Money Back On Losses Offers

Loss-back offers are a popular type of casino offer.

These are where a casino will give you a certain amount of cash if you lose money playing their games.

It can be a little tricky at first to understand how these offers work, and how to approach them.

But fear not…

In this guide I will go through the following points so that you can smash loss back offers:

Loss back offers can take many different formats.

The best format is a 100% back on losses offer, such as the one below.

In this example, the casino is promising to return to us, 100% of the losses that we make up to £5 cash.

We start with £5 cash in our account.  We then start playing on casino games.

Sometimes we’ll hit some nice wins, and our cash balance will increase to more than our starting balance.  If we are happy with our profit, we can stop wagering and lock in a nice profit.

And if we don’t make a profit, we know that our losses will be refunded.

For a 100% loss back offer, we should only ever lose as much as the cashback amount.

So for the offer above, we would stop wagering as soon as our losses reached £5.

This makes the offer completely risk-free because the cashback will cover our losses.

Offers With Less Than 100% Loss Back

Often loss back offers are not completely risk-free, because the % loss back is less than 100%.

Commonly, casinos offer 20%, 25% or 50% cashback on losses.

For instance, the offer above is 25% cashback on losses up to £5.

If we only receive 25% of our losses back, then we would need to lose £20 to receive the full £5 loss back.

We should start the offer with £20 cash balance, and then wager on casino games until either:

• We make a profit that we are happy with (covered later in the guide)
• Our cash balance decreases by £20

When either of these things happens, we stop wagering immediately.

If we've made a profit then great!

If we've made a loss, we know a portion of our losses will be returned by the casino.

Casinos will often specify a certain game, or group of games, that are eligible for a loss back offer.

An offer will usually either be on slots, or table games (like blackjack and roulette).

The type of game will impact how we typically approach the offer.

Table Games

For table games, our approach will often be to play one single game round. We will stake the amount of money that we would need to lose to qualify for the loss back in one single spin/hand.

So either one big hand of blackjack, or one big spin on roulette.

Our goal is to either double our money or lose and qualify for the loss back.

This is a very quick, and very high EV approach to loss back offers on table games.

It works because table games are typically very low variance.

For instance, a hand of blackjack wins almost 50% of the time, as does a bet on red or black on roulette.

Slots

Our approach on slots is a bit different.

Slots are much higher variance than table games. Our chances of hitting a nice win off a single spin would be very low.

So we would never recommend approaching a loss back offer by doing one single £10 spin on a slot.

This would be a high EV approach, and very rarely would we expect to hit a big win, so we wouldn't normally recommend this approach.

We also would not want to use the smallest spin size, like when wagering our own money for other others.

It would take a long time to complete the offer, and the chance of hitting a big win, to give us a nice profit, would be very low.

We should use a spin size of around 50p-£2.

This will depend on the size of the offer, but a spin size in this range will usually give a high EV, with a reasonable chance of achieving a profit.

Our approach to loss back offers on table games is usually quite fixed.

We play one round of blackjack or roulette, aiming to either double our money, or lose and qualify for the loss back.

But it's not quite that simple for loss back offers on slots.

Similar to bonus wagering offers, our approach has a significant impact on both the EV and the Bust Rate (chance of making a loss).

The two main factors that we must consider are our spin sizing, and our profit target.

These are explained below, and we then detail how to use our EV Simulator to decide your approach.

Like deciding what spin size we use to wager a bonus, we usually get to decide our spin size for loss back offers.

Typically, the larger the spin size used, the higher the EV.

But a big spin size means you will on average complete fewer spins before having to stop the offer. Fewer spins mean less chance of hitting a winning spin and making a profit.

So whilst it is higher EV, a larger spin size means higher variance.

This means a much higher chance of either finishing the offer with no profit, or at a loss (if loss back is less than 100%).

We don’t want to use a very large spin size. But we don’t want to use a tiny spin size either.

Using minimum spins will mean a very low EV.  It would be difficult to have wins large enough to hit our profit target, and the offer would take a long time.

We should use a spin size of around 50p-£2 for loss back offers.

We can be flexible with our spin sizes, depending on the exact offer we are attempting.

For instance an offer of 100% loss back up to £5, you might choose to use 50p spins.  That way you will get to complete at least 10 spins.

But if the offer were 100% loss back up to £25, it could make sense to use a larger spin size, of £1.50-£2.

We should always start a loss back offer with a profit target in mind.

Our profit target is the amount of profit at which we would be happy to stop a loss-back offer.

Typically a higher profit target will mean higher EV.

