Casino Offers - When Can It Pay To Take More Risks?

I'll start this all off by saying not to worry if you don't understand every single detail of what I'm about to go into! I'll explain the maths for those who want the gory details, but the main takeaway will be simple: sometimes you can get more value out of a casino offer by employing a riskier strategy (i.e. playing with larger stakes or playing on a higher variance game).

The value of certain types of casino offers won't change by going for the risky approach. Small stakes and keeping the volatility of an offer nice and low can sometimes be the perfect strategy.

Styles make offers, and not every style of casino offer should be played the same way. This is why I'll tell you all about the styles of offers where high risk equals high reward, and for good reason!

Outplayed will always tell you the best strategy for each offer in our writeups, so think of this article as an insight into why we tell you what we do.

This article will assume you already somewhat know your way around making money from casino offers. The concepts of wagering, Expected Value, RTP, and variance/volatility should already be familiar to you.

What Do I Mean By "More Risk"?

There are two main ways to play a casino offer in a more risky fashion. The first is to raise the stakes. Playing with £2 spins on a slot is going to have more profit/loss swings than playing with £0.10 spins.

The second way is to play a game that is inherently more risky and volatile. Not all slots are made equal; some of them pay out smaller amounts quite often. These are known as low variance games (lower risk). Other slots will pay out larger amounts, but not as frequently. This would be high variance (higher risk).

With some casino games, the choice of what you bet on can affect the risk. Roulette is a perfect example of this. When betting on Red, 18 out of 37 times you'll be a winner - that's nearly 50% of the time. On the flip side, if you bet on a single number, you'll only be a winner 1 in 37 times but win a much larger amount when it happens.

The single number strategy is much "riskier" than a simple bet on Red.

Example Where Risky Doesn't Make a Difference

Some simple styles of offers are unaffected by stake sizing from a value point of view. For example, if you're taking part in a "Wager £10 Get £5 Cash" promotion.

You have to play through £10 worth of spins, and then the casino will give you £5 cash. For the sake of all examples in this guide, we'll assume you're playing on a slot with an RTP of 95%.

The EV of this offer can be worked out with Outplayed's EV Calculator:

This shows that the long term value of this offer is £4.50.

This was calculated by taking the wagering amount (£10) and multiplying it by the casino's edge (5%) to get the amount you'd expect to lose by qualifying. This gives an expected loss of £0.50 (£10 x 5%). Then, you add on the reward value (£5) to get your £4.50 overall EV.

Now, you could do the £10 wagering requirement by doing 100 x £0.10 slot spins, or maybe 10 x £1 spins, they both total the £10 stipulation. Does it make a difference to the value, though? Absolutely not.

The 10 x £1 spins option is more volatile; it's easier to lose larger amounts in comparison to 100 x £0.10 spins, but it's also easier to win much bigger amounts if you get lucky on the larger spin size.

But when it comes to value, nothing is going to change. It'll be worth £4.50 regardless.

So why is this?

In a nutshell, it's because you always have to wager the full £10 in this offer to get the cash reward. You'll never finish early, you'll never wager more than £10, and it'll always be exactly £10.

Cast your mind back to 3 minutes ago when I told you how the EV calculation was done. It started off by multiplying the wagering amount by the casino's edge. 

So if your wagering amount isn't going to change (it's always £10 regardless of what size stakes you decide to play with), your EV isn't going to change!

Example Where Risky Makes A Difference

Here's an example where the amount you're likely to wager will change if you play a riskier strategy.

Let's say you have a deposit match style casino offer with the following terms:

• Matched Amount - 50%
• Maximum Bonus - £50
• Eligible Games - Slots
• Wagering Requirement - 20x the bonus amount (which would be £1,000 if you get the maximum £50 bonus)
• Cash Used Before Bonus? - Yes

This means that you'll deposit £100 of your own cash to receive a £50 bonus from the casino. You'll need to play £1,000 worth of spins on the slots before the bonus balance turns into withdrawable cash.

