Need your input: Is Chasing Bonuses Ever EV+ Anymore?

[dunover]

So at 96% with a 4% (1/25) house edge, a 25x wagering requirement just about matches the expected value to break even.

Anything less than 25x would favour the player to convert some of the bonus and thus IS what's known as EV+ bonus in basic terms.

Over 25x wagering and the house would expect to win most times.

I cannot think of any sign-up bonuses now that offer a decent match at 25x wagering or less, the best now appear to be 35x so EV- and some are lunatic amounts like 200x or 60xD+B.

Are you peeps still taking SuBs and if so at what WR and how's your luck in converting them, or beating them in other words?

 

[philderby]

I always seen sup bonuses (or I did when I used to play much more than I do these days) as entertainment. My max wagering would be 35x bonus much more than that I wouldnt bother.

As you seen on my post on chopleys thread im now signing up to the weekly 1x wagering in the gaming centres in town. Need to get a seperate wallet on ebay and go to the post office for a few fivers. Will have to be disciplined though and not see it as anything more than taking the value out of the cash match offers

 

[SYPlayer95]

I always seen sup bonuses (or I did when I used to play much more than I do these days) as entertainment. My max wagering would be 35x bonus much more than that I wouldnt bother.

As you seen on my post on chopleys thread im now signing up to the weekly 1x wagering in the gaming centres in town. Need to get a seperate wallet on ebay and go to the post office for a few fivers. Will have to be disciplined though and not see it as anything more than taking the value out of the cash match offers

You'll quickly find you will stop receiving cash match etc.

 

[philderby]

You'll quickly find you will stop receiving cash match etc.

Well if thats the case, then c'est la vie

 

[lockinlove]

Quite a few of the Ontario casinos offer 10-20x wager and ill cap those out most times.

Bonuses help you play longer, play more slots and hunt around for that big hit. Also bet bigger so if you do get that hit it might be really big.

The wager forces you to play... so sometimes you can go on some pretty sick runs if you run into the right slots at the right time

I dont play with straight cash often because I play too responsibly and I dont like being forced to do that lol. Meaning, If I deposit $100 and get $250 ill cash out. Whats $150 going to do for me? If im forced to wager then I have a much more pleasant time playing dozens of slots.

 

[mulven]

So at 96% with a 4% (1/25) house edge, a 25x wagering requirement just about matches the expected value to break even.

Anything less than 25x would favour the player to convert some of the bonus and thus IS what's known as EV+ bonus in basic terms.

Over 25x wagering and the house would expect to win most times.

I cannot think of any sign-up bonuses now that offer a decent match at 25x wagering or less, the best now appear to be 35x so EV- and some are lunatic amounts like 200x or 60xD+B.

Are you peeps still taking SuBs and if so at what WR and how's your luck in converting them, or beating them in other words?

How are you calculating this and at what stakes? Obviously minimum or low stakes will lend itself to lower EV numbers. Based on you saying 25x is when it turns to negative EV leads me to believe you are applying a post-wager ev formula to deposit matches (bonus - wagering*edge=EV) which isn't suitable for deposit matches.

The reason that you can't apply this formula to deposit matches is when you bust, only a portion of the wagering as been completed and thus you haven't received the full exposure to the house edge. Let's say you have a bust rate of 85% on a 100% up to £100 offer.

The 15% of the time you win you will have won X after completing the entire wagering requirement.

The 85% of the time you lose you will have won -£100 after completing varying amounts of the wagering.

The EV would then be calculated by multiplying X by 15% and adding it to -£100 multiplied by 85%.

To get reasonably accurate numbers you'd have to simulate game play so you can get the varying bust outs as well as the surviving wins.

The average win X can be increased by maximising your stake and slot volatility. This is crucial for maximising EV as your losses will always be -£100 but the low % of wins you get will be bigger the more volatile your play.

For a 100% deposit match up to £100 with 25x wagering and £5 bets, you would yield an average EV of around £59. At £1 bets it's £35 and at £0.20 it's £13.5.

In this scenario the actual bust rate is around 81% meaning that the EV is (0.81*-100)+(0.19*X)=59. Solving for X gives you the average win 19% of the time being £736.8421

 

[mulven]

I think adding an EV Simulator to the site would be an excellent tool for players to aid in their understanding as well as protect them from predatory and unfair bonuses. Seems likely that many people who are cognizant of EV only apply the simple formula which might lead them to not playing bonuses which are in fact still very juicy.

If Crike Muikshank can do a very rudimentary one for his little enterprise, I'm sure casinomeister could manage to make one!

 

[Casinos Hate Winners]

These kinds of calculations only work if you’re betting a single cent on a low volatility slot like Starburst.

IRL, to account for the variance tied to max bets and the volatility of the slot itself, you need to use Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the EV of a bonus.

