If you’re new to casino Matched Betting, you might well be wary about getting started. Unlike traditional Matched Betting on sports, there is risk involved, with no guarantee of coming out in profit.
But casino offers are well worth doing, and can make you hundreds of pounds a month in profit. Still, before you begin it’s definitely best to have a complete understanding of how they work.
The majority of casino offers involve free spins – and if you use your free spins correctly, you’ve got an excellent chance of coming out in profit.
So what’s the best way of doing this, and what pitfalls should you avoid?
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll talk you through all you need to know about how to make the most of free spins and turn casino offers into profit.
What Are Casino Free Spins?
A casino free spin is a free play of a slots game.
There are thousands of slots games out there, with hundreds of variations in the mechanics – especially in terms of bonuses and mini games – but they almost all work on roughly the same principles.
You click a button to play the game, which will display a series of spinning reels, their outcome determined by a random number generator.
If your spin results in several matching symbols along a payline (normally at least three), or if you manage to land a certain number of bonus symbols, you win.
The amount you win depends on the exact symbols you match, and is calculated based on your stake – the higher the stake, the higher your winnings will be.
Normally, you stake your own money when you play a slots game. Stakes can be as low as 5p or as high as £5, the legal maximum for a stake per game cycle (or £2 for 18-24 year olds).
But bookies and online casinos are always keen to incentivise customers to play their games, and giving out freebies is one of the most reliable ways to draw in new customers, and to keep existing customers coming back.
Free spins are therefore one of the most common casino offers you’ll encounter. From a casino’s point of view, they’re a great (and relatively cheap) way to give a customer a taste of slots, in the hope they’ll want to keep playing with their own money.
How Do You Get Free Spins?
In all sorts of ways! Bookies have a multitude of offers that will reward you with free spins, which can be divided into two main categories: sign up offers and reload offers.
- Sign up offers are for new customers, and are typically generous in terms of the value of the freebies. Sadly, you’ll only be able to do each offer once per bookie, as they aren’t accessible to existing customers.
- Reload offers are for existing customers, and aren’t nearly as generous as sign up offers. However, they’re often still worth doing, and will form a steady source of profit each month.
As a rule, you’ll have to complete some sort of qualification requirement to receive your free spins, which will most commonly involve risking some of your own money. Sometimes, though, you can receive a small number of free spins totally free, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for risk-free offers!
Some of the most common ways to earn free spins are as follows:
- Log in. In some cases, all you have to do is log in to access free spins!
- Make a deposit. Some of the more generous offers, especially sign up offers, will only ask you to make a deposit in order to earn free spins. You may have to wager any winnings to turn them into cash, however, and you’ll need to be careful not to accidentally wager your deposit if so.
- Play a free game. Lots of bookies and casinos have daily or weekly free games, which give you the chance to win rewards, including free spins.
- Stake your own money on slots. One of the most common ways to earn free spins is to risk your own money. For example, you might have to stake £10 on slots to earn a number of free spins.
- Place a sports bet. Bookmakers with both sports and casino sections sometimes mix and match their offers, so you might be asked to bet money on a certain sport, or a certain event, to earn free spins.
- Exchange credits for free spins. Some bookies/casinos use internal credits (such as coins on Coral or ‘comp points’ on Betfred) that can be exchanged for free spins. You can usually earn these credits by completing daily free games, or by staking real money.
How Do You Use Free Spins?
Usually, if you’re completing an offer with free spins, you’ll have to choose to opt in or claim those spins on the main promotion page.
Once you’ve done so, with most bookies you just need to load an eligible slots game and click ‘accept’ or ‘play now’ to use your free spins.
You should be careful to ensure you’re definitely playing with free spins before you start, however.
Some bookies – Betfred is particularly prone to this – will also feature popups inviting you to join leagues or challenges and, despite having initially chosen to use your free spins, responding to subsequent popups can return you to playing with your own funds.
Double check before you click ‘play’ that you’re definitely using your free spins! The default stake size is £2 for many casinos, so you could accidentally run through quite a lot of money if you don’t immediately realise you’re not using free spins.
What Are The Best Strategies To Profit From Free Spins Offers?
The most crucial concept to understand when it comes to profiting from free spins offers is that of expected value. This refers to the average profit someone can expect to make from an offer.
The expected value is based on the advertised return to player (RTP) of eligible slots games for each offer. This indicates the average percentage of money staked that will be returned to players in winnings.
For example, a game with an advertised RTP of 96% will pay out £96 on average for every £100 staked, with the remaining £4 forming the casino’s profit.
The RTP will never be over 100%, for obvious reasons, meaning that when you play with your own money, the likelihood is that you will always end up losing money overall.
But adding free spins into the equation can change all that! If you complete an offer that asks you to wager £10 to receive 100 free spins, each worth 10p, on a game with an RTP of 96%, you are statistically likely to end up in profit. You can work out the expected value as follows:
Wagering: £10 at 96% = you will lose 40p on average from your wagering
Free spins: 100 x 10p spins at 96% = you will win £9.60 on average from your free spins
Expected value: £9.60 – £0.40 = £9.20
If you’re considering completing an offer involving free spins, it’s a good idea to run it through our expected value calculator, to make sure it’s likely to be profitable.
Or, to make things even easier, you could become an Oddsmonkey All Access member, which gives you access to all our casino offers – with full guides as to how to complete them, and the expected value of each.
What Are The Risks Of Free Spins Offers?
It’s important to be aware that, while free spins casino offers do give you a statistical advantage, they’re by no means risk free.
The RTP of a game may tell you the average percentage of money returned to players by that game, but that figure is achieved over millions of spins, not the couple of hundred you might complete as part of an offer.
On a smaller scale, you’ll see far more volatility, meaning you could drastically outperform the expected value of any single offer, or get nowhere near it. It’s theoretically possible (if fairly unlikely) to end up losing the money you wager to qualify for an offer and then to win nothing from your free spins.
However, the more casino offers you complete, the closer your overall profits are likely to come to the total expected value of those offers.
High volume helps to bring you closer to the statistical average, so if you’ve got the bankroll to weather any downswings in your casino journey, we do recommend completing these offers.
Other Ways To Make Money From Online Betting Sites
Casino offers can be very profitable, and even fun, but they do involve an element of risk.
A safer alternative with minimal risk, which we’d recommend if you can’t afford to potentially lose any money staked on casino offers, is to have a go at Matched Betting.
Matched Betting is a strategy that involves betting both for and against the same outcome, and using free bets from bookies to make a profit.
Oddsmonkey members have access to all our handy tools and guides, which take you step by step through all you need to know, making it easy even for novice bettors to do.
If you like the sound of Matched Betting, take a look at our beginner’s guide – or if you want to get going straight away, take out our free trial and earn your first £29 in Matched Betting profits today.
