mathare's Casino Blog

[mathare]

Going to start a new diary for my casino gaming. Mostly (if not exclusively) I'll be bonus hustling rather than playing 'properly' so how often I will update this diary is anyone's guess at this stage. It depends on where and when I find the bonuses worth having.

I'll be using a few abbreviations along the way so it's best I define them now so it's all clear.

B = bonus amount
D = deposit amount
WR = wagering requirement
EV = expected value
BJ = blackjack

16th October 2006
William Hill - £25 monthly match bonus (20xB WR)
EV: £46.25
Actual value: £70

Bit of a strange one this evening. I logged on for my monthly £25 match bonus which I used to claim religiously at the start of each month (although I sometimes used to waste a lot trying to claim it) and for some reason rather than converting my whole account balance to chips as I expected it left some behind in the sportsbook, which confused me initially. But I got my bonus added to my account. Twice! I got £50 added for some reason, not that I am complaining.

Before I go much further let me just tell you a bit more about this bonus. It has a WR of £500 for £25 ie a 20 times the bonus wagering requirement. Tonight I got a bonus of £50 so I expected to have to wager £1000 to cash it out. This is one of my favourite bonuses because it is regular (every month) and as far as I can tell you play with your bonus money first. So if you lose £25 you're not out of pocket and you can give up chasing the bonus for this month. I think that's right anyway. What is certainly true is that if you win before you have met the WR then the win is added to the bonus amount. So by the time you meet the WR (which doesn't increase even if your bonus amount does) your bonus can be worth anything depending on whether you have won or lost.

I started grinding it out with £1 (minimum) bets this evening and lost something like the first 10 hands I was dealt. It was a bad start. Back to the lobby (psychological boost, fresh start) and back on to the tables again and we were off once more. I was grinding out the bets and bringing that WR down nicely. Then I noticed a new feature I hadn't used before - the log viewer. This shows you number of bets, session length, amount gambled etc. So I had a quick look at that and then looked at my account details online. This is when I realised I had been given a £50 bonus tonight. This is also the point where I noticed something odd - according to the figures given I needed to gamble a total of £807 tonight to release the bonus, not the £1000 I was expecting. I fired off a quick e-mail to customer services to check this and at the time of writing have not had a response. I also asked why I got £50 instead of the £25 I was expecting.

Anyway, back to the tables and £1 bets. I was plodding along merrily and got back up to about where I started the evening. Then I decided that I still had quite a long way to go and to try £2 bets for a while. And from there I never looked back. I never dropped back below my starting point and by the time I had met the WR I had grown my bonus to £70 :D A nice little sum for a couple of hours work that.

A good start to the bonus hustling really. I would have been happy to take away anything over £45 really. That's the expected value of this promotion, assuming a BJ house edge of 0.5% (it's actually around 0.47% on Will Hill BJ) and working on a WR of 20xB (£1000 @ 0.5% = £5 so the bonus is worth £50-£5 = £45. Using the exact numbers from tonight the expected value of this bonus is £50 - (£807 * 0.47%) = £45.97). To make another £25 on top of the EV is good news all round really.

Very pleased with the start to this new little bit of fun. Let's hope it continues in a similar vein :)

[mathare]

17th October 2006
Littlewoods - £50 match sign-up bonus (25xB WR)
EV: £43.75
Actual value: £20.50

Let's start tonight's entry with a bit of an explanation about yesterday's bonus. William Hill have confirmed that my £50 bonus was correct. It was a special deal for people who haven't been in the casino for a while, a £50 bonus for buying £25 in chips (not a new deposit, a transfer from the sportsbook which is why this bonus is so wonderful) and only a 15xB WR, which is excellent. I'm really chuffed with that one.

I was so pleased I decided to have a tilt at another Cryptologic casino this evening - Littlewoods. They had a £50 match sign-up bonus on offer so I had myself some of that. It had a 25xB WR which is about as much as I am prepared to go at this stage. After all I can pick and choose from basically the whole market at the minute so a WR of 25x is about my limit for now.

Anyway, being Cryptologic the software was familiar and I was able to play on autopilot. A few short sessions before tea and some long ones after, with breaks every now and then to keep my focus and concentration fresh (or at least quite fresh). I whipped through the necessary action (£1250) easy enough at £1-£2 per hand and sometimes spread multiple hands for a bit of variety. At my peak I had built the bonus up to £70-£75 but I also had lows where I nearly lost the bonus completely. Of course the great thing about these bonuses is I am playing with the casino's money first (confirmed this evening) so if I lose the bonus I could cash out and forget this one, no real harm done. But Littlewoods have a £25 monthly match bonus too so it's worth sticking around this casino.

Anyway, I soon got through the WR and I had a bit of a problem - I had lost most of the bonus. I was down to around £60 in total by the time I had given them they action they wanted so my bonus was only worth a tenner. I decided to keep playing and either lose the whole bonus (but not a penny more) and basically write off the evening or try and make it up to around £75 in total ie take half the bonus. I quit with a total action of £1554 for the night and a balance of £70.50. OK, so I lost a lot of the bonus cash but I still made £20 tonight and I'm happy with that. And my continuing to play the game for another £300 of action ought to reduce any potential heat on me. After all I have gone for two Cryptologic casinos in two nights now. I haven't taken much off them, I know that, but casinos frown upon 'bonus abuse' so it's worth being a bit cautious. Hopefully my continuation this evening will mark me out as a bit of a gambler rather than a bonus hustler. I won't be cashing out for a while either, hopefully that will add to the gambling image. And when I do cash out I won't take it all back, maybe just my original £50. That should put me in a decent position for future monthly match bonuses. Hopefully.

But the real gem of the evening was confirmation from Golden Palace that their 300% bonus is non-sticky :D OK, so it has a 20xDB WR but even so - happy days :woohoo:

[mathare]

18th October
No casino gaming

This is turning into a blog isn't it? I should perhaps update the thread title accordingly :)

Anyway, no gaming this evening as I set about getting my house in order ready for a long-term campaign against the casinos and the evil house edge. I opened a Neteller account in US$ this evening and set up my spreadsheet so I should be ready for the next bonus opportunity when I find it. And with that in mind I set about looking at a few casinos to see what was on offer.

The Neteller account was sort of inevitable really. I have made a few deposits at casinos and poker rooms in US$ in the past using my debit card and each time I have been charged £1.50 for using a foreign currency. I can't afford to pay that every time I want to deposit at a casino that operates in US$ so I have decided to create a Neteller account, put an initial deposit in there (and take the £1.50 hit) and use that for future US$ casino deposits and withdrawals. Hopefully that will build up a decent sum and I can use that for more and more and withdraw some of the cash also.

The spreadsheet is a must-have, no two ways about it. I need to record all the casinos I have looked at and all my transaction details of those I choose to 'raid'. I need to record deposits, withdrawals, transfers, bonus details, games played, session lengths etc. Accurate, well-kept records are a must for all gamblers - we all know that :)

While writing this post I have also used by digital camera to photo bank statements, utility bills and my passport as proof of ID as some places need this to allow withdrawals. I'd have used the scanner and done a more proper job but that's in the loft and I don't fancy go up there at the minute. This should do the job well enough. Now to use Paint or something to mask out the important details and job's a good'un.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Investigated a few casino bonuses tonight. Nothing much jumps out at me but I have only looked at 5 or 6. I can forget about most of them (including 32Red and Casino Tropez) but the SkyBet and Totesport bonuses may be of interest as they give me an edge of 4.5% and 4% respectively. Golden Palace is still my next main target though - just waiting for the Neteller account to be completely verified and fully loaded.

[mathare]

19th October
No casino gaming

I'm out this evening (at a filming of Have I Got News For You) and while I will happily gamble on the horses and football at work playing blackjack is probably pushing it a little too far, even if I use one of the instant play casinos so there is no software to download and install.

Found out the best way to play EZ-type bonuses this afternoon too, or rather had my thoughts on the best strategy confirmed by someone who runs an online blackjack strategy site so that'll do for me. As I suspected the trick here is not to play for the bonus but to use the bonus cash as a bankroll boost allowing you to play aggressive blackjack cashing out when you have made a suitable sum and forgetting about trying to claim the bonus. After all you're looking at a 200x to 1500x WR on these bonuses if you play blackjack so trying to actually claim the full bonus amount isn't worth it.

Take the welcome bonuses at All Slots casino as an example. They offer $100 when you deposit $25 or $150 when you deposit $50. These bonuses have a 30xB WR but BJ counts only 2% towards the WR giving you an effective WR of 1500xB. That's a lot of blackjack. 150 times a $150 bonus is nearly a quarter of a million bucks worth of blackjack which at a house edge of 0.5% results in a hefty loss if you try and play out that WR. So don't. Deposit the $50, take the extra $150 and play off a bankroll of $200 looking to double that to $400 through aggressive staking. If you lose you only lose $50. But if you win you'll cover yourself for a few future losses on the EZ-type bonuses. When you reach your target ($400) cash out (as you're allowed to under the EZ bonus scheme). Ok, that resets your balance bonus to 0 and you can no longer claim it but so what? You've made a 300% profit on your deposit so they can stick their bonus now.

American roulette can be played and counts 100% towards the WR but playing that for a 30B WR ($4500) results in an EV of -$93 for the bonus. Not worth it - play like I suggest above for the EZ bonuses and you'll do alright in the long run I reckon.

[mathare]

20th October
No casino gaming

Nothing much happening today and I am away at a wedding in Kent tomorrow so the next opportunity will be Sunday. Ah well.

I did some more work on my spreadsheet today though, more groundwork effectively. All useful stuff though and I am a lot happier with the format and stuff now.

Looked into a few bonuses in a bit more detail too. Came across a nice 320% welcome bonus for deposits of $100 with a WR of 12DB. That was at 32Vegas casino and although they exclude a hell of a lot of games (including all blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat and several other games) they do allow video poker to count towards the wagering requirements so that's excellent news. I can't play my favourite game but I can play a game with an almost equal house edge as their video poker uses a full 9/6 pay table. I estimate a player edge of over 24% on this bonus. And rather bizarrely if you play it in £GBP the edge drops to around 15% as the WR increases to 18DB for some unknown reason. Mind you if you're not in the UK and want to play in GBP the WR increases to 35DB and even more games are excluded. But this one is great for me. Another one to raid when my Neteller account is up and running.

And talking of Neteller I tried to withdraw a significant sum from my Mansion account this evening but they have yet to process my photo ID so that was denied. The plan was to pull a big chunk out of that account (as I rarely use it) and use that to fund the Neteller account initially.

What else? Oh yeah, Paddy Power offered me a tasty 100% deposit bonus if I make a deposit this coming Sunday. I'll do that to the maximum £100 (especially as only the other day I withdraw a greater sum than that from that account) and with a 34B WR that should be worth around £80 which is not to be sniffed at. I've had some nice bonuses from paddy Power casino and long may they continue. I also started to look at the bonus on offer from 888.com but it is far from crystal clear so I have fired off e-mails to their customer support department but I'm not getting all the answers I want at this stage. I'm in no real rush though - I have plenty of bonuses on my list that I have already investigated and marked as worth claiming.