Funny enough, I even tried to post about how max bet wagering, slot volatility, and win caps impact the EV of a bonus, but got canceled by the moderators.

Quote: “content of this nature is not welcome at Casinomeister.”

So if you claim there’s positive EV in bonuses, that actually falls under section 1.16 of their forum rules because, as quoted:

“As far as I can see section 1.16 DOES apply because — IIRC — you are saying that you have a way to win based on maths. That is the very definition of ‘a system’ and as such falls fully within the scope of 1.16.”

 

[Casinos Hate Winners]

How are you calculating this and at what stakes? Obviously minimum or low stakes will lend itself to lower EV numbers. Based on you saying 25x is when it turns to negative EV leads me to believe you are applying a post-wager ev formula to deposit matches (bonus - wagering*edge=EV) which isn't suitable for deposit matches.

The reason that you can't apply this formula to deposit matches is when you bust, only a portion of the wagering as been completed and thus you haven't received the full exposure to the house edge. Let's say you have a bust rate of 85% on a 100% up to £100 offer.

The 15% of the time you win you will have won X after completing the entire wagering requirement.

The 85% of the time you lose you will have won -£100 after completing varying amounts of the wagering.

The EV would then be calculated by multiplying X by 15% and adding it to -£100 multiplied by 85%.

To get reasonably accurate numbers you'd have to simulate game play so you can get the varying bust outs as well as the surviving wins.

The average win X can be increased by maximising your stake and slot volatility. This is crucial for maximising EV as your losses will always be -£100 but the low % of wins you get will be bigger the more volatile your play.

For a 100% deposit match up to £100 with 25x wagering and £5 bets, you would yield an average EV of around £59. At £1 bets it's £35 and at £0.20 it's £13.5.

In this scenario the actual bust rate is around 81% meaning that the EV is (0.81*-100)+(0.19*X)=59. Solving for X gives you the average win 19% of the time being £736.8421

Exactly, that’s what I was talking about. Here’s how the EV changes depending on the bet size in the slot The Dog House, which has a volatility of 13 (using standard deviation as the measure).

If you look closely, you can see that the EV drops off dramatically once the bet goes below $5. Which kind of suggests how pointless a max bet limit of $5 is for the casino.

 

[philderby]

Ok, so a little update on my cash match journey. Been doing it a few days now, the staff know my name they always ask if id like a drink so i have a diet pepsi and play the 20 credits off. between the 2 murkurs and the playland in the last 5 or 6 days i have 'won' if you will £161. Now i understand there will be peaks and troughs but on a good run at the moment. Im actually surprised they are still honoring these match offers tbh. I just keep my self to myself, smile and be polite and patient if theres another customer that wants attention. Im currently in between civil service positions atm and could be for a few weeks so this came at the right time. Exciting!

 

[dunover]

These kinds of calculations only work if you’re betting a single cent on a low volatility slot like Starburst.

IRL, to account for the variance tied to max bets and the volatility of the slot itself, you need to use Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the EV of a bonus.

Funny enough, I even tried to post about how max bet wagering, slot volatility, and win caps impact the EV of a bonus, but got canceled by the moderators.

Quote: “content of this nature is not welcome at Casinomeister.”

So if you claim there’s positive EV in bonuses, that actually falls under section 1.16 of their forum rules because, as quoted:

“As far as I can see section 1.16 DOES apply because — IIRC — you are saying that you have a way to win based on maths. That is the very definition of ‘a system’ and as such falls fully within the scope of 1.16.”

Saying there's EV+ in a bonus would NOT be banned under that clause as the bonus could well be one at a low WR that would favour the player on most slots and stakes permissible within the bonus rules. These are seldom given on sign-up now, rather are awarded to existng players hence the more generous terms.

Bonuses are mostly offered with low max stakes of $5 and in many cases the slots that you refer to are either excluded or have reduced WR contribution for the very reasons you suggested.

In fact, 'bonus collusion' was a problem in the past with players clubbing together to take the bonus then playing at the maximum permissible stake on a designated HV game.

The casinos can spot this a mile away now and have acted against it therefore the stake caps and slot exclusions and conversion limits.

So if you were telling forum members they could be at an advantage by taking a certain bonus (as with your graph) playing at unrealistic stakes on HV slots, then that would patently be misleading and fall foul of 1.16.

 

[Casinos Hate Winners]

Saying there's EV+ in a bonus would NOT be banned under that clause as the bonus could well be one at a low WR that would favour the player on most slots and stakes permissible within the bonus rules. These are seldom given on sign-up now, rather are awarded to existng players hence the more generous terms.

Bonuses are mostly offered with low max stakes of $5 and in many cases the slots that you refer to are either excluded or have reduced WR contribution for the very reasons you suggested.

