few games that you might be able to change the odds on in the last section in this article, but the fact is that there are really no great options in the casino.
Nothing Is Really Free
Have you ever received free drinks or a free ticket to the buffet or a free hat in a casino? If you play in casinos long enough and/or play in many different casinos, the odds are that you get something for free every once in a while.
I don’t know how many hats I’ve got over the years from casinos, but it’s too many to count. I usually wear a hat when I gamble, and the casino knows if they give me a hat I might wear it and give them some free advertising.
The point I’m trying to make is that nothing in a casino is really free. If they give you a hat or a shirt it’s because it’s a form of advertising when you wear it. If they give you free drinks it’s because they know that gamblers who drink while they gamble play longer and lose more money.
If you play for 5 hours and get a free buffet ticket, they know that you’re likely to play for at least 5 hours the next time you gamble so you can get another free meal. And the money you lose over 5 hours of play is far more than the cost of the buffet to the casino.
Whenever you receive a casino comp, take a close look at the situation to see how it really benefits the casino.
Finding an Advantage Is Problematic
Making Money At The Casino
Even though everything you’ve read so far paints casinos in a bad light, there is some hope. You don’t have to continue losing every time you go to the casino.
It’s never going to be easy, but there are ways to gamble in casinos that give you an improved chance to win. For example, some casino players know how to count cards when they play blackjack. These players can make money at the blackjack table.
Of course, it’s not easy to learn how to count cards, and even if you do the casino is going to kick you out if they catch you. But counting cards isn’t the only advantage you can find in a casino.
The key is to understand that there are ways to find advantages. Then you just have to find at least 1 way and learn how to use it. Just keep in mind that casinos do everything they can to make this difficult, because all they’re interested in is continuing generating piles of cash at your expense.
In addition to counting cards, some poker players make money, as well as some sports gamblers. And some progressive jackpot games reach a high enough amount that they can become profitable to play. These are the best places to start when you’re looking for profitable ways to play in a casino.
Conclusion
Almost everything about casinos is sad when you take a close look. Most people go to the casino looking forward to the experience, yet they tend to leave with less money than they started with.
How To Win Gambling
The main reason for this is because casinos are designed to be cash machines, and not in your favor. Reward’s clubs and free drinks aren’t really free. Everything is working against you.
Making Money Online Casino
Once you understand this you can start taking steps to change the game. You might decide to quit going to the casino or you might decide to find ways to use the casino to improve your chance to make a profit.