If at any point you have a £0 balance, the offer is over; you've "bust out". There's no value in depositing any more of your own cash to complete more of the wagering requirement because you have no bonus left to convert anyway!

The very fact that you can lose the lot early, and therefore not always need to wager the full £1,000 requirement is the crucial reason why this offer has more value by playing "riskier".

It can seem counter-intuitive at first, but if you raise your stakes, this means you're more likely to bust out of the offer, and therefore will wager a smaller amount on average. Smaller wagering means a lower amount of play on a game where the casino has the edge, which means more value for you!

The larger stakes also mean that when you do hit a big win, it'll be very big.

You can use Outplayed's special Casino Simulator to get the EV of this type of offer. We can see the theory in action by first simulating the offer with low stakes/high stakes.

Low Stakes (£0.20):

The EV is only £0.30 - not worth bothering with! A very interesting thing to note here is the "Wagered" amount of £986.81. This means that on average, £986.81 out of the maximum possible £1,000 wagering requirement was played to complete this offer at £0.20 stakes. It's practically the whole lot. You've extended your stay on a slot that has a 5% edge over you.

High Stakes (£4):

I've ran the exact same simulation for the offer, with the only difference being £4 stakes instead of £0.20. Look at the dramatic change in EV; it's now shot up to £17.64 and will only take 8 minutes to complete instead of 4 hours!

Again, let's look at the average amount wagered in this simulation. It's £659.40 this time instead of £986.81. This is what's making all the difference - putting less of your money through the casino on average.

The exact same concept applies when playing a low variance game compared to a high variance one. This time I'll go with £1 stakes and keep all the simulator settings the same except the variance.

Low variance:

When playing a low variance game (one that gives smaller wins but more often), the EV is £3.12 and the average amount wagered is £931.48.

High variance:

In contrast, when playing a high variance slot (one that pays out less frequently but with large wins when it does), the EV is much higher at £12.45 and the average wagering is much lower at £760.20.

Balance Between Risk & Reward

As with everything in life, there's a sweet spot. Just because you'll get more value out of an offer by employing a high risk strategy doesn't mean you have to always play with crazy high stakes. There's a balance to be had. You don't want to risk blowing your whole bankroll early and never having the chance to take more value from more offers.

Let's see this in action by looking at another deposit match style casino offer with the following terms:

• Matched Amount - 100%
• Maximum Bonus - £10
• Eligible Games - Slots
• Wagering Requirement - 10x the bonus amount (which would be £100 if you get the maximum £10 bonus)
• Cash Used Before Bonus? - Yes

This means that you'll deposit £10 of your own cash to receive a £10 bonus from the casino. You'll need to play £100 worth of spins on the slots before the bonus balance turns into withdrawable cash.

Firstly, I'll simulate a sensible and balanced strategy: £1 stakes on a low variance slot:

The value with this strategy is £6.48 and the bust rate is 54.39% (which means you'll lose your £10 deposit and make nothing from the bonus just over half the time doing the offer).

Now, I'll simulate an over-the-top risky strategy with £10 spins on a high variance slot:

The EV is admittedly higher; it's now up to £7.48 from our previous simulation which gave £6.48. But it's only an extra £1 for the sake of a much higher bust rate. This time, you'll not make a profit and bust out of the offer 86.89% of the time. The other 13.11% of the time, you'll likely have a very large profit, but you'll be coming away a loser all too often, for only £1 of extra long-term value.

Types Of Casino Offers

Here's a quick overview of various types of promotions and whether you can get more value out of them by playing with a riskier strategy:

Summary

Now breathe... I've given you a lot to take in, maybe too much, but I hope the takeaway messages are clear:

1. You can gain more value from some styles of casino offers by playing in a riskier fashion.
2. Some styles of offers it won't make a difference. The value is the same, however you play.
3. There's no need to go over the top. A nice balance can be had between EV and bust rate. You can always play around with the Outplayed Simulator to find out what works for you.