In fact, 'bonus collusion' was a problem in the past with players clubbing together to take the bonus then playing at the maximum permissible stake on a designated HV game.

The casinos can spot this a mile away now and have acted against it therefore the stake caps and slot exclusions and conversion limits.

So if you were telling forum members they could be at an advantage by taking a certain bonus (as with your graph) playing at unrealistic stakes on HV slots, then that would patently be misleading and fall foul of 1.16.

And yet, when I stated this, it was interpreted as a “system,” which means a violation of the rules and classified as undesirable content. That’s simply a fact.

As for bonuses, the EV of a bonus barely depends on the wager multiplier. You can’t ban all slots — in the example above it was The Dog House, a popular but actually pretty ordinary slot in terms of variance and RTP. Thousands of slots are suitable to achieve over 50% ROI on a $5 bet with a 60x wagering requirement on the bonus. Many slots would work even for $1 bets. Rare slots might be suitable for $0.25 bets.

Moreover, practically any 100% deposit bonus can be played with positive EV, except those that are only credited after you complete the wagering, or those with strict caps on winnings from the bonus.

If you want, you can send me a specific example and I’ll calculate the EV for a particular slot.

And of course, I never said “make a deposit at casino XYZ and play a non-existent slot with stakes that are prohibited by the terms.”

 

[mulven]

Saying there's EV+ in a bonus would NOT be banned under that clause as the bonus could well be one at a low WR that would favour the player on most slots and stakes permissible within the bonus rules. These are seldom given on sign-up now, rather are awarded to existng players hence the more generous terms

That sounds accurate for the UK market but in other countries there can be tons of good bonuses available at good sites.

In most of my posts on this topic I usually mention that specifically targeting bonuses for profit is inherently against the terms of the website and can't be encouraged. However I think it would be good for people who do enhance their regular gameplay with bonuses to be aware of how to play them.

You only need to play high variance games at max stakes to optimise the EV to its highest. Plenty of people on the forum play at 0.2 and plenty play at 1 whilst still quite a few play at 5 with some degens (hi Jan!) playing even higher! In my previous post I showed that 25x wagering is not breakeven as that's only for post wager calculations. It's +EV for £0.2, £1 and £5 stakes with £1 still getting 60% of the optimal EV.

Additionally there are thousands and thousands of games with the most popular ones being all pretty high variance, so the only thing that I would personally encourage is that people do not play slots below 96% RTP if possible.

Additionally if they play bonuses with caps, they should play games with maximum wins that fall in line with their stake and the cap, which is essentially just common sense.

The main issue with encouraging this as a way to profit and make an income is leaving out important caveats. It would be irresponsible to play like this unless you had loads of money (talking like 50-100K) and for 99% of people that isn't the case so it just isn't viable.

I remember everyone using dead or alive back in the day as well as a few others which found themselves on nearly every UK banlist! These days there's thousands of slots so people definitely shouldn't be playing the same ones.

I caught up to about 50 new posts at the weekend and replied to a few and maybe 3 of them happened to be EV related. Based on how you are defining systems it's possible a few of my posts have run awry of that. I personally don't view playing to the terms of the casino optimally a system but I hope that the cavaets I usually mention (playing for profit is a violation of terms, without a large bankroll you can't safely play like this) might save me from breaking that rule, if I had thought of it as a system I wouldn't have wrote it.

Just to check though, you aren't challenging that the EV is correct for the hypothetical offers? The other posters graph is spot on in terms of the simulated EV. I can agree that it's not wise to encourage the regular person to play like this but the numbers are accurate.

I think we are just trying to show that bonuses are still full of EV, more so outside of the UK though but even 40x wagering in the UK at £1 stakes on 96% slots will be positive EV.

 

[mulven]

And yet, when I stated this, it was interpreted as a “system,” which means a violation of the rules and classified as undesirable content. That’s simply a fact.

As for bonuses, the EV of a bonus barely depends on the wager multiplier. You can’t ban all slots — in the example above it was The Dog House, a popular but actually pretty ordinary slot in terms of variance and RTP. Thousands of slots are suitable to achieve over 50% ROI on a $5 bet with a 60x wagering requirement on the bonus. Many slots would work even for $1 bets. Rare slots might be suitable for $0.25 bets.

Moreover, practically any 100% deposit bonus can be played with positive EV, except those that are only credited after you complete the wagering, or those with strict caps on winnings from the bonus.

If you want, you can send me a specific example and I’ll calculate the EV for a particular slot.

And of course, I never said “make a deposit at casino XYZ and play a non-existent slot with stakes that are prohibited by the terms.”

Yep the main difference maker for matches 100% and over is the RTP first and foremost, the stake and the slot variance which are both volatility based. I think the crappy simulator I use doubles the stake for high variance, halves it for low variance and keeps it the same for medium. The EVs it spits out are still fairly accurate though.

