5 Casino Myths Debunked

Reading Time: 5 mins

Josh Hughes
King of Casino

We often hear the same misconceptions about online casino offers, and we thought it was about time to set the record straight.

Below are 5 common casino myths. Chances are we’ve all heard, or even thought, one or two of these are some point.

In this post I'm going to cover why they are not true!

1 – Casino Offers Are No Different To Gambling

When someone plays a casino game, such as slots, roulette or blackjack, the casino has the mathematical advantage. That means that, on average, the player will lose money playing.

This is why casinos exist. They know that in the long term, if people gamble with them, they will make money.

Casino offers work very differently to simply gambling.

We identify offers where the reward gained is valuable enough to not only remove the casino's advantage, but also to give us, the player, the mathematical edge. We call these offers +EV (positive expected value).

If an offer is +EV, it doesn’t mean that we are guaranteed to make money from it. We will still lose money on some offers. What it does mean is that we have the mathematical advantage and on average, we will make a profit over the long term.

Without an offer, the casino has the edge, and we should lose money over time.

With offers (that are +EV), the player has the edge and should make money over time.

2 – Online Casino Games Are Rigged

If you’ve lost a bit of money playing on an online casino, it could be quite easy to decide that online casino games are rigged. That the games have somehow been adjusted to reduce your chance of winning.

After all, it must be easy for casinos to make changes to online casino games to ensure they keep winning, right?

In reality, most online casino games are created and managed by software development companies, who then license the games to the casinos. These games are programmed to pay back a certain percentage of stakes over the long term (called return to player or RTP).

If a game has a 96% RTP, then this means that for every £100 staked, the game should on average pay out £96 in winnings. There is no need for the casino to rig the game because they know that, on average, for every £100 wagered on the 96% RTP game, they will make £4 profit.

Multiply that by the millions of pounds that get wagered on online casinos, and you can see how online casinos make big profits from gamblers, without the need to rig games.

All casinos featured on Team Casino are regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. They are closely monitored to ensure they meet all regulations and that their games are fair. If a casino was found to be rigging games, they would lose their license and face big fines.

Casinos will make money without rigging games, so it simply isn’t worth the risk for them of losing their license.

3 – You Should Stop An Offer Early If You Win More Than The EV

You’re completing an offer, which has £5 EV. After a few spins you hit a big win and are £20 in profit. You’ve made more profit than you expected to, so it makes sense to stop the offer and bank the profit, right?

Wrong.

We know that playing casino games without offers will lose us money, and it is only when we gain rewards like free spins and bonuses that offers become +EV and can make us money.

By stopping an offer early, you are failing to earn the reward like free spins. You are effectively just gambling without an edge, which we know will cost us money on average.

So, if an offer is +EV you should always complete the offer, regardless of whether you are in profit or loss from the wagering. This way you earn the rewards that make the offers +EV. The more EV you bank, the more long term profit you will make.

Sometimes you will continue with the offer, and give back some of your profit, but don’t dwell on this. You followed the correct approach, the one that will make you the most EV, and therefore the most profit on average.

Example

Let's take a very simple offer example:

Wager £10 on a 95% RTP slot to get a £2.50 cash bonus

By wagering £10, we will lose 50p on average ((£10 * 0.95) – 10)

We lose 50p from wagering, but then get £2.50 cash, giving us an EV of £2.00.

You start the offer, and after £5 of wagering, you are £10 in profit.

What does the maths now say about whether or not we should continue?

We now effectively have an offer of wager £5 to get a £2.50 cash bonus.

By wagering £5, we will lose 25p on average ((£5 * 0.95) – 5) but gain a £2.50 cash reward, giving us £2.25 EV.

By continuing with the offer, we can expect to make an additional £2.25 profit on average.

So, we should absolutely continue with the offer, and not be tempted to take the early profit from wagering.

4 – Casino Offers Are Just About Being Lucky

Casino offers are subject to variance, which means offer results are not guaranteed and will vary. Imagine you completed a casino offer three times. One time you make £20 profit, another time you make nothing, and another time you lose £5. Overall, you’ve made £15 profit, but each result was completely different.

When first starting out, if you completed a few offers and didn’t make much profit, it could be very easy to decide that you are: ‘not lucky enough for casino’ or that perhaps: ‘casino offers don’t work for me’. And you decide not to do any more offers.

The reality is that everyone will have periods where they don’t make much profit from casino offers. We call that bad variance, and it’s completely normal.

Think about tossing a coin 10 times. On average it should be 50/50 heads and tails, but on this occasion you get 8 heads and 2 tails. That’s quite a large variance from the average. But toss a coin 1,000 times and you will almost certainly find that your results are extremely close to 50/50.

We can apply the same idea to casino offers. Over a small number of offers, our actual profit will vary quite a bit from our EV. But the more offers we complete, the less variance becomes a factor. This means that over time we should increasingly see our profits rising in line with our EV.

Making a profit from casino offers isn’t about being lucky, it’s about repeatedly completing +EV offers as often as we can to overcome any short term variance and grow our long term profits.

5 – One More Spin Won't Hurt

Online casino games are designed to make you want to keep playing. Think bright colours, upbeat music and themes relating to popular films, bands, celebrities etc. It’s all intended to make you think you’re having fun, and want to keep playing.

When you finish an offer, there might be the temptation to play a few more spins, keep going until you hit a bonus round, or play a couple more hands of blackjack. After all, a few more spins won’t hurt, will they?

Casino offers are all about exploiting a mathematical advantage that allows us to make a profit over time. As soon as the offer finishes, we no longer have an advantage, the casino does. This means that we’re effectively just gambling and on average, every additional spin or hand played will lose us money. That makes those few extra spins a great way to eat into your profits.

If you find yourself increasingly spinning without offers, then you could be on a slippery slope towards developing a gambling problem. It sounds extreme, but 1 or 2 extra spins might turn into 3 or 4, which turns into 5-10 extra spins and so on. If you are concerned about this happening to you, then please see our Responsible Gambling guide for more info.

Casino offers work because of the mathematical advantage we get from the rewards. As soon as we finish the offer, we should stop wagering IMMEDIATELY.

Recap

To recap:

1- Casino offers are very different to simply gambling.

With gambling the casino has the edge, we will lose money in the long term. With +EV offers we have the edge and will make money over time.

2- Online casino games are not rigged.

Casinos always have the edge on casino games (without offers) and therefore know that they will make money from punters without the need to fix their games. Casinos are heavily regulated and monitored and it would not be in their long term interests to rig games.

3- You should always complete casino offers.

Even if you make a profit early on in the wagering, finishing the offer will make you more profit in the long term.

4- Casino offers are not simply luck.

They are about repeatedly exploiting a mathematical edge to make a long term profit.

5- We should never continue to spin after finishing an offer.

Continuing to spin after finishing an offer will eat into our profits and can escalate over time into gambling problems.

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We've Got Your Back.

As always, if you have any questions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to contact us!

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