Till Sunday and a lot of Paddy Power blackjack....

[susanwells]

what is the aim of all this Mathare ? To gamble and , hopefully, win, using their money not your own ?:hearty

[mathare]

what is the aim of all this Mathare ? To gamble and , hopefully, win, using their money not your own ?:heartySort of. More to take advantage of the free money available. I say take advantage of, what I actually mean is take. Internet casinos are offering decent sums of cash when you sign up with a new account play a few games, risk a bit of cash, that sort of thing. These welcome bonuses are often good enough that even though the casino wants you to risk several thousand pounds during your gambling that if you know what you're doing the bonus can more than cover your gambling losses and you make a tasty profit. And when you've claimed the free money you ditch the casino and move on to the next victim. I'm just a gold-digging casino whore really :)

[mathare]

22nd October
Paddy Power - 100% match bonus on deposits up to £100 today only (34xD WR)
EV: £83.00
Current value: £70.25
WR remaining: £1118

This was a one-off special that Paddy Power e-mailed me about the other day and having crunched the numbers on this one it's not exactly the sort of bonus I was after with a player edge of only 2.44% (I am trying to avoid anything under 3%) but it was a 'one day only' deal and it's free money so it seemed stupid to let the opportunity go to waste.

The only thing is Paddy Power is not one of my favourite casinos. I love them for their bonuses but it's an instant play casino and I prefer the download versions. Don't ask me why, I just do. Add to that the fact that the last time I claimed a bonus from Paddy Power I spent almost all my spare time for a week playing there and the actual value of that bonus wasn't very much by the end of it. You see I don't feel I get the rub of the green when it comes to blackjack at Paddy Power. I seem to come out with far the worst of it compared to other casinos. This evening's session was a great example of that. It started in a nice steady to and fro way - win some, lose some. Then it became win some, win some more. I had begun with £1.50 stakes determined to conservatively grind out the WR. I got about 25 hands ahead and upped to £2. I then managed to get about 10 further hands ahead after some to and froing again. Then came the slump. I cut stakes as it kicked in but I still finished the evening about £30 down - which annoyed me really. OK, maybe it shouldn't because if I can maintain a decent game tomorrow I can take this bonus for £65 or more but I know it should be worth just over £80 so hopefully I will get back up somewhere near that.

Anyway. I had a couple of sessions today (one before tea, one after) and ground out over two-thirds of the WR with just £1118 left and most of the bonus still in tact, as you can see above it stands at about £70. I should be able to crank out the remaining WR tomorrow evening. I'll probably try and see it out with £1 bets, maybe going to £1.50 if I can get a few hands ahead. Even with stakes like that I should be able to claim a bonus that will work out at roughly the equivalent of £10 per hour, which is a reasonable return for a spell of blackjack.

888 got back to me with a lengthy reply spelling out the terms of their welcome bonus. The casino works in $ only but I can do all my transactions in £ it seems and they do a currency conversion on it. OK, I can handle that. It's a $200 max on the bonus with a 20xB WR. I'll work out the edge on it later but from that I guess it'll be acceptable, especially as it's non-sticky/cashable.

[Win2Win]

They all work in $....and yet the Yanks can't play.....:doh

[mathare]

They all work in $....and yet the Yanks can't play.....:dohRather odd isn't it?

[susanwells]

But whenever I have used these bonuses you seem to have to play times 1,000 of what they give you of your own money before you can withdraw the bonus. which unless you win consistently sort of defeats the object. Or am I missing something ?
I get very good promo cash from Victor Chandler with whom I place a lot of bets.. the other day I used the 100 of promo cash to bet on Dettori inm a race I thought he wasn`t l;ikely to win - but worth a punt with someone else`s money .. and he won at 12-1 :hearty

[mathare]

But whenever I have used these bonuses you seem to have to play times 1,000 of what they give you of your own money before you can withdraw the bonus. which unless you win consistently sort of defeats the object. Or am I missing something ?A WR of 1000 would be harsh, it's mostly around 20 or 25 times. Sure, it means playing a lot of blackjack or whatever to get the best of it but I don't mind that as I love blackjack. The free money is there for the taking but I guess most people either don't know how to claim it or don't want to spend the time getting it. I'm quite happy to grind it out though :)

[roma]

I just signed up with Golden Palace, choosing £ rather than $ on the grounds that although they only give you 200% instead of 300% (even if you use Neteller), £200 is more than $300 ... tried to deposit with my Switch/Maestro card, it was declined and the customer support popped up and told me they no longer take Switch/Maestro so I had to use my Visa card but they gave me an extra £50 bonus for my trouble without being asked ... so you may like to try depositing with Switch/Maestro too ... don't tell them I told you though :wink

[mathare]

I looked at the deal for working in £ on Golden Palace and for some reason didn't think it was as good. I don't own a Switch/Maestro card though. My debit card is Visa.

Edit: Oh yeah the 300% bonus in £ is only available if you use MyCitadel, that's it. £200 may be more than $300 but I'd take the 300% bonus each and every day. After all the initial $100 deposit is less than £100 so your overall risk on this play is less in $ and the edge is bigger in $ (13% in $ and 8.5% in £).

[hudsonmat]

Very interesting this Mat,

A couple of quick questions, what would you do at say William Hill if you signed up for the £50 matching bonus and lost the £50 bonus with less than half the wagering complete. Would you carry on with your own cash or come away and move on to the next casino. Likewise how much of your own cash would you play on this kind of bonus.

Also if you walked away would this balance WR need to be played before you could claim the monthly matching bonus.

Finally today I received an email form Totesport deposit 100 get 150 bonus WR 5000. Is this as good an offer as it seems and what would be the EV.

thanks
matt

[mathare]

23rd October
Paddy Power - 100% match bonus on deposits up to £100 22nd Oct only (34xD WR)
EV: £83.00
Actual value: £91.00
Running total: £181.50 :)

Job done! I finished off the Paddy Power bonus claim this evening grinding out the remaining WR with £1 and £1.50 bets and was never really in the hole at all this evening. It was a much fairer gamble than it seemed yesterday. And the actual value of the bonus was greater than the EV but £8, which is nearly 10% of the EV so that's nice.

Not that much else to report really. Not decided on my next victim yet, got some mulling over and some sorting out to do first. It doesn't help that my Neteller account has been closed before I'd even done anything with it. And what's more annoying is I don't know why it has been closed. I tried to log in this evening and got a screen telling me the account was closed and to either phone security (on a number that didn't seem to work) or e-mail them. I e-mailed them and then later on tried the live chat function. The guy I spoke to there told me they needed to talk to me over the phone and gave me a number to call but there was no response on that number and I just got someone's voicemail in the end. I left a message and tried the live chat again but to no avail. I'll try again tomorrow. I could really do with getting that sorted.

Mansion still haven't processed my idea yet so I can't my hands on that cash either.

[mathare]

A couple of quick questions, what would you do at say William Hill if you signed up for the £50 matching bonus and lost the £50 bonus with less than half the wagering complete. Would you carry on with your own cash or come away and move on to the next casino. The old me would definitely have carried on, more out of addiction (for want of a better word) to the game that to anything else. The new clued up me isn't sure at the minute, hang on...


Likewise how much of your own cash would you play on this kind of bonus.Tricky question and with casinos like this (Cryptologic) it depends what you're after. You play with their money first so if you lose the £50 before meeting the WR you have in effect lost nothing. You could take your £50 out again if you wanted. The crucial point of this comes next...


Also if you walked away would this balance WR need to be played before you could claim the monthly matching bonus.Unfortunately, yes. The Ts&Cs say they may roll over unmet WR from month to month. So if you just wanted to try and claim the initial £50 match bonus and you lost it with unmet WR you would walk away never to return and you wouldn't have lost any of your own cash. But then you're missing out on a £25 monthly match bonus and that is very nice to have, especially with Will Hill due to the one account covering sportsbook and poker too so there is no need to deposit each month, just transfer into the casino from elsewhere.

The crux of it is how you (and the game) has been playing. And what you have been playing. Blackjack is preferred for this sort of bonus as it's a fairly low variance game and you can grind it out with minimum bets. It may take a while but the swings will be less than with video poker (which has roughly the same house edge). But if the game is being mean and you've had a big downswing then maybe you don't feel like going back to it. But have you been following the correct strategy for the game? They are all available on the web so make sure you use them.

Were you to lose £50 on £1 blackjack bets before you met the WR you would have been extraordinarily unlucky if you were following basic strategy.


Finally today I received an email form Totesport deposit 100 get 150 bonus WR 5000. Is this as good an offer as it seems and what would be the EV.Not enough info there I'm afraid Matt so I'm going to make assumptions based on the 100% match bonus I have found at Totesport. The bonus ought to be cashable (non-sticky) so a 20DB WR isn't bad at all. Your EV is the bonus minus the expected loss based on a 0.5% for the necessary action (WR). In this case that's £150 - (£5000 * 0.5%) = £125. To get this you need to risk £2000 of your own cash so your edge is 125/2000 = 6.25%. That's a good edge, about twice the minimum you should be looking for. But check the excluded games (roulette, baccarat and craps at a guess) and ensure that you get your bonus instantly (so you can gamble with it) and it's not added to your balance once you have met the WR (as Paddy Power bonuses are)

[hudsonmat]

Thanks Mat, very helpful as always.

Matt

[mathare]

24th October
Mummy's Gold - $200 welcome bonus (300xB WR)
EZ Bonus

It's been a weird old day really. This lunchtime I managed to make progress on the Neteller front. It seems an e-mail they say they sent me went missing and they needed some proof of address from me because they couldn't find me on the electoral roll at my current address. Probably due to the fact I haven't registered yet depsite the council sending me the forms a couple of times. I did fill one in last night though so I'm getting there. Anyway, I sent Neteller a scanned utility bill so let's hope now we start to get some progress and I can get an account open there and get that funded and start raiding the USD$ casinos.

Still unable to withdraw from Mansion as they haven't yet processed the proof of ID I sent them.

This evening was odd. I didn't get started till late, around 9pm and then I had a few bits I wanted to get out the way first. The assualt on the casinos started in earnest about 9.30pm. I had no specific target lined up for this evening. Totesport and UK Betting both offered acceptable bonuses, the latter being sticky so I was less keen to pursue it. Then I remembered Mummy's Gold...