Then when caps are involved that's where it gets messy. It's not that bad when it's parachute and I've done capped offers with 80% ROI. But caps on cashable (locked in) offers with loads of wagering can get quite sucky.

But like you say, a 100% is positive EV at most wagering amounts, even x70b or x40d+b it's just a lot worse.

Aye back in the old UK days there were very few slots and only a few high variance ones. Nowadays there's no need for specific ones you just need to play anything that isn't awful RTP pretty much and the dog house (if at its highest RTP setting) is a good example of a bang average 96.5% slot (cries in german 88%)

TBF asking to DM to show something is something someone peddling a system would do even though that's not what's happening . You are just trying to hammer home that most offers are +EV on most slots unless the RTP is really bad.

An example of this is RTG sites with huge matches. The slot RTP is either 95% but more likely 91% on most sites so these huge matches are awful unless you do very small deposits (30-50) (as the max bet of 5 or 10 has more weight there). Forgot to say these matches usually have 30-40d+b wagering too.

 

[Avernite]

I think adding an EV Simulator to the site would be an excellent tool for players to aid in their understanding as well as protect them from predatory and unfair bonuses. Seems likely that many people who are cognizant of EV only apply the simple formula which might lead them to not playing bonuses which are in fact still very juicy.

If Crike Muikshank can do a very rudimentary one for his little enterprise, I'm sure casinomeister could manage to make one!

As soon as I saw this title I knew you'd post as our EV expert. Nicely done!

 

[Casinos Hate Winners]

Yep the main difference maker for matches 100% and over is the RTP first and foremost, the stake and the slot variance which are both volatility based. I think the crappy simulator I use doubles the stake for high variance, halves it for low variance and keeps it the same for medium. The EVs it spits out are still fairly accurate though.

Then when caps are involved that's where it gets messy. It's not that bad when it's parachute and I've done capped offers with 80% ROI. But caps on cashable (locked in) offers with loads of wagering can get quite sucky.

But like you say, a 100% is positive EV at most wagering amounts, even x70b or x40d+b it's just a lot worse.

Aye back in the old UK days there were very few slots and only a few high variance ones. Nowadays there's no need for specific ones you just need to play anything that isn't awful RTP pretty much and the dog house (if at its highest RTP setting) is a good example of a bang average 96.5% slot (cries in german 88%)

TBF asking to DM to show something is something someone peddling a system would do even though that's not what's happening . You are just trying to hammer home that most offers are +EV on most slots unless the RTP is really bad.

An example of this is RTG sites with huge matches. The slot RTP is either 95% but more likely 91% on most sites so these huge matches are awful unless you do very small deposits (30-50) (as the max bet of 5 or 10 has more weight there). Forgot to say these matches usually have 30-40d+b wagering too.

It’s really nice to read messages from someone who clearly understands what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, there are so many misconceptions on the internet about bonus EV, slot volatility, and more.

But I still think your estimate of required bankroll is a bit too conservative. You can get by with less and still secure enough EV while minimizing the risk of ruin. It’s also perfectly reasonable to pick slots with slightly lower EV but a higher chance of clearing the bonus.

By the way, how does your crappy simulator actually work, if you don’t mind me asking? Does it simulate spins on a real slot, or did you code a simple slot model yourself?

 

[mulven]

It’s really nice to read messages from someone who clearly understands what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, there are so many misconceptions on the internet about bonus EV, slot volatility, and more.

But I still think your estimate of required bankroll is a bit too conservative. You can get by with less and still secure enough EV while minimizing the risk of ruin. It’s also perfectly reasonable to pick slots with slightly lower EV but a higher chance of clearing the bonus.

By the way, how does your crappy simulator actually work, if you don’t mind me asking? Does it simulate spins on a real slot, or did you code a simple slot model yourself?

It's not mine actually it's a hand-me-down from someone I know who gave me a login for it eons ago. I think it simulates based on a simple slot model and then as I said instead of having different models for volatility it just manipulated the stake behind the scenes. it's quite dated and for parachute offers I would have to calculate the bonus only EV then simulate it as a cashback on losses offer with the EV of the bonus being the cashback. This worked as a workaround since technically that's kinda what a parachute offer is in a sense.

I had access to a much better bit of software with far more customisations for a while as I had a friend who knew the developer. Got the highest tier for free. BonusChum that one was called. Lost it after a computer reinstall and couldn't get the freebie key again so had to start using my friends login to his (swap round Mofit Praximiser)

Regarding risk of ruin, I only used a basic calculator I found online back in the old UK days and I just followed whatever it spat out I didn't look much into it. Then for my Canada time i had ample money due to crypto.