Ok so there is no way to cheat a slot machine. They are rigged in the casinos favour, usually with a 95-98% RTP (return to player). That means that if we were to wager £10 we would expect to win back £9.50 on average with 95% RTP. So the casino makes on average 50p from every £10 on a 95% slot machine.

Of course this doesn’t work out that way every time, it’s the average based on thousands and thousands of spins. Sometimes you might lose all your money and sometimes you might win a huge amount but it’s the casinos that win every time. Even when someone hits a huge payout the casino is making their money on everyone else.

So how can we turn this in our favour? Well most online bookmakers will offer bonuses from time to time to keep players interested. Most of them have a sign up offer as well. The bonuses we are most interested in are Wager £x and get a £x bonus. The bonus gives the player an edge and means that most of the bet x get x offers have a positive expected value.

Every offer is different though and usually any bonuses awarded carry a wagering requirement. So if a a £10 bonus needs to be wagered 10 times we would have to spend £100 on the slot machine before the bonus becomes cash we can withdraw. Using the RTP percentages though it’s the player who has the edge on average over time as long as the wagering isn’t too high.

Let’s look at an example offer:

  • Ladbrokes are offering us a £10 bonus when we wager £20 the Superman The Movie Slot machine.
  • The bonus needs to be wagered 10 times for a total of £100 on any slot machine.

Using the RTP % we can calculate how much this offer is worth to us. Firstly we need to calculate what we are going to be left with after wagering £20 on the Superman slot.

Superman The Movie has a 95% RTP. This means that after wagering £20 on average we will be left with £19. We will be £1 down.

  • We can work this out by dividing our wager by 100 and multiplying it by the RTP.
  • So £20/100 x 95 = £19

So we are £1 down but now we have a £10 bonus we can use on any slot. For this we are going to use Golden Tour slot machine which has a RTP of 97.71%.

So again we calculate what we will have left after wagering but this time we need to take into account the 10 times wagering requirement.

  • We can work this out by dividing the bonus by 100 and multiplying it by the RTP to give us a 1 times wagering return
  • So £10/100 x 97.71 = £9.77
  • Which is a loss of £0.23
  • We then multiply that figure by the amount of wagering required (10)
  • £0.23 x 10 = £2.30

Now we know that from our £10 bonus we will be left with £7.70 cash after wagering.

  • We then need to deduct our original loss of £1 from out qualifying spins
  • So £7.70 – £1 = £6.60

That means that this slot offer is worth on average £6.60 to the player. This is known as Expected Value (EV).

Obviously these offers are not risk free and sometimes the player will lose the full amount, that would mean on this offer we could end up £20 down. However by trusting the EV over many offers and thousands of spins the player will always end up in profit on these offers. You might lose all your money on 9/10 offers but the tenth time you do the offer you might hit a big win.

Statistically speaking the player has the edge.

There are also deposit bonuses where we can get a bonus as well. For example:

  • Bet365 are offering us a £10 bonus when we deposit £20 in the casino.
  • The bonus has 20x wagering requirements

These offers can be even more profitable as there is no wagering requirements to qualify. All we have to do is deposit. However we have to be careful to read the terms and conditions. If our own money is used before the bonus funds then these offers are not profitable. Most of the time though the bonus will be used first or we can simply withdraw our qualifying deposit and be left with the bonus to play with. Meaning these offers are completely risk free.

We calculate these offers in the same way but we have no qualifying loss so on the above offer it would work out as follows:

  • Our £10 requires 20 times wagering on any slot machine. We are going to choose a high RTP slot (98%) to maximise our profits.
  • £10/100 x 98 = £9.80
  • Which is a 20p loss.
  • 20p x 20 (wagering requirement)  = £4
  • Which leaves us with £6 of the bonus left as withdrawable cash. So the EV on this offer would be £6

It is worth noting that on any slot where we have to wager a certain amount we should always use maximum lines and minimum stakes. Most slot machines allow you to change the amount you wager per spin, we want this to be as low as possible. For the number of lines we want this to be as high as possible so that we can win in more ways. Not all slots allow you to alter the line number.

The reason for using minimum stakes is that it means we have to do more spins. The more spins the better as the variance is reduced and it gives us more chances to win back our money. If you were to use £2 stakes on a £10 qualifier the chances are you would end up £10 down as that is only 5 spins. Using 20p spins is 50 spins which gives us a much higher chance of hitting a bonus round on the slot and winning a chunk of money.

I’m sure you will have seen many people online posting pictures of huge slot wins and asking yourself why does that never happen to me! Well by taking part in these offers, not only are you going to end up in profit over the long haul you are giving yourself loads of chances to hit a massive win. Doing hundreds of these offers amounts to thousands and thousands of spins. One day it could be your turn to hit the jackpot but you have to be in it to win it.

These offers are not risk free and there is a chance we could end up losing money. However by sticking with them, ploughing through every offer that comes up that is positive EV we will undoubtedly end up massively in profit.

You can use the calculator below to calculate a bet x get x slot machine offer to determine whether it is worthwhile. If the EV is negative move onto the next offer. Always check the terms and conditions of every offer as sometimes we have to use certain slot machines to qualify and then a certain slot for the bonus.