The majority of online casinos offer so called signup bonuses - as an incentive to play - to new gamblers signing up to the casino, opening an account and making their first deposit. Signup bonuses usually match a specific percentage of the player’s deposit with a predefined dollar maximum. There are, however, several exceptions to this rule, with some casinos offering fixed bonuses as well as online poker rooms with Cryptologic software “putting up for sale” as many as 5 dollars for every hour of playing. Besides the above defined one-off bonus type, there is a so called promotion bonus referring rather to some particular occasion than signup. At the bottom, signup and promotional bonuses play a significant role in the marketing strategy of online gambling institutions, with special regard to new online poker rooms which strongly need poker players as nobody would enter an empty room.

The terms and conditions concerning bonus offers, although they may vary from casino to casino, concern by all means the next two issues: wager requirements and restricted games or bets.

Wager requirements prevent players from simply withdrawing their bonus right after receiving it. In turn, they must wager a certain amount of money (or certain times) on hazard games specified by the casino before being allowed to withdraw bonus cash.

Restricted games are those for which wager requirements would be too easy to complete (low risk wagers), including almost universally slots, keno, roulette, baccarat and craps.

With the expansion of online gambling industry and the diversification of bonuses, a new gambling strategy has been emerged called “bonus hunting”. Bonus hunters are smart online gamblers actively searching for Good poker and casino bonus offers, signing up to the casino to claim the bonus, and what the most significant step is, playing only at the lowest stake tables in order to minimize the amount of bonus that is eaten away in the process of fulfilling the wagering requirements. Supposing that someone is loosing during the process of fulfilling the wagering requirements just as much as he or she is winning (and this is quite likely to happen), the only “cost” that is to be subtracted from the initial bonus is the house edge, which is usually much less than the bonus money. Thus, advantage play is mathematically possible.

Bonus hunters are referred to by many sources as “bonus abusers”, “bonus baggers”, “bonus whores” and “casino scalpers”. However, there is a major difference between bonus hunters and bonus abusers, and many casinos don’t see or don’t want to see this difference. A bonus hunter proceeds according to the terms and conditions of the given casino, while a bonus abuser violates these terms and conditions, as, for instance, creating multipleaccounts to claim the same bonus over and over.

In reply to “bonus misinterpretation” or “bonus abuse”, a number of measures have been implemented from the part of online casinos in order to stop scammers. Wagering requirements have become more severe, for instance 25-30 times wager requirements instead of ones of 10-20 of former times. Some casinos have introduced “sticky” bonuses which cannot be withdrawn at all. Others have disallowed games with low house edge such as Blackjack and Video Poker as well as risk free bets. Gamblers suspected of bonus hunting and especially bonus abuse have been kicked out and got on the blacklist of not only the casino in question but also its affiliates and sister sites.

As a consequence, bonus hunting is becoming less and less profitable, but by no means dead. Experts state that “as long as the competition is fierce, bonus hunting will be part of online gambling”.

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