Mummy's Gold e-mailed me while I was away offering me an hour in their casino with £500 of their money to see what I could do with it. I briefly read the Ts&Cs at the time and didn't spot anything nasty so I thought this was one to remember. Tonight I read those same Ts&Cs in more detail and here's how it works. They give you £500 in free fun chips to play with. You have exactly one hour to play these chips and must make at least 100 bets before you cash out. They tell you they are letting you access only a select bunch of the games but in reality you have a lot to choose from. What they don't tell you, and what I found out once I started playing, is that the stakes on the games are limited. Max £4 or £5 bet on BJ. Anyway, whatever you win can be cashed out to a real money account and you're away. But the money isn't instantly cashable, it's one of these EZ Bonus type schemes with a 30B WR and BJ counting 10% making it the equivalent of a 300B WR. Ouch. But as we know these bonuses are great for hit and runners like me. Make the minimum deposit, take the bonus and play aggressive blackjack and shoot for the moon.

Anyway, I played the £500 in free chips. I started on basic BJ, then switched to video poker for a few minutes but I wasn't able to stake as I wanted to (ie more than £5 per hand/spin) so I set off in search of a higher limit table. I found a high limit (£20 max) European BJ table so played there. I'm not overly keen on European BJ but the greater house edge (not much greater but greater than proper Vegas rules most online places use) was more than made up for the higher limits. I played £20 every hand and (having forgotten that the Ts&Cs said it was a max £200 bonus) was shooting to cash out with at least a £250 profit. I had been up there or thereabouts a number of times and when I hit £702.50 (£202.50 profit) with about 5 minutes of my hour left I decided that was enough and cashed in. It was then that I remembered it was a £200 max profit so it worked out well enough in the end anyway.I made my minimum deposit of £50 and claimed my £200 bonus. I now have £250 sat waiting for me to play some aggressive blackjack and either lose my £50 or hopefully come out a couple of hundred quid ahead of the game.

Bit weird that here you play first to set the size of your bonus and then set about claiming it but so be it. It's a gimmick innit? And the £500 free chips for an hour is bound to attract a few punters, many of whom will be losers.

So, err, yeah. Like I say, a weird old day but this bonus at Mummys Gold is much better than their £25 match welcome bonus that people who lose on the £500 free chip deal get offered. Just hope I can turn it into something respectable now :)

[mathare]

25th October
Mummy's Gold - £200 welcome bonus (300xB WR)
EZ Bonus
Actual value: £225 :D

It worked! The EZ Bonus strategy I talked about earlier only went and bloody worked didn't it: :woohoo:

OK, this may have been an extraordinarily good example of it in action but when the luck is with you, take advantage of it. Let me explain...

I said last night I had £250 waiting for me to play some aggressive blackjack and I had a maximum downside of my £50 deposit. The plan was to play at £25 a hand and see where that took me. Now a bankroll of 10 units is insufficient to grind much out, it's a hit and run bankroll and one that needs to hit a good run of cards really. And what a run I hit just now! I played 10 hands and came out £225 up. I hit 5 or 6 in a row, including a couple of blackjacks, then the dealer beat me, then I won a few more. I then took my money and ran away - fast!

I had done a little bit of homework before sitting down at the tables. There are quite a few varieties of blackjack on offer at the casino so I spent a bit of time working out the house edge on each game and picked a nice single deck game with an edge of only 0.19% and it seems like I made a good choice.

With the cards going the way they were I could maybe have squeezed a few more quid out of this one and I did agonise for a few minutes whether taking the money now (and forfeiting the bonus) was the right thing to do. I know one of my big weaknesses is knowing when to quit ahead. I will play on trying to turn a small win into a modest win, or a modest win into a big win and end up either back where or started or a loser and then I get annoyed and determined not to quit behind so I play to get out the hole and so on. Tonight I decided £225 free cash was plenty so I stopped and requested a withdrawal. I asked for £250 of my £275 (tonight's profit plus my £50 deposit last night) thinking I could leave them £25 that I may play through sometime for a bit of fun, maybe try out some new games in preparation for casinos that don't count BJ towards the wagering requirements.

There may well be another diary entry later but at this moment in time I just needed to get my joy recorded somewhere and this seemed the perfect place.

:happyboun :wiggle: :giggle :winer :heehee :REDanceda :REGamblMo :party :icon_win: :smileybigtmouth: :omg: :woohoo: :prosper:

I think that just about covers it :laugh

[hudsonmat]

Nice result Mat

Well done

Matt

[wb]

Looking good mat. I don't know a lot about poker, but this thread certainly is interesting!

Well done :)

[mathare]

Looking good mat. I don't know a lot about poker, but this thread certainly is interesting!:doh

Who mentioned poker? This thread is about the casinos not the poker rooms. OK, there are cards involved but it's mainly blackjack with a smattering of video poker to come later but no real poker.

[wb]

:doh

Who mentioned poker? This thread is about the casinos not the poker rooms. OK, there are cards involved but it's mainly blackjack with a smattering of video poker to come later but no real poker.

Apologies, I don't play any online games, so I suppose I associate them all as similar.

[mathare]

Apologies, I don't play any online games, so I suppose I associate them all as similar.No worries Wayne. Most of the big players these days have a casino and a poker room to take advantage of the different markets. And of course the UK scene tends to add a sportsbook to that too to give firms a three-pronged attack.

In a brick&mortar casino you've got your slots, table games (craps, roulette, blackjack etc) and in many a small poker room and in the States a sportsbook (for the dodgy racing and football they have over there). These tend to be split up online so firms can better reach their target audience. Casinos will have all the slots (fruit machines basically) and table games. There will be separate poker rooms offering a much wider variety of games and stakes than you get in a real casino due to space limitations. And the sportsbook you know to be separate.

Poker is a game of skill so the poker rooms are often marketed as such. However, casino games are generally speaking luck-based (although many have some element of skill) and so are marketed differently to the poker rooms. While both poker rooms and casinos will offer bonuses those available from the casinos are often far more generous than the poker bonuses, and certainly much easier and faster to claim. It is these bonuses I am hustling, primarily through my love of blackjack.

[mathare]

26th October
Bet365 - 100% match welcome bonus (12DB WR)
EV: £88
Current value: £116.25

It's a tale of four sessions today really - one I am annoyed with, one I am pleased with and two I have no real feelings over.

I decided I ought to give Littlewoods and Mummy's Gold a little more action so they didn't think I was a hit and run bonus abuser. So I fired up Littlewoods when I got home from work and brought up the craps table. That was a mistake! However, the bigger mistake was staying at the table. I never got ahead at any stage of the session and it was painful. 10 minutes at the table making small bets (£1 pass line backed up with £2 odds and the same on one come bet at a time). I put less than £200 into action according to their records and managed to come out with a loss of over £40. That was the session I am annoyed about - annoyed more at myself than anything else though.

Then came the good session, thankfully. Still in Littlewoods and this time and the tried and trusted blackjack tables. It took me over an hour but I managed to double through my remaining bankroll to finish their with only an £8 loss overall and plenty of action (another £500+ on BJ). That ought to act as good enough camouflage play and allow me to take advantage of their monthly bonuses.

Next up was Mummy's Gold again. Straight back to the blackjack tables and with the £25 I had left in my account I played £1 a hand. It didn't go great. I was aiming to maybe double through, or at least get to around £40 and then go try something like video poker for a change. But instead I played the £25 into nothing. Do I care? Not really. I still took this place for a couple of hundred quid and then gave a little back. I doubt I'll be back there unless they try and tempt me with nice bonuses again. This is one to forget about now unless they get in touch again. Once I have confirmed my withdrawal, anyway!

Then onto a new bonus that was due to run out at the end of the month, and a bonus I originally thought I was ineligible for. I have had a Bet365 account for years so I must have played in their casino, right? Wrong. I have bet many times on the sportsbook and played their poker but never their casino games. So in with £100 there and an instant match of £100. 12DB later and the £100 bonus will be withdrawable. I played it up to £116.25 this evening through £557 of action so I am only about a quarter of the way there but I can soon finish that one off. I have no real feelings about this session. Sure the increase in the bonus somewhat offsets tonight's earlier losses but the money is still way out of reach at the minute.

Anything else? Oh yeah, I found a semi-sticky bonus at UK Betting that is very worth having. More on that another time though. And Neteller have made a small deposit into my bank account so we are getting there slowly. Still can't log into it though which must mean they haven't processed my ID yet. I'll call them again tomorrow. I need to get hold of Mansion too as they still won't give me my cash - the buggers.

[hudsonmat]

Mat, when I opened my Neteller account recently it was put on hold when they received my first deposit. I had to telephone them to verify my ID, basically answering a few security questions then hanging up and waiting a few seconds while they rang me back and asked a few more security questions before finalising my account opening.


Good luck
Matt

[mathare]

Mat, when I opened my Neteller account recently it was put on hold when they received my first deposit. I had to telephone them to verify my ID, basically answering a few security questions then hanging up and waiting a few seconds while they rang me back and asked a few more security questions before finalising my account opening.
I haven't even got as far as being able to make a deposit yet! A phonecall at lunchtime to see where we stand, definitely.

[mathare]

27th October
Bet365 - 100% match welcome bonus (12DB WR)
EV: £88
Actual value: £53.09

Quick entry tonight because it's late. Finished off the WR for Bet365 tonight and I must admit I may not rush back there as the software (Playtech) isn't really to my liking. And I could, and maybe should, have made more of the bonus. I started off with blackjack again this evening and that started OK before tailing off and I was £60 down for the session. I then went to play video poker for a bit of a change and twice came close to losing all the bonus money before a couple of lucky hands dragged me out of the mire. I may give this lot a bit more action over the weekend to see if I can play the bonus money up a bit and maybe get it back over £80, just as a feelgood thing more than anything else. I hate to feel I have been hard done by on a bonus and not got the full EV even though I know in the long run it ought to work out that some I will beat the EV on and some I will miss the EV by some margin. I need to learn that once the bonus is mine I should stop playing and starting withdrawing (or at least squirreling some of it away).

No advance with Neteller. My phonecalls went unanswered, they have never replied to any of my e-mails but the live chat chappy said he would file a request for someone to call me so we'll wait and see what happens. I'm not holding my breath though.

Finally got my money out of Mansion though. I know have my hands on the funds I was going to use to fund Neteller for the USD$ casino assualt. Well, I say I have got my hands on it - the withdrawal request has been accepted and should be processed soon. I may not actually see the cash in my bank account for a few days yet.

888 or Coral tomorrow I think.

[mathare]

28th October
Totalbet - 100% match welcome bonus (20D WR)
EV: £65
Current value: £100.75
WR remaining: unknown

Before we get to tonight's bonus play a couple of loose ends to tie up. I played up my Bet365 funds to a decent level this afternoon, and it only took me 10 minutes :D. I transferred £100 to my sportsbook account to get it out of the casino and remove the temptation to stake larger than perhaps I should and risk losing some of my deposit as well as the bonus. I then took and remaining £53.09 and turned it into £80.09 at the blackjack tables. That's more like it and I'm pretty happy about that bonus now. And Neteller e-mailed me asking for confirmation of my phone number and a copy of a recent landline phone bill. I have told them in the past and I told them again today, I don't get landline phone bills in any form they can use. It's all eBilling through Telewest. With that in mind I don't expect to get anywhere with a Neteller account in the near future.

