Online casinos have many ways to "trick you" into gambling. One of the most common ways is offering casino bonuses, which can be divided into several categories. Let's talk about match bonuses (or online casino sign-up bonuses) today, as it's the most common online casino bonus.
Match bonuses are often seemingly big in numbers (sign-up bonus as big as $3000 is not a rare thing to see nowadays). Many of these bonuses are very tricky, making withdrawing your winnings as hard as possible. Several players have quit playing at those casinos after they've understood that there's no easy way to gain profit with this bonus. They feel that they've been tricked. Hell yeah, I can't blame them!
Some of these match bonuses really are absurd. Even though, players in these days are not retarded - many of them know that the $888 "free money" means cosmic deposits and serious betting activity with real money, leading us to a fact that in the end you're probably back to ZERO, angry and have no plans to return there.
Online casinos and poker rooms are extremely cautious giving bonuses away. Usually you as a player are not allowed to play blackjack, roulette and craps with your bonus money. And often you can't withdraw your winnings if you have less than 10x bonus gathered on your casino account. My personal best has been 134 dollars with $16 dollars no deposit bonus money... of course, I gambled it down to zero. I was 26 bucks short to withdraw.
Some casinos (not the ones I prefer!) can afford those high bonuses only because they have low payouts. Not many online gamblers look at payouts when choosing a casino, so beware!
In some cases match bonuses can be used against casinos, but be sure to learn the rules before you start any monkeygambling.
Ralf Vinogradov is a part-time journalist in a newspaper and an editor and webmaster of gambling related website Best Online Casinos and Online Gambling - GamblingRalf.COM, that introduces wackiest online casino bonuses. He also runs infamous newsletter called "Club Hundredaire" with few hundred dedicated members.