Gaming in Online Casinos, by Nicolae Sfetcu

Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos, are the online version of land-based (“brick and mortar”) casinos. They allow you to play casino games through the Internet. Some online casinos provide various games, while others only provide only one type of game. Online poker is also very popular and there are many dedicated companies that provide this activity.

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The online casino market is a tough one, and although overall the online casino industry is thriving, competition within it is hard. All online casino companies must do two things in order to survive in this tough market: they must hang on to their existing clients and they must attract new ones.

As a result online casinos invest a huge amount of money in promotional efforts to attract new customers, but if they fail to hang on to a substantial proportion of these new customers then this investment, or at least a large proportion of it, will be wasted.

The most important and most up-front promotional activities involve bonuses. In the early days these tended to be simple welcome bonuses which rewarded a client with a bonus that was awarded as a proportion of the initial deposit. This could be anything from 50% of the initial deposit right op to 200% and possibly even higher. You should note however that these bonuses are not exactly free money; it is necessary to play them through a number of times before they can be converted to cash. A better way of looking at them is as free bets.

The problem with this model was the emergence of what the casinos dubbed as “bonus tarts”. These players would sign up to a casino bonus, satisfy the necessary terms and conditions, then if they ended in a profit would simply withdraw their funds and sign up to the bonus offer of a competing casino. They would just keep repeating the pattern ad infinitum.

Casinos then realised that in order to hang onto their customers progressive bonuses are a better model. With these you receive similar multiples, but rather than awarding them when you sign up, there are stages over a number of deposits. You will receive a proportion of the bonus when you first sign up, say 40% of it, then on you subsequent three deposits you will receive 20% of it each time.

Many casinos now also provide regular bonuses in terms of ongoing customer loyalty awards; the more you play the greater the awards. Naturally all this competition is only good news for the online player.