I evaluated a few more bonuses this afternoon during the racing and decided Totalbet was worth having so I set about having some of it. I know I said it would probably be 888 or Coral next but this seemed like a good opportunity and I fancied a bit of variety. You see this one is a semi-sticky bonus, and I am quite excited by the prospect of such a bonus so I want to see one in action. With Totalbet you deposit £100, wager it 20 times and then you get a non-withdrawable bonus of £100. Non-withdrawable is usually bad but this one isn't so bad because anything you win with the bonus money is withdrawable. And the bonus stays in your account until you lose it. So the trick is to wager enough to claim the bonus, get your own cash out of the casino and then bang it out with the house's money in the form of the bonus. Play aggressively and make a profit. Take the profit out and repeat for as long as you don't lose the bonus. They could be a regular little profit maker these bonuses so I am really quite excited by it.

The software isn't great though. The games and stuff are fast enough and slick enough but the supporting bits just aren't there. There is no playcheck type facility to see how much you have staked in any session or on any game so I don't know how far through the WR I am. I could perhaps keep count as I play the games but I get into the gambling zone and don't want to be distracted with such things.

The blackjack is a £5 minimum, which is steep for an online casino, so I played video poker this evening. Not my favourite game by any means by a good alternative to BJ for meeting the wagering requirements as the house edge is about the same (0.5%). The bankroll needed for video poker is much greater though. I was playing 25p per coin and 5 coins per hand (so £1.25 per hand) which gives me around 80 hands from my bankroll. I wouldn't want a bankroll of less than 50 hands certainly as you can go for a long time with nothing and then hit a big payout, unlike blackjack where the game is a lot more even and the variance much less. Even then I wouldn't play off a 20 unit bankroll (£5 per hand on my £100 deposit) when the aim is to try and break roughly even over £2000 of wagers. With a £100 bankroll and that aim I'd be placing £1 bets mainly, £2 and £3 if I hit a good streak of cards. Anyway, I finished the video poker session after just over an hour and I was 75p up. Woohoo! But I was around £50 down at one stage so I am quite content.

In order to find out how much I had wagered I gave customer services a call. After getting me confused with another customer (and giving me this other guy's name (which is actually the same as mine), address and mobile number) I was told they need to get a supervisor to get the information on how much I had staked and the supervisor would call me back. Bit of a ballache that but so be it. No word from them yet and I phoned nearly an hour ago. Oh well. I'd like to say it's not that important but I think it is. I monitor amount staked for every session, whether it is working towards a bonus or not.

[mathare]

29th October
Totalbet - 100% match welcome bonus (20D WR)
EV: £65
Actual value: -£158 :(

I am disappointed and angry with myself this evening. But what has gone on has been a learning experience and I hope I take in the lessons from today and think back to them in future situations. Let me explain...

Yesterday I spoke of the swings and variance in video poker. That was particularly apparent today as I had to reload part way through a mammoth video poker session on Totalbet while working through the remaining WR. I added another £50 to my account there, partly as security blanket but mostly because I thought I was going to need it. I deposited this extra cash when I was down to my last tenner and although I didn't drop into this cash for a while I did get deep into the next £50 on several occasions. Then the bonus came free and I was away from the video poker to try and win the cash back on the blackjack tables. I took £132.72 (including the bonus) to the tables and walked away with 22p. Did I play poorly? No, I made all the right plays (on both blackjack and video poker as it happens). So how did I lose the cash? It wasn't poor staking as I flat bet all the way through both games. Bad luck? I dunno. Cheating by the casino? Nah, I don't buy that for one minute. It was stats and fluctuations, that's why I lost. But did I take any of the opportunities I was offered to cut some of my losses and take some money out of the casino? No, and that was my biggest mistake of the day. I played my bankroll down to nothing and I am angry at missing the opportunities I was offered to reduce my losses.

Was I right to reload with another £50? It's a question I have asked myself several times tonight and I believe I was right. It was a gamble but being able to claim the bonus could have meant I had the opportunity to win my deposit back and more. Sadly it wasn't to be that way. Had I stopped when I lost my original £100 deposit I would never have claimed the bonus. I needed closure on the bonus as much as anything, maybe.

Now while I may have made mistakes today I can't let my head drop. I need to stay focused and remember my goals. I had a setback but this will happen along the way. Not every casino will yield a nice juicy bonus. And this was my first semi-sticky bonus and the first bonus I have had to claim through video poker play (although next time I am tempted to try my luck on blackjack from the start) so a lack of experience told maybe. But I have learned a lot from this. Video poker needs a big bankroll and the ability to withstand huge swings in the bankroll. It's not my sort of game if I'm honest. Maybe I should look to trade the small house edge for less variation albeit with a bigger house edge in the future.

The bottom line is I am still over £300 ahead on this bonus hustling and there is plenty more money to be had yet. I need to put this one behind me and move on. But not to forget the lessons that have come out of this bonus, that is key. I've paid a lot of money for those lessons so they ought to stick :)

[mathare]

30th October
Coral - £25 monthly bonus (25B WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: £60.50

This evening was the perfect antidote to yesterday and just what I needed. I am very pleased with how it all went.

It's a bit of an odd bonus at Coral as there is no minimum deposit. You just need to transfer funds into the casino and wager at least £625 to get the £25 bonus added to your account. You need to claim the bonus via a code when you transfer funds in to the casino but that's easy enough. So as we were nearing the end of the month I figured I ought to claim it quick, so I can do the same in a few days time.

Blackjack counts towards the WR here, so that's good news. It's the same software as the Totalbet casino I wasn't so keen on yesterday but at least Coral have better playcheck functionality and I was able to keep some sort of track on my staking to see where I was up to. And the minium BJ stake is £1 per hand, which is far more reasonable.

I deposited £50 into my Coral account (I'd had it for a while but only had about £3 in the sportsbook), transferred that into the casino (using the code to claim the bonus) and set about the WR. An average start soon turned sour and I was a tenner down when I broke to have my tea. Refreshed I soon won that tenner back plus plenty more as I finished the WR with £85.50 before the bonus was applied. All in all a very satisfying session. Confidence restored, most definitely.

I need to make sure my accounts and records are all in proper order before continuing really. There are a few little bits to double check, make sure I have recorded all my withdrawals and transfers for example. And soon it'll be November and that means at least 3 new monthly bonuses to be claimed. Lovely.

Oh yeah, the next installment in the Neteller saga. They e-mailed me today and I'm not afraid to say they got a blast from both barrels in return. They asked for a copy of a recent utility bill to be sent to them. Not unreasonable, had they not requested this last Tuesday and been sent it the very same day with a note explaining all the different ways they could contact me should there be a problem with my account. Today's stroppy e-mail told them they had better have bloody lost that e-mail if they want another copy, and if they have whether they treat all customer data in such a careless manner. I had a right old whinge, and deservedly so. I must admit, I don't feel like the 'valued Neteller member' they addressed the e-mail to.

[mathare]

31st October
Paddy Power - 100% match halloween special (32D WR)
EV: £66.08
Current value: £148.20
WR remaining: £1713.50

What did I say yesterday? I need to make sure my accounts and records are in proper order before continuing really. I was planning a day of sorting out bits and bobs before a new month starts and new monthly bonuses become available. But no, instead I spend a lot of the evening playing baccarat chasing a new bonus.

Paddy Power e-mailed me with another special bonus offer and while the actual terms of the bonus and hence the player edge aren't great it seemed rude to decline it, especially since it was a 100% match bonus up to £100 for a period of only a few hours this evening, their halloween special. And at a current value of over twice the EV with nearly half the WR played out this one is certainly a treat rather than a trick.

The bonus doesn't permit blackjack or roulette to count towards the WR, which leaves me games such as craps, baccarat and video poker if I want a low house edge. I saw recently the nasty variance on video poker plays so I decided to swerve that one. I thought about craps and then decided to give baccarat a go. It has a low house edge (1.06% on banker bets) with a variance about the same as blackjack so it seemed perfect. It's also very easy to play as you place a bet and that's the end of your involvement in the game. Ok, it can get boring and I don't really see why the high rollers love it so much but it is easy. You bet, some cards come out (2 for the player and 2 for the banker) and you add up the total of each hand. Sometimes one or both hands get a 3rd card, sometimes they don't. But there are no choices involved, the rules say exactly what happens and when. The highest last digit on the hand totals wins. And that's it. I was a bit stumped initially when I saw blackjack wasn't allowed for the WR and thought about passing up on the bonus (it has a player edge of 2.07% and I am looking for 4% or more on bonuses like this one) but it seemed tempting enough to have a stab at it and I'm glad I did. I'm £48 up on the night and nearly halfway to the bonus becoming free. Should make a decent sum on this one I reckon.

And another great point about this one is I didn't need to take any more money out of my bank account. Last night, as coincidence would have it, I transferred £200 from Paddy Power casino to sportsbook. Tonight all I had to do was transfer £100 of that back again and enter a bonus code to qualify for the £100 bonus. Easy. Paddy Power are quickly becoming one of my favourite casinos.

[mathare]

1st November
Paddy Power - 100% match halloween special (32D WR)
EV: £66.08
Actual value: £61.84

I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't make more of this bonus after yesterday's excellent result but then again what comes around goes around and my final result is pretty close to the EV so I shouldn't be too unhappy. Anyway, it's still £60 free cash and this was a bonus I came close to not even claiming at one stage so I should be happy really.

The cards never really got going for me tonight and I ended up making a pretty hefty loss on the actual gambling session but then the bonus came along and brightened the bottom line up. I'm a little disheartened by the run of cards I got tonight but this is gambling and the house should win so what did I expect?

I've transferred my £100 deposit from yesterday and another £100 on top of that from the casino to the sportsbook and from there I will probably withdraw a good chunk of it. I might leave a bit behind though in case Paddy Power come up with another good bonus in the coming weeks. But the rest of the money may as well sit in my bank account earning me a little bit on interest rather than do the same for a bookmaker.

William Hill e-mailed me today to remind me my November bonus is now available. Yeah, like I hadn't realised! They are next on my hit list although it may be Saturday before I next get some serious casino gaming done as I have a poker night round mine on Friday and will need to set some stuff up tomorrow night.

[mathare]

2nd November
No casino gaming

I tidied the spreadsheet up at lunchtime and improved my record keeping a bit. Still a little work required but it's getting there and it's looking good.

But the main bit of work on the casino front today has been a VERY snotty e-mail to Neteller. It was real no nonsense stuff, sent to as many Neteller e-mail addresses as I can find. I gave them the full story so far and demanded someone contact me by close of business on Monday to explain the situation and offer a resolution. I am not sending them any more personal details until they tell me where the last lot went.

