Online Casino Bonuses
Most online casinos use bonuses as a viable and efficient incentive for all types of players. Existing bettors with a long track record in the online casino are offered deposit bonuses and loyalty schemes to get them engaged for longer, while newcomers are encouraged to claim welcome bonuses as a way to show them the online casino’s allure. In Irish online casinos, you are going to find more than five types of bonuses and promotions, most of which are reviewed in this post below. There is no clear and unambiguous answer to whether one should claim bonuses because not all bonuses are good and beneficial. However catchy they may look at first glance, not all of them are worth your time and effort. Read below to find out more about the types of online casino bonuses in Irish casinos and other helpful details about bonuses.
Welcome bonuses
When you sign up, an online casino can offer you a welcome bonus. This can occur at the stage of creating an account, where the registration form may contain an invitation to check a box if you want to claim the first deposit bonus immediately after signup. Before rushing to take the bonus, you should read its attached terms attentively to avoid frustration later. A typical welcome bonus is given as a certain amount from the initial deposit. For example, if the bonus reads ‘120% up to €500’, this means you will receive €120 on a €100 deposit, but the bonus sum must not go over €500.
Some bonuses come as a package associated with two or more deposits a new casino user placed. A welcome package may be comprised of match bonuses and free spins, e.g. you can get a 100% first deposit bonus up to €300 plus 50 free spins on the second deposit. As a general rule, welcome bonuses have a wagering requirement of 30x and higher. Experience shows that maybe about 20% of all bonuses are good enough to be claimed because of hard-to-beat wagering requirements.
Reload bonuses
These are the main constituents of a casino’s bonus program. Also known as deposit bonuses, a reload bonus is given away when you deposit money to your online casino balance. As a rule, each reload bonus has its unique terms and conditions, setting forth the minimum sum one must send to the balance with the purpose of claiming the bonus. When you get it, the bonus funds will be put to the dedicated bonus balance, without being mixed with the real funds.
Visiting new online casinos in Ireland, you often see a line like this: ‘Get 100% up to €500’. This means you will get the same amount as deposited but not above €500. Reload bonuses show significant variability in percentage, max sizes, contributing games, and a few other factors. Moreover, you should look carefully at the list of excluded games that are not eligible for the reload bonus. Otherwise, the bet you place to wager the bonus will not be counted.
Cashback
This is perhaps the most coveted and sought-after bonus every player wants to grab. After a ruining gaming session where you lost hundreds of euros, you might feel disappointed. Top casinos online in Ireland can offer you cashback to compensate you for your unhappy losses. It is calculated as a fixed percentage of losses incurred during a set period, e.g. a week. So if you happen to have lost €100 in a video slot and claim 10% cashback, the online casino will credit you €10 as a gift.
Importantly, some casinos give you that €10 or other sum with no strings attached. You just take it and use it as you like. Other online casinos have WR linked to their cashback. At the same time, the best casinos in Ireland and other countries tend to peg low WR to cashback, somewhere about 5x to 20x. Notably, the cashback scope often depends on the player’s VIP level in the online casino, and players at a higher tier get more than novices.
Do you know what rakeback is?
This is a rare sub-group of cashback, but—compared to the latter—rakeback is awarded on every real-money bet, not losses. Rakeback is usually small, less than 1%, and finding it in a casino is a great luck!
Free spins
Free spin bonuses are given on a specific video slot or a group of slots as a welcome bonus or regular promotion. So you may get, say, 20 free spins that you can play on A Night In Paris (or other game as per the bonus t’s&c’s). While using these free spins, you sure get some winnings; experience and common sense have it that the winnings are pretty low. This is because a free spin value is minimal, so you can win just a few cents from each.
Free spins also have the wagering requirements, which are about the same as for reload bonuses. The WR are applicable to FS winnings. When spinning a video slot as part of the bonus, you will have other restrictions: no Bonus Buy feature can be bought, and so on. The best online casinos in Ireland offer lucrative free spin bonuses with low WR and other compelling conditions.
Free chips
Also known as no-deposit bonuses, free chips enjoy the same tremendous popularity as cashback, and for the same reason: they give you some money on the balance. To be more exact, free chips are not free; they do come with prerequisites, e.g. signing up in an online casino. So when you come across a casino online in Ireland with a no-deposit bonus, read its related terms. High chances are they want you to sign up in the casino first.
After creating an account successfully, the casino credits bonus cash to your bonus account. Free chips are usually not sizeable, about €10 to €20 or so. What’s more, they come with very high wagering, at about 60x or even up. So, with all their appeal and seemingly alluring look, free chips are quite hard to wager. On the other hand, you lose nothing even if you fail to wager a no-deposit bonus in full. We, on this site, offer a couple of top IE casinos with no-deposit bonuses.
Casino bonus properties
Now you know the major categories of online casino bonuses. Besides, you have already learnt what the wagering requirement (WR) is. But in addition to that, every bonus comes with a set of rules, provisions, do’s and dont’s, which are usually put down in the General Terms or Bonus terms, depending on the online casino’s composition. So, what are the main and vital bonus properties that players should know to leverage and benefit from a bonus?
Wagering requirements
Bonuses are not freebies. They come at a cost, but online casinos do not call it the ‘cost’ or ‘price’ literally. Wagering requirements (WR) are what a person must pay for taking a bonus. In other words, when an Irish online casino grants a bonus of 100 euros, it must be wagered, say, 40 times. The bonus is credited to the separate balance (you can find it in your dashboard), and it stays there until wagered completely (4000 euros), at which point the remaining sum moves to the real-money balance. Many players proceed to wagering bonuses, but few of them complete it successfully, because they run out of real money earlier, and the bonus gets forfeited for this reason. Our research shows that the WR of 20x for deposit bonuses is fine. Anything over it, is hardly reachable.
Minimum deposit
This is another criterion that an aspiring player should be aware of. Every bonus except for free chips requires a user to make a deposit equal to or higher than a certain amount. Usually, the min dep is €10 or so. If you incidentally top up less, the bonus will be inactive.
Bonus validity
Bonuses are not diamonds—they are not forever. An online casino bonus has an expiration date, much like dairy products. If you do not use it for a week or so, it will become useless. Reading bonus terms and conditions, pay attention to how much time the online casino gives you to wager it utterly. Some of the best Irish casinos have a month term, while others restrict it to ten days. We recommend staying away from bonuses with a few-day validity.
Qualifying games
It often happens that an online casino outlines the games in which a player may wager a bonus. These can include a package of video slots from a provider, all video slots except for three-reel slots, and so on. If the player bets bonus money on a casino game that is excluded from the bonus terms and conditions, such a bet will not contribute to fulfilling the playthrough. Be careful with this important provision since violating it can ruin your casino bonus experience.
FAQ
This is an incentive for new users to join the site and a way to retain the existing players.
You can claim a welcome bonus (after signup), reload bonuses, free spins, no-deposit bonuses, and cashback. Some casinos also have tournaments and loyalty programs.
This is a multiplier value showing how many times a player who has claimed the bonus must wager the bonus amount (sometimes, the bonus and deposit) to make use of it (withdraw or bet in games).
A reload bonus is given to a player who has topped up the real-money balance. It usually represents a percentage of the deposited amount, e.g. a 50% reload up to €500.
This depends on the casino’s policy. Normally, a player is entitled to have only one active bonus. Redeeming another one can forfeit the active bonus and all associated winnings.
The max bet is usually set at €5 to €10.