As our target increases, the chance of us hitting large enough wins to reach our target decreases.

So a higher profit target means higher variance, and more chance of busting out.

Our profit target will depend on the exact offer that we are attempting.

We should usually aim to make a profit of around 50-100% of our initial investment.

So if we were completing a 50% back on losses up to £10 offer.

Our starting balance, or initial investment, would be £20. This is the amount we could lose by completing the offer.

Based upon this, we could set a profit target of £10-£20.

Say you decide a profit target of £10. If at any point your cash balance increased to £30+ (£20 starting balance + £10 profit) then you would stop wagering immediately.

You'd be finished with the offer, having made a nice profit.

You can be a little flexible with your profit target.

So if you set a £10 profit target, and get to £9.50 profit, it would be to stop and bank the profit, if you wanted to.

Team Casino's EV Simulator is a brilliant tool for helping you decide how to approach loss back offers.

The EV Simulator will allow you to see how spin sizes and profit targets will impact the EV, and bust rate of an offer.

The simulator will ask you to enter the following information for your offer:

• Cashback %
• Maximum Cashback Amount (£s)
• Game Type – Roulette, Blackjack Or Slots.
  • If selecting slots, it will ask you the level of variance.  Our Slots Database gives variance estimates for lots of slots, but if you are not sure, consider selecting medium variance.
• Slot RTP – use our Slots Database or the website Slot Catalog
• Spin Size

Once you have entered this information, click ‘Start Simulation'.

The EV Simulator will then show you the EV, and Bust Rate, based upon 4 different profit targets.

You can see how your profit target impacts the EV and bust out rate, allowing you to decide your approach.

You can adjust the spin size, and then re-run the simulator, to see what impact a different spin size would have.

This section explains a few factors to consider before starting a loss back offer.

Are You Comfortable With The Risk?

If an offer is 100% loss back as cash, then it is completely risk-free.

If the loss back % is less than 100%, then that means there is a chance that you could make a loss.

In fact, you often have a 50%-80% chance of making a loss by attempting a loss back offer.

Always consider whether you are comfortable with the risk that you are taking.

If you are not comfortable with making that loss, do not attempt the offer.

As the loss back % decreases, and the offer’s loss back amount increases, the risk will increase.

Loss back offers (other than 100% loss back) can often be medium-high risk offers. These are only suitable for those with big bankrolls, and high tolerance to risk.

If an invite offer has a loss back % of <50%, or the loss back exceeds £20, we would recommend speaking to the team on live chat. This could be quite a high-risk offer, and we can help you decide whether the offer is right for you, and how to approach it.

Wagering On Loss Back

Loss back offers usually refund your losses as cash.

Sometimes the refund on losses will come as a bonus with wagering requirements.

Often this has 1x wagering to complete on the same slot.

Whilst this increases the variance of the offer, it doesn’t have a significant impact on the EV.

However, if the wagering is greater than 1x, this will increase the variance, and reduce the EV.

It can also cause problems if the casino uses cash before bonus funds.

Speak to us on live chat before considering a loss back offer with large wagering.

Number Of Game Rounds

Sometimes a loss back offer will need you to play a certain number of games (spins) to qualify for the loss back.

This will impact our approach to the offer.

If an offer was 100% back on losses up to £5, with 10+ game rounds required, then it would be a bad idea to do £1 spins.

You could end up losing more than the refund amount.

Reduce the spin size that you use to ensure that you can always complete the required number of game rounds.

Once you have completed the required number of games, you could increase the spin size to finish the offer.

This applies also to loss back offers on blackjack and roulette.

Perhaps the offer is 100% loss back up to £20.  Normally we might play a single £20 hand on blackjack to attempt this.

But what if the terms state you must play at least 10 game rounds (hands of blackjack)?

What we can do in this case is start with £20 cash balance. We play 9 hands with the smallest stake allowed (usually £1 per hand).

Then on the 10th hand, we can place all our remaining cash balance on a single hand.

If our hand loses, we have lost £20, which we will get as loss back, or if it wins, we should be in profit.

Winning the 10th hand might not take us to a good profit if the first 9 hands went badly. If so, we could play one more blackjack hand with our entire cash balance, to either make a good profit, or bust out.

Eligible Games

Loss back offers will almost always state which games you can use.

This will usually be a specific slot, or choice of a few slots. Or it might be any casino game (blackjack or roulette).

If available, blackjack will be the highest EV, and simplest option.

But be careful with this. If you wager on the wrong games, you won’t qualify for the loss back.