Y'see I phoned them today and got no answer on the direct number to the London office (just voicemail and I have long since given up on leaving them messages to ignore) but their central support line answered and told me I needed to check my e-mail as they need a copy of a utility bill. I told them to check their e-mail as I sent that info over a week ago. Oh. I get put on hold and then transferred to someone who should be able to help. Oh great, the London office again and again no answer. So I lost my rag and wrote then a stern but factual e-mail describing my situation and telling them that if this isn't sorted soon I will be taking my issues up with the management team, working up the chain step by step, day by day until someone sorts it out. That ought to go down well.

I'll let you know how it goes :)

Oh yeah, and Littlewoods sent me a reminder that my bonus for November is now available to be claimed. I know Littlewoods, oh I know. :wink

[roma]

What have you done to get those special bonuses from Paddy Power Mat .. I am very jealous :rolleyes:

Getting money out of Golden Palace seems almost as difficult as opening a Neteller account ... it cost me £6 this morning to send them a fax with all the ID they said they needed (don't have a job so no free fax machines) and they claim they did not receive 2 pages so please would I send again ... but I have the printed confirmation that all the pages were transmitted ... and I expect when I send again, they will have lost something else ... and any payment is indefinitely postponed in the meantime. They will not pay back to the credit card that you deposited with, they want to send you a cheque in the post taking up to a month, so I deposited more through Neteller so that I could withdraw to Neteller. I got £250 bonus, won another £120 plus my deposit of £100 plus £30 via Neteller so they have £500 which I consider is mine ;fire

[mathare]

Paddy Power - err, I dunno. Before they offered me a juicy signup bonus back in August I had never really used them. I went to one of their Cheltenham preview nights last year but I don't remember giving them any personal details that night. Since then I had used them for one or two bets, and I think they were all freebies through the paper (the £1 Grand National specials and so on). Now I seem to get some juicy bonuses from them. I have taken them for over £150 in the last fortnight.

Does it need to be faxed Roma? Can you not e-mail them scanned versions? I have yet to sign up to Golden Palace as I was after the Neteller thing first. Maybe I will drop them down my list of priorities.

Hang on, can you not fax cheaper via your PC?

[roma]

I don't have a scanner ... at least I do, but it doesn't work with this computer ... maybe it would work if I hooked it up to my old computer again ... might be worth a try tomorrow. Thanks, good suggestion. :)

I'll let you know how I get on with Golden Palace. Probably they are fine and I am just in a bad mood about it because I could really do with that money a bit quicker. But for speed and ease of withdrawals the UK bookies casinos are definitely best in my opinion. Blue Square & Sky (probably P Power too as the software is the same) ask you for ID when you hit a certain withdrawal limit but it is instant once they receive the ID and I think the limit is around £2000, which sounds a lot but if you are constantly transferring money in and out to get bonuses etc you can reach it fairly soon. It doesn't mean you have won £2000.

I find with Totesport the credit back usually shows in my bank account a day or so before the deposit, which is nice :D

[roma]

What have you done to get those special bonuses from Paddy Power Mat .. I am very jealous :rolleyes:

Oh no ... I ticked the "Don't contact me" box :splapme

Corrected now :D

[mathare]

But for speed and ease of withdrawals the UK bookies casinos are definitely best in my opinion. Blue Square & Sky (probably P Power too as the software is the same) ask you for ID when you hit a certain withdrawal limit but it is instant once they receive the ID and I think the limit is around £2000, which sounds a lot but if you are constantly transferring money in and out to get bonuses etc you can reach it fairly soon. It doesn't mean you have won £2000.I usually let a couple of hundred quid build up before withdrawing it from bookies/casinos I don't use on a regular basis. That way the money is in my account and then when I get the bonus offers that require me to make a deposit to qualify for the bonus I can just put the money I withdrew back in.


Oh no ... I ticked the "Don't contact me" box :splapme
Doh! I never tick those. I prefer to get all the spam and slowly filter it out rather than risk missing out on something.

[roma]

Golden Palace have paid up :D

It just took 2 days as advertised. They decided they had received all of my original fax after all and sent the money straight out to my Neteller account. So it will be in my bank account in another couple of business days. :happyboun

Probably worth waiting until you have Neteller set up though, otherwise it is the cheque-in-the-post thing, they won't pay out to cards.

[mathare]

4th November
William Hill - £25 monthly match (20b WR)
EV: £22.50
Current value: £30
Remaining WR: £410

I'm cheating slightly by writing the entry form 4th November on the following day but hey, who really cares eh?

A few things to update you on before we get on to the latest gaming session and bonus claim. The main thing to bring you up to speed with is my Neteller account. Stamping your feet and having a whinge works it seems. I sent my e-mail to them giving them the full story with dates and names and threatened to take it all the way up to the chief executive if I had to and lo and behold I got a phonecall Friday evening from the night shift manager at the London security office offering his personal guarantee that we could get the issues sorted out in double quick time. They needed a copy of my utility bill as they claim to have not received the previous one, plus a copy of the front and back of my debit card showing the first 6 digits and the last 4. I was to send that to this guy's personal address at Neteller and he would see to it that it was all processed as soon as possible and that my account would be up and running at the earliest opportunity. I sent the necessary documentation to him yesterday so now it's just a case of wait and see. I asked him to confirm receipt of the documents so if I don't get that by late Monday I will phone/e-mail again. I also took the opportunity when I had the guy on the phone to sound off a bit about how hard it is to get hold of someone in their customer services department who is actually any use and what I thought of their policy of being pushed through to voicemail.

The next thing to tell you about is a new BJ strategy I have come across. The book I have been reading (Gregorian Strategy for Multiple Deck Blackjack by Gregory Mannarino) describes a new strategy aimed specifically at shoe games as it claims the original basic strategy is flawed as it was designed for single deck games dealt to the end. That much is true but the basic strategy has been reworked several times for multiple decks and different rules. The new strategy is interesting and has around 30-odd variations on plays compared to old basic strategy for a multiple deck game. The author claims there is a 1% edge over the house with flat betting. It sounds like the holy grail of blackjack but I am yet to be convinced. The book is 3 years old and this is the first I have heard of it despite semi-regular surfing of BJ forums and building up an impressive library of BJ literature. A web search on it gives mixed reviews. Some swear by it, some hate it. I am going to try it for a while (in fact I tried it for a bit 'today') and see how it goes. A 1% edge is massive and the author offers no real evidence to back up his claims. He says the strategy took two years to develop and a year to test and that computer simulations have shown it to be incredibly powerful. Yeah? I did a quick test of it this morning using 100,000 hands on PowerSim (a BJ simulator) and found it basically doubled the house edge compared to basic strategy. But I shall continue to trial the strategy and see how it goes.

The first place for the trial was William Hil land their £25 monthly match bonus. I love bonuses like this where I don't need to make a deposit, just transfer money in from my sportsbook account. I only played for a few minutes yesterday and knocked off £90 of the WR finishing a fiver up playing £1 per hand flat betting. I'll knock off the rest of the WR in a couple of hours at most this afternoon. Then find another bonus to claim, probably Littlewoods.

[mathare]

5th November
William Hill - £25 monthly match (20B WR)
EV: £22.50
Actual Value: £40.00
Littlewoods - £25 monthly bonus (25B WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: £15.00

An overachievement and an underachievement today but the overall figure for the day is better than the EV of the bonuses so it's a good day :)

Not that much to really report today. I tried the Gregorian Strategy at William Hill and normal basic strategy at Littlewoods and I don't think for a minute that is the reason why I did well at one and badly at the other. The test hasn't been anywhere near long enough but a number of plays under the Gregorian Strategy just feel wrong so I reverted to the tried and trusted basic strategy at Littlewoods.

Because the blog is so light today I felt I ought to share with you a staking plan I have been using for blackjack recently, one of my own devising. I think it is particularly suited to what I am doing here as the idea is to get more money on the table and get through the WR quicker but without taking excessive risks. It's very simple too.

Your basic bet is 1 unit, you'll never bet less than this and this will be your bet for most hands so make sure you are comfortable with it (and make sure it's no more than 2% of your session bankroll). Play out your hands using a good strategy, that is key. Basic strategy is perfectly suitable but tailor it to the game you're playing. Don't use the 6-deck strategy in a single deck game and vice versa. When you win a hand, make a mental note of it, a count if you will. The secret to the staking plan is winning streaks so you need to know when you're on one. When the current winning run is 2 hands, your next bet is 2 units. If you win 5 hands in a row raise your bet to 3 units. Win 9 in a row and you increase to 4 units. You stake 5 units after a run of 14 hands and so on. If you lose a hand the run is over and you revert to 1 unit bets. Tied hands don't count either way.

The idea is to start with 1 unit and continue at that level until you win (stake + 1) hands in a row, then you increase the stake by 1 unit. So on a good winning run your stakes would be 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5 etc. This way when the table is hot and you're winning hand after hand you're piling up the cash. But when the table is cold you're losing the bare minimum, 1 unit per hand. And that's it. Winning streaks make you more and losing streaks cost you the same as flat betting.

The way I run this little plan is to work only in terms of initial hands dealt. So suppose I had just lost a hand so I am staking 1 unit. The strategy says to double my bet (say my 11 v dealer 5), which I do and I win. I am on a winning streak of 1 hand, not 2. I treat the extra winnings from doubling down and blackjacks as extra insurance against an extended losing streak, something to absorb a bit of the pain.

This plan does mean that winning runs of two break even (+1, +1, -2) compared to a +1 unit profit from flat betting but for streaks of 3+ it really does come into it's own and your profits can soar.

I'm not claiming this to be anything special. It is just a controlled progressive betting system and it won't turn a losing strategy into a winning one. But it helps keep the mind a bit more active than just flat betting and I find it helps maintain concentration over a long session. Plus when deliberately trying to get a lot of money staked in a session rather than aiming for a given target profit I find this much safer than flat betting at a level greater than 1 unit.

[roma]

That looks like an interesting staking plan Mat :)

I'm having fun in Ladbrokes .. they have autoplay for blackjack :laugh

It uses basic strategy but you can go in and change the criteria for any of the hands if you want to play differently. You can set the number of hands you want it to play for you and/or tell it to stop after it has won or lost a certain amount.

The downside is you have to play at £5 per hand to qualify for the bonus, so it's risky, and you cannot really use a staking plan, or not one that changes frequently, anyway. On the other hand you do not have to worry about hitting Hit instead of Stand or getting RSI :)

[mathare]

I have used that before on Laddies Roma, handy isn't it? It should be available on all casinos running the Microgaming Viper software.

I'm not getting any Ladbrokes bonuses though :( Is this a new sign-up bonus you're chasing?

[mathare]

7th November - am

A special morning edition of the blog to celebrate a momentous occasion: my Neteller account is active :happyboun And not only that but I have initiated a funds transfer into it too. Hopefully I will be able to play the US$ casinos soon and start the real bonus grabbing.

Lunchtime edit: I :hearty Paddy Power Casino. They have sent me another bonus offer only a week after the last one. Another 100% match up to £100 with a 35B WR (which is a bit steep) and banning BJ and roulette so it's another couple of marathon craps sessions coming up. All I need to do is transfer money into the casino this lunchtime and enter the code they sent me. Easy money. Again! :)

[roma]

I have used that before on Laddies Roma, handy isn't it? It should be available on all casinos running the Microgaming Viper software.

