Reading an Offer in Five Numbers

Every casino promotion has a headline number, and the headline is never the value. It's the maximum size of the offer. What the offer is actually worth to you is decided by five other numbers, most of which live in the terms and conditions, and once you know how to read them you can price any promotion in about two minutes.

This guide walks through all five with real arithmetic. Every dollar figure below is a made-up example chosen to keep the math easy to follow. I don't name platforms, because terms change constantly and the point is the method, not any one offer. Read the current terms of anything you're actually considering.

We published a broader guide on advertised value versus cash value.

The five numbers

1. The face value. This is the headline: "$500 bonus," "up to $1,000 in bonus funds." Two things to notice. "Up to" means tiers, and the top tier usually requires the largest deposit. And the number describes bonus funds, not cash. Bonus funds can't be withdrawn until you've done something with them, which brings us to the rest of the list.
2. What it costs to unlock. Most casino bonuses are deposit matches. "100% match up to $500" means you deposit $500 of your own money to receive $500 in bonus funds. Your deposit is still yours, but it's now sitting in an account with conditions attached, and on many offers the conditions apply to your deposit too, not just the bonus.
3. The playthrough. This is the number that decides almost everything. A playthrough (sometimes called a wagering or rollover requirement) is a multiplier: you must place bets totaling that many times a base amount before the bonus funds become withdrawable. "15x the bonus" on a $500 bonus means $7,500 in total bets. Read carefully which base it applies to. "15x the bonus" is $7,500. "15x the deposit plus bonus" on the same offer is $15,000. Same headline, double the requirement.
4. The house edge on the games you're allowed to use. Every casino game has a built-in edge for the house, and the playthrough is a machine for applying that edge to a fixed amount of betting. Slots typically run somewhere around 3% to 6%. Some table games run well under 1%, which is exactly why most bonus terms either exclude them or "weight" them, counting only 10% or 20% of each table bet toward the playthrough. The eligible-games section of the terms is where a lot of offers quietly lose most of their value.
5. The clock and the caps. How many days you have to complete the playthrough, the maximum bet allowed while bonus funds are active, and on some offers a maximum cashout. A 30-day window on a $7,500 playthrough is comfortable. A 7-day window on a $20,000 playthrough is a second job.

The math, worked all the way through

Take a hypothetical offer: a 100% deposit match up to $500, with a 15x playthrough on the bonus only, slots eligible at 100%, and a 30-day window. You deposit $500 and receive $500 in bonus funds.

The playthrough requires $7,500 in total bets. If you play slots with a 4% house edge, the expected cost of placing $7,500 in bets is:

$7,500 × 4% = $300

That $300 is what the playthrough costs you, in expectation, before you can withdraw anything. So the expected value of the $500 bonus is roughly:

$500 minus $300 = about $200

Call it 40 cents of value per advertised dollar. Not nothing, but not $500, and the difference between the two is entirely the playthrough doing its job.

Now change one number and watch what happens.

Same $500 bonus with a 5x playthrough: $2,500 in bets, times 4%, is $100 of expected cost. The bonus is worth about $400, or 80 cents per advertised dollar. That's a genuinely good offer.

Same $500 bonus with a 30x playthrough: $15,000 in bets, times 4%, is $600 of expected cost. The bonus is now worth about negative $100. The offer costs more to unlock than it's worth. It still has a $500 headline.

And a bigger headline: a $1,000 bonus with a 20x playthrough. $20,000 in bets, times 4%, is $800. Expected value about $200, which is 20 cents per advertised dollar. The bigger offer is worth the same as the smaller one and takes nearly three times the work to unlock.

That's the whole trick. Headline size and real value are almost unrelated, and the playthrough multiplier times the house edge is the number that connects them.

We published a separate guide on the real cost of playthrough, with the cost at every multiplier from 1x to 40x.

The one-line version

Expected value of a bonus is roughly: face value minus (total required bets × house edge). Divide by the face value and you get cents per advertised dollar. I treat anything under about 50 cents as needing a specific reason to bother, and anything the clock makes impractical as worth zero regardless of the math.

What this math doesn't tell you

Expected value is an average across many plays. Any single attempt can land well above or well below it. Variance is real, it's why the working capital requirement on this site exists, and no arithmetic changes it.

The math also says nothing about whether an offer is available to you (state, platform, account history all matter), and nothing about your own tolerance for swings. Those are separate questions, and they're most of what an actual screening conversation is about.

What the math does do is stop the headline from making your decision for you. Five numbers, two minutes, and you know what you're looking at.