I'm not getting any Ladbrokes bonuses though :( Is this a new sign-up bonus you're chasing?

Yes it was the signup bonus. I haven't been in there before.

How can I find other casinos that run this software? I do like it, as well as being able to do other things while it qualifies for my bonus, the rules on Atlantic City blackjack are very generous with surrender and resplitting.

[mathare]

How can I find other casinos that run this software?http://wizardofodds.com/casinos/

How are you finding Neteller by the way? Are the fees OK?

[roma]

Yes Neteller seem OK. They charge you a flat £1 for a withdrawal so it is best not to withdraw small amounts. I am not sure how the currency changing works when you go in and out of dollars but I assume it is like bank rates.

[mathare]

7th November
Paddy Power lunchtime 100% match bonus - 35B WR
EV: £65
Current value: £6.78 :(
WR remaining: £1956.60

These casinos really know how to hit you where it hurts at times don't they?

Blackjack doesn't count for this bonus so I started with some craps and that went badly but after scrapping my way level again I made my way to baccarat tables. A slow start with a bit of give and take but that soon gave way to losing streaks that started to hurt. I quickly cut stakes but the losses continued to mount. I battled and pulled a bit back and it soon slipped away again. I gave the craps one more go for a short while, at much reduced stakes but that just took another chunk out of my bankroll.

I face a fight to maintain any sort of bankroll while playing out the remaining WR. Although the current value of the bonus is under £7 the bank balance I am working with is bigger than that, albeit not much bigger. It's about £26. Fortunately I can play with stakes of 20p as a minimum but that's going to take a long time to grind out the remaining WR. It's a tricky choice: temporarily boost the playing bankroll to get through the WR quicker or play at diddy stakes and just grind through it.

It reasonable has been a bugger of a session this evening. My returns have been -3.82% on craps and -6.47% on baccarat. Ever so slightly different from the long term expectations of around -0.4% and -1.06%. None of this is outside the realms of possibility and probability though. I just hit a really bad streak tonight. It does happen from time to time. I certainly don't suspect any foul play.

I'll sleep on it tonight and come back tomorrow with an action plan to crank out the remaining WR and hopefully rescue some of the value from this bonus.

[mathare]

8th November
Paddy Power lunchtime 100% match bonus - 35B WR
EV: £65
Current value: -£3.73 :(
WR remaining: £1419.20

Another day at the Paddy Power coal face and another pretty tough one. I deposited another £50 direct into the casino and learned something new: do that once a month and you get a £50 matching bonus after meeting a 30D WR. Interesting.

Baccarat started with the traditional downward swing (why is the first swing never upwards?) and I managed to scrap back to where I started so I quit while I wasn't behind as the game was frustrating me.

A bit of light relief next up: video poker. Yes, I know I said I hated the game now but I didn't fancy craps and I don't know many games well enough to rattle through the WR as fast as I would like to. It went badly. I was on low stakes and breaking a cardinal rule by not playing 5 coins per hand but then I didn't feel my bankroll could support it and I was on the lowest stake per unit so I didn't have a lot of choice. I ended up losing overall at a ROI of about -25% :yikes:

Back to the craps table. Lousy for getting through the WR at any sort of speed but at least there was a chance I could put some face back on the bankroll and indeed I did. I managed to earn back most of my losses but my ROI on the day is still around -5% and that's another harsh day.

I am not sure where to turn next with this bonus. Craps is probably the way forward but I still have over £1400 of the WR to get through and craps just isn't getting through it quick enough. At a level my bankroll can support I managed to put around £120 into action in 40 minutes at the craps table. I can do that in half the time at the equivalent blackjack stakes. I hate bonuses that don't allow BJ!

[mathare]

9th November
Paddy Power lunchtime 100% match bonus - 35B WR
EV: £65
Actual value: £50.55

I did it, I battled back against the evil casino and actually made something out of that bonus in the end. Hurrah!

I decided late last night as I was trying to get to sleep that I couldn't let this go. I'd had a big negative swing so surely the pendulum had to go back the other way and I could rescue some of that bonus money, and so it proved. I switched off my emotions and become a logical staking automaton, not risking more on any hand than I had to but balancing that with getting through the WR as soon as possible. That was back on baccarat, a game I stuck with all night. I was made to work for it a bit but I settled this evening only £50 down on where I started this chase for the bonus so I effectively kept half the bonus in tact.

And now I have a decent enough bankroll to hopefully tear through the 30D WR for the £50 monthly match bonus, although I have yet to confirm what games count towards that WR.

I had a feeling today would be a good day :)

[hudsonmat]

Well done Mat,

Have you had a look at the Skybet signup offer, it looked pretty reasonable to me.

regards

Matt

[mathare]

Have you had a look at the Skybet signup offer, it looked pretty reasonable to me.It's on my list of suitable bonuses, yep. A decent enough 4.5% edge and BJ allowed. I'll be having some of that one at some stage. I'm working my way through the rest of the monthly bonuses first though. Can't afford to let them slip by unclaimed.

[mathare]

10th November
Coral £25 monthly bonus
EV: £21.88
Current value: £9.50
WR remaining: £169.00

A disappointing start to the BJ at Coral this evening with me making a couple of stupid errors, basic strategy errors really. And the swing of the game seemed to be downwards more than upwards too so I have splatted most of the WR with little of the bonus left to show for my efforts. That's the risk with these small bonuses though.

Not much else to add tonight really. The Paddy Power monthly match bonus isn't worth it as they exclude BJ, roulette, baccarat, craps so it's basically video poker or crappy games - and you know how much I love video poker at the minute!

I did tidy up my accounts a little this afternoon though and I currently stand £511.70 to the good, which is nice.

[mathare]

11th November
Coral £25 monthly bonus (25b WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: £23.00

Another good closing session to rescue the bonus and see out the WR and even exceed the EV for the bonus. Gotta be happy with that :)

Got nothing else on the go at the minute although I do have a few in the pipeline. I checked my Neteller account this afternoon to see if the deposit I made via internet bank transfer had been received yet and found my account closed again, or suspended at least as they need to verify my identity again. A quick phone call soon suited that though and I now have $750 in my Neteller account and the US$ assault is ready to begin.

In a bit of downtime this afternoon I worked out my hourly rate for this casino bonus hustling. It's a respectable £14.55 at the minute. I then realised that that's equivalent to a decent wage bearing in mind it's tax free. Multiply by 2000 to get a rough per annum figure and you get around 29 grand a year tax free. Not bad, not that you could do this sort of thing all day every day but interesting all the same.

[mathare]

12th November
Totesport 100% welcome bonus (20DB WR)
EV: £80.00
Current value: £50.00
WR remaining: £740

Totesport is another Playtech casino (same as Bet365) and I must admit I am impressed at the speed of the software. The hands are dealt very quickly and there is little downtime between hands. But like Bet365 there is no function that allows a player to work out his wagering to date, at least not accurately. You have to either contact customer services and ask them (which I don't like to do too much as I think it gives away the fact that you have one eye on the prize, as it were) if you work it out from your comp points with each comp point being equivalent to £10 staked. Not ideal but it'll do.

The swings and roundabouts of the game of blackjack have seen me lose half the bonus already with only about two-thirds of the WR met. Am I worried? Not really. I know the EV is £80 and I'm currently a good way below that but whatever I take away from this bonus will be free money and will have taken me about three and a half hours to earn so anything £50 or over will be a good hourly rate on this one.

I'll tell you this for nowt - I'm really glad I bought the book that got me started on all this, How To Beat Internet Casinos & Poker Rooms by Arnold Snyder. I think this is now one of my favourite ever books. Without it I wouldn't have thought to go after all these casinos in this manner. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it :)

[mathare]

13th November
Totesport 100% welcome bonus (20DB WR)
EV: £80.00
Current value: £30.25
WR remaining: £1700

Anyone else spot the dody maths last night? Yep, I wrote down 20DB and the calculated the remaining WR from 20B :splapme

Not sure whether I am happy or not today. I had another losing evening but on the plus side it's not really my money is it? Well, it is at the minute because until I can rattle out another £1700 it's my money on the line. And I have a sneaking suspicion I will either lose out on this bonus and it will cost me money or I'll be lucky to scrape home with a tenner of the bonus remaining. One thing is for certain though - the card games don't seem to like me much.

BJ to start this evening. A game I know inside out and good for rattling through the WR at good speed, even with minimum £1 stakes on most hands. That got off to a stinking start and when I quit that after half an hour I had faced an uphill battle to finish only £20 down. Then on to Pontoon - a game I thought I used to play as a nipper but it all seemed very new and very odd to me. I dug out a basic strategy for that and soon picked up the pace of the game as I started to learn the strategy. That started with some give and take followed by swings in either direction, including one that took me almost all the way back to where I started the evening. And then losing streaks took me way back down and just under the £100 total balance mark before I pulled the plug. That was the bonus gone, effectively. Time to call it quits for the night. But on my way out of the casino I decided to just fire up the video poker and see what the minimum stakes where there. OK, I can play for 10p a coin so 5 coins is 50p a hand, that's OK. I think it goes lower than that too but below 10p per coin it'll take months to get through the rest of the WR. Anyway, I played for about 15 minutes, hit 4 of a kind three times plus full houses and flushes and finished about £30 up, which was nice. It seems unusual for me to find a video poker game that isn't run by the dark lord himself and wants to eat all my cash as fast as possible. Maybe I'll have another play on that tomorrow as the card games have been evil to me too.

[mathare]

14th November
Totesport 100% welcome bonus (20DB WR)
EV: £80.00
Current value: £221.02
WR remaining: £1140

I came home in a stroppy mood after the Herculean task of getting to work this morning followed by yet another losing afternoon on the horses. I ate my tea, washed up and shut myself away in my study to play on the Totesport casino. The card games had been nasty to me so I went back to video poker. I selected a 4-line Jacks or Better game on the basis that having 4 lines would iron out some of the variance in the game and give me a steadier ride. But no, I had one of the wildest swings I have ever had to my bankroll...

Karma gave me a visit this evening you see. It decided I had had a lousy day and that what I needed was a good evening to make up for it. So one one hand it gave me AKQJ suited in clubs and some other rag. I held the four high cards and hit the deal button. 10 in the first hand - that's a straight, I'll have that. Then another 10 in the next hand, nice. Hang on! That's suited. That's a royal flush :yikes: I gave up looking at the last two hands at this point.

I was playing 5p a coin for 4 lines (£1 a spin) and the royal flush for 5 coins is worth 4000 coins or £200. I hit another straight on the 4th hand too so I returned £202 for a £1 spin. And who said video poker was an evil game :D

Not much more to add really. I played on for a while after the big payout and made a few more quid but tonight rescued the bonus in a BIG way. I'll leave you with a picture of the glorious moment...

EDIT: Oh yeah, I turned down another £100 Paddy Power lunchtime bonus today as it was a slots only bonus and I'm not that keen on slots, especially when the WR on the bonus is 32B

[mathare]

15th November
Totesport 100% welcome bonus (20DB WR)
EV: £80.00
Actual value: £475.64 :D

Video poker is a really stupid game isn't it? :laugh

I am in an excellent mood this evening, brought on in no small part by making a proper killing on the Totesport welcome bonus, and mostly through video poker. The card games took the hump with me and also a lot of my bankroll at this casino. But the 4-line Jacks or Better loves me. It must do, it gave me another royal flush this evening :yikes: And unlike last night where I held four of the cards for it, tonight I had held only two (Queen and King of hearts). I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. And it didn't stop there, it dealt me a pat four of a kind and some other good hands too. I've had a very good session in there tonight :D :happyboun

I put in £100 a few days back and cashed out £500 this evening, leaving just over £75 behind for some more fun with the video poker some time.

The excitement of this evening has worn me out a bit though so I'm calling it a day now. But I will leave you with evidence that royal flushes are like buses - after waiting ages two come along at once :)

[mathare]

16th November
Skybet welcome bonus (20D WR)
EV: £90.00
Current value: £30.75
WR remaining: £708

I don't like this casino. The blackjack games are rubbish, mostly with some sort of side bet going on. There is not much in the way of straight BJ. The software is the same as Paddy Power (Wagerworks) which I'm not overly keen on anyway but this particular casino can be so slow at times, it drives me mad. And as you can see from the current value of this bonus I have not had a good time of it tonight. I'll battle through the remaining WR and maybe scrape a bit back but my aim now is to get through the WR without this costing me any money once the bonus is counted. I won't be coming back here - that's for sure.

Oh yeah, and the video pokers use a short paytable (7/5 rather than 9/6) else I'd have been on those tonight. That's really tight of the casino. And I don't particularly like the video poker software from Wagerworks anyway.

Not in my list of favourites this one. I'll claim the bonus, cash out and be done with it I think.

Doubt there'll be another entry till Sunday or Monday now as I am away on a stag weekend this weekend :drinkme

[mathare]

20th November
Skybet welcome bonus (20D WR)
EV: £90.00
Actual value: £15.75

Still don't like this casino. I was gunning along quite nicely this evening and had managed to play the bonus back up to £50 or more and then the game just decided to turn on me and I lost most of the bonus. I then played a bit of baccarat because I was bored and lost what was left. Ah well. I have taken me £100 deposit back and left the remaining 80p behind. I won't be back there in a hurry, not unless they come up with the same sort of bonuses Paddy Power have been throwing about recently...

[AngieS]

Matt I do the same but for free bets, coral are giving a free £50 bet if you deposit £50. It is recommended you bet on football or other sports bets as the market does not change so quick, but I have to do horses because thats all I know.

So you deposit £50 bet that on any horse that you can find a good match with betfair and then lay it off so you only loose a couple of pounds in commission. Then you get your free £50 bet which you do the same and you should be around £40 odd quid better off. Then move on to the next bookie.

Plus there are cash back sites which give you money back for signing up from them

And like you Matt I signed up with Blue Square put in some code cant remember what it was, put my first bet on for £50, rushed like mad to lay it off on betfair only to find a pop up saying insufficient funds on blue sq, rushed back to betfair and bought it back. Could not belive my luck the bet had been taken and the horse had won, my account was £250.00 better off.

Then I check balance again and found I have another free £50 bet, thought to myself not risking laying this one off just have bet and let it run incase they suss it. Well it must have been my lucky week because that won as well and ended £295.00 up on the day.

[mathare]

22nd November
Paddy Power £50 monthly match bonus (30D WR)
EV: £42.50
Current value: £16.50

Remember a couple of weeks back when I said I wouldn't be bothering with this bonus. Ahem. Yesterday I got an e-mail from Paddy Power offering me yet another £100 match bonus if I made a deposit into the casino between 9pm and 11.59pm last night. Awkward because I was out for the evening but I made it back in time to make the deposit and get the bonus. So I set about some 4-line Jacks or Better this evening (on a full paytable despite being the same Wagerworks software as rip-off Skybet and their lousy 7/5 table). It was only at the end of the evening when I checked my progress against the WR that I realised I needed to clear this bonus out the way before I can start on the WR for the latest bonus. It's not going great at the minute but never mind, swings and roundabouts. And there is still a hell of a lot more video poker to go to get through this one, let alone the 34D WR for last night's deposit bonus!

[mathare]

23rd November
Paddy Power £50 monthly match bonus (30D WR)
EV: £42.50
Actual value: £21.50

Just a quick entry tonight as it's bedtime. I whizzed through the remaining WR on the £50 monthly deposit bonus for Paddy Power and I'm now in a position to attack the latest £100 match bonus they gave me. I reckon it should take me about 8 hours or so at the 5p 4-line Jacks or Better I have been playing on max coins (5). It's fun, but very frustrating at times I can tell you. More interesting than baccarat though and as BJ doesn't count towards the latest bonus it's the best thing on offer really.

In all the video poker I have played I have yet to hit a regular straight flush. I've had those two royal flushes and every other hand numerous times but never hit a straight flush. How odd.

Oh yeah! I think there may have been a mistake with my Paddy Power account. I tried to transfer £100 from sportsbook to casino late on Tuesday night. It went out my sportsbook account but didn't appear in my casino account. Uh-oh! As I was trying to claim a bonus that evening and I was running out of time I made a debit card deposit of £100 to try and claim the bonus that way. That didn't work either. So I phoned customer services and explained the problem and the fella made a manual adjustment to my account and sorted my bonus out. Lovely. But last time I looked at my PP sportsbook account the £100 I tried to transfer was still there. So it looks like I may have got a free £100 from PP :D

[mathare]

26th November
Paddy Power £100 bonus (ppnights) (34B WR)
EV: £83.00
Actual value: -£37.25

Paddy Power £100 bonus (ppdancer) (34B WR)
EV: £83.00
Current value: £96.25
WR remaining: £3287.00

There has been a lot of video poker played since I last updated this. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon and evening playing and I have to confess it didn't go too well. As you can see claiming the first bonus actually cost me a small sum of money. Oh well, this is gambling after all. But with that out the way I am free to attack yet another bonus. Paddy Power e-mailed me on Friday with a Saturday night deposit bonus and that's the one I am on now. I'm playing video poker again for it as BJ doesn't count and while I could play baccarat it bored the bum off me last time and video poker has a lowe rhouse edge, although it does have a much higher variance so my chances of losing on it are probably greater overall. But it's more fun and there's the chance of the big killing that baccarat doesn't offer. And being so far behind on the video poker compared to my EVs I reckon Paddy Power are lining me up for a decent payout any day soon. Perhaps.

That payout may not come but maybe in some respects it already has. Remember I said there were issues with the deposit/transfer functionality at Paddy Power the other day? Well on Tuesday they made a manual adjustment to my account for the £100 that was stuck between my sportsbook and casino accounts. Then the other day (Friday?) they e-mailed me to say they had sorted out all the problems at their end and I should log in to check my balance. Bugger, I thought, they caught up with me and corrected the overpayment. Not as such. There was another £100 adjustment to my casino account so I reckon they have overpaid me by £200 now. Now wonder I love 'em so much :D

[mathare]

29th November
Paddy Power £100 bonus (ppdancer) (34B WR)
EV: £83.00
Current value: -£44.55
WR remaining: £1165.00

Had a few days off from this doing other stuff but I decided tonight I should get back into the swing of it, especially as I had a Paddy Power bonus awaiting my attention. But now I am beginning to wish I hadn't bothered :(

Yep, the video poker just continued another bad gambling day for me. I switched from 4-line to 10-line and it just didn't seem to work out for me today. I am trying to stay positive but I have really struggled to make anything from these last two PP bonuses. I'm going to try and get some sleep and clear my head now, come back refreshed for next time.

[mathare]

7th December 2006
888.com 100% match welcome bonus (20D WR)
EV: $180
Current value: $200.20
WR remaining: $3462

I have neglected this little blog for a while so I will try and bring you back up to date somewhat.

The Paddy Power bonuses went from bad to worse. Playing VP to claim that Saturday night bonus cost me over £150 of my own cash as well as losing the bonus itself. But there are two ways to look at this:
i) I should think about not taking up these bonus offers if I am going to have to play video poker to claim them, or at least exercise a fair degree of caution when doing so;
ii) Because Paddy Power made a cock-up of my deposits and funds transfers and actually credited me £200 extra I didn't lose out on this bonus grabbing exercise and they in effect got their money back.

I know I have an edge when claiming these bonuses but we're still gambling here, with real money, so losses will happen now and then. I know that but sometimes I need a reminder such as the Paddy Power one. Anyway, lesson learned, move on.

I took some time out from the casinos, partly to celebrate my 30th birthday and partly because I was in no fit state to gamble with a dodgy neck/shoulder. I'm currently signed off work with it still and shouldn't be using a PC but have you seen daytime TV?

Golden Palace were up next, a juicy 300% welcome bonus their enticement. That had an EV of $260 from a $100 deposit but I managed to get out of their with the full deposit intact, requested a withdrawal of $350 and left a bit in there for some fun.

William Hill's monthly bonus is always worth claiming so I thought this afternoon I'd have December's. Unfortunately I lost on that one too and finished nearly £17 down rather than £22.50 up which is the EV. Ah well.

And now I've moved on to 888.com and their welcome bonus. I played about half an hour of BJ and got rogered so I quit that table and went for a nice easy braindead baccarat session. That was enough to get me level again, which will do for now. I haven't decided what to play next but I still have a lot of WR to get through.

[roma]

You're doing well Mat. It's bound to be up and down isn't it?

I'm not sure whether to play video poker any more either. I have lost more than I've won in bonuses on that, I'm sure. Maybe it evens out over the long term but you can go heavily down in the meantime.

I'm still trying to keep up with the blackjack monthly bonuses but I think I may not have time for them all this month. Coral is driving me bananas because although only 625 WR, it's a very slow game so I seem to have been playing for weeks. :(

I see you have been writing Vegy's obituary for several days now ... when's it coming out? is there really that much to say? :wink

[mathare]

I'm still trying to keep up with the blackjack monthly bonuses but I think I may not have time for them all this month. Coral is driving me bananas because although only 625 WR, it's a very slow game so I seem to have been playing for weeks. :( I had a good session on Coral today actually. The bonus took me half an hour of 4-line Jacks or Better (5 coins, 5p/coin) and then an hour and a half of BJ. I managed to bank just over £63 including that bonus, which is nice.

Did you know you can also play Gala Casinos off the same username and password as Coral and claim the monthly bonuses there too? I must confess that I didn't till about 5 minutes ago.


I see you have been writing Vegy's obituary for several days now ... when's it coming out? is there really that much to say? :winkI'm a slow writer, I keep getting distracted by blackjack :laugh

[roma]

Did you know you can also play Gala Casinos off the same username and password as Coral and claim the monthly bonuses there too?

I didn't know that, thank you! Another one to add to the list :D

[mathare]

11th December 2006

Just received a very curious, and unwelcome, e-mail from 888.com:

My name is Linda, writing from the Operations Department at Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd.

We have reviewed your account and after careful consideration it has been decided that your membership should be terminated. This decision was based on the following clause of the Terms and Conditions:

ii) In the event that the Company believes a user is abusing or attempting to abuse a bonus or other promotion, or is likely to benefit through abuse or lack of good faith from a gaming policy adopted by the Company, then the Company may, at its sole discretion, deny, withhold or withdraw from any user any bonus or promotion, or rescind any policy with respect to that user, either temporarily or permanently, or terminate that user's access to the Service and/or block that user's account.

Therefore, your account has been permanently blocked and no further accounts will now be accepted

I have requested a cashout of $200 which equals your original deposit to be paid direct to your Neteller account, please allow 5-7 business days for this to appear on your statement

I hope this now clarifies the situation in regards to your account. We now consider this matter closed, and no further correspondence on this issue

Regards,


Eh?!? I checked my records for 888.com and it seems I played there for a bit last week. I opened my account on 7th December with them, depositing $200 and getting a $200 bonus awarded. I then played BJ for a bit, taking a hammering before winning it all back on Baccarat. I played some video poker and incurred more losses before heading back to the Baccarat tables for a while. I had played over $1800 worth of games with them and lost nearly $100 of my bankroll. They e-mailed me saying they needed to confirm my ID so I sent them a copy of a utility bill and a copy of my passport. A few auto-replies later they say they will soon process the documents and then a few minutes ago I got the e-mail above. I am confused to say the least.

1) I have played several different games at their casino
2) I hadn't cashed out anything at any stage, so it's not like I took the bonus and ran (as I have elsewhere)
3) They use their own propriotary software (I think) so it's not like they were tipped off by another casino using the same software
4) I'm not aware of them being owned by the same parent company as any other casino I have claimed bonuses from. In fact a quick check reveals Cassava Entertainment own 888.com/Casino-on-Net, Pacific Poker and Reef Club and I haven't played at Pacific Poker or Reef Club.

This is most curious. Is it a one off or the sign of things to come? It has put a slight dampener on the day I must admit.

[mathare]

12th December
Paddy Power £100 bonus (ppsaturday) (34B WR)
EV: £83.00
Current value: £125.65
WR remaining: £1664.00

I decided to get over yesterday's 888.com disappointment with some serious gambling at my old muckers Paddy Power. I got an e-mail from them late last week with a bonus offer for Saturday night so I made my deposit and entered the bonus code. And now it's time to start working off the WR.

I've been too into video poker recently and the swings have been doing my bankroll in somewhat so I decided to go for a game with a higher house edge but much lower variance - baccarat. And yes, it's still as dull as ever. But I have been winning small amounts on it so if I can get out of this bonus with at least the EV I will be very happy. There is a good chance I will be spreading this one out over a few days too as PP e-mailed again today to say that for the next couple of weeks they are running prize draws and if I deposit/transfer with a special bonus code each day I will get a free entry into the prize draw for every £10 I gamble. May as well try and get myself a prize from it as well as the bonus eh?

[roma]

I'm stunned about 888.com. :ermmm I've been doing their happy hour bonuses regularly for a few months and they've never complained. In fact they keep giving me little extra $5 and $10 bonuses all the time. It would be good to know why they got suspicious. Do you think you clocked up too much of the WR too fast?

[roma]

Or if Mat Hare is your real name, maybe they are reading this :yikes: :yikes: :yikes:

[mathare]

It would be good to know why they got suspicious. Do you think you clocked up too much of the WR too fast?It certainly would be nice to know why they got suspicious but they said they wouldn't enter into any discussions over the matter (as is standard) so I haven't pursued it any. As for clocking up the WR too fast - can that be done? Can they not handle big bets? And all I was doing was making small bets of a pretty small ($200) bankroll. It's not like I was trying to shoot for the moon and take them for several thousand was it?

[mathare]

Or if Mat Hare is your real name, maybe they are reading this :yikes: :yikes: :yikes:Y'know, I had wondered that but I shan't worry about that possibility too much.

[roma]

Maybe the thread could be moved into the members' section?

I just thought with the WR too fast thing, maybe the pattern they noticed is a lot of small bets in a short space of time, like over just a couple of days, as most of us tend to work one casino quite quickly and then move on. But still I think it is surprising.

[mathare]

Maybe the thread could be moved into the members' section?Possibly. I thought it most relevant to the Casino Chat area but I could possibly shift it upstairs. We'll see how it all goes over the next few weeks.


I just thought with the WR too fast thing, maybe the pattern they noticed is a lot of small bets in a short space of time, like over just a couple of days, as most of us tend to work one casino quite quickly and then move on. But still I think it is surprising.One of the problems people like me cause casinos is they don't know if I am a genuine customer or a hustler. Suppose you're looking for an online casino you can call home. You'd make a deposit to see how easy it is. Then you'd play your favourite game and probably a couple of others to check the look and feel of the software and the odds of the games on offer. Then you'd try and cashout to make sure you could get your hands on your money when you wanted to. And if you didn't like any of your experience you'd simply move on to another casino and repeat the process there. That's basically the same as I am doing. If you are a genuine casino gamer looking for a new home you'd play a lot in a short space of time too. Why waste days on one casino when there are plenty more out there touting for your business? Get in, get playing and if you're not happy get out again.

[mathare]

18th December
Paddy Power £100 bonus (ppsaturday) (34B WR)
EV: £83.00
Actual value: £176.25

I know I said I was going to spread this one out over a few days due to the prize draw promotion at Paddy Power but other things have got in the way really so I decided to forego some of the added value offered by the prize draw and get the remaining WR rattled off this evening and claim the bonus. And I think I made a decent job of this one, more than doubling the EV :) PP are back in my good books again :laugh

Next up - Gala (probably).

[mathare]

8th January
Coral £25 monthly bonus (25D WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: £19.00

Time to get this back up to date I think :)

A new month means a load of new bonuses to claim so I have set about claiming them. First up was Coral the other night, and it was a mixed time on the BJ getting through the WR. It started with a short session that was very good, then I had an exended losing session. I followed this up with a couple more short sessions that resulted in smallish wins, took the bonus and got out of there. I was underfunded for this one really, transferring only £30 from the sportsbook to the casino. I thought I had more in the sportsbook then it occurred to me where it was - I had had a quick play at Gala casinos before christmas and they are part of the same firm so use the same sportsbook account. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to claim the Gala monthly bonus too but my e-mails to their customer support asking why I don't seem to be getting it are going unanswered so I have given up on Gala for now. I transferred my money out of the Gala casino and should have poured more into Coral casino but I played it out on the small session bankroll and survived. Not a great idea to play it the way I did but it worked, more or less.

I'm on Littlewoods at the mo but I'll update you on that one later on...

[mathare]

10th January
Littlewoods £25 monthly bonus (25B WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: -£30.50

I have gone off Littlewoods and I won't be playing there again! Whatever I do I just cannot seem to win at that casino. I've claimed four bonuses from them and they should have been worth £109.38 but they have actually been worth -£46. I'm not the only one who finds the dealers impossible to beat there either, a good mate of mine won't go anywhere near this casino any more. The dealers just cane me at whatever game I choose. Tonight I played BJ and pontoon and took beatings on each.

This one is off the list from now on.

I am currently working on a new bonus at City Club Casino, and it's not my usual sort of thing as it is a slots only bonus. But it was a 400% match bonus with a 20DB WR do I figured for £100 it was worth a try, see what happens like. I'm not that far through the WR (only about £500) but I have found a very handy autoplay feature on the slots that I have tested out gently this evening. I should be able to set that going and just let it run sometime. If I lose the £500 I lose it but I am playing with low stakes (20 lines at 5p a line on the slot I have been playing this evening) so hopefully it will last a while. And if it gets through the WR OK I'll take out what is left. At least I will have given it a go :)

[mathare]

16th January
City Club Casino 400% welcome bonus (20DB WR)
EV: £100.00
Actual value: -£45.79

Paddy Power 100% match bonus (30B WR)
EV: £70.00
Actual value: £40.00

William Hill £25 monthly bonus (20B WR)
EV: £22.50
Actual value: £38.00

So much to tell you about since I have let this get out of dat a little recently. Let's start with City Club. The bonus here was one of many on offer but this was by far the most generous in percentage terms and even though it was a non-progressive slots only bonus I fancied my chances. I had calculated the EV based on a rough guesstimate of a 97% return from the slots. Was that realistic? I thought so, but much of it would depend on which slot I played as well as the massive variance associated with slots due to the low probability/high payout bets. So while I expected to make £100 I was also prepared to lose my £100 deposit and anything I made from the bonus was just that, a bonus. I started on one machine (Desert Treasure) and put over £6300 through that for the loss of nearly £330. So things weren't really going to plan and the return was running more like 95%. Also the machine had a little side game that needed my attention every now and then, so this was not one I could set up Autoplay for and go away from my PC for any length of time.

Sunday morning saw a change of plan and a change of machine (Dr Lovemore). I had been dropping the stakes off steadily as the balance went down and now I was so low on capital I dropped to 20 lines at 2p a line so 40p a spin. I set autoplays up for 1000 spins at a time and got on with other things. It would take longer to get through the WR with smaller bets but I needed to protect what bank I had left but there were no side games that needed user input so I could truly let this one play through automatically. Things got a little scary with only a few hundred quid of the WR left as I only had about £15 of the bank left and a swing could easily wipe that out before I completed the WR so I dumped £50 more in to the bank, set the machine going and watched Walsall v Grimsby. At the end of that the machine was nearly done, the WR was met and the bank had gone up nearly £40 during the football.

After it looked like I was going to lose it all I managed to get away with only losing around £45. I'm happy enough with that. It was a risky bonus and the return on the first machine was too low to get me the start I needed but you can't easily gauge the return from a slot machine from the paytable and there was nothing to indicate what it was so I was on a bit of a gamble. At least I had a crack though.

The e-mail bonus offer from Paddy Power came just at the right time, at the back end of last week just as I was thinking "Hey! I haven't had a bonus from Paddy Power for about 3 weeks now, something must be wrong." And this one had a lower WR than normal (it's usually 34B). And if you claimed the bonus in full by 23.59 on 15th January you were entered into a draw for a massive LCD TV. What more incentive did I need? Free money and a free TV, maybe, that'll do me. It was just a good job I could put the City Club slots on autoplay so I could concentrate on Paddy Power's bonus.

No BJ, roulette or multiplier (whatever that is) as usual but baccarat is OK so off I go to the baccarat tables. A good start sees me go nearly £40 up and take out £800 of the WR. The next session sees me wipe out another £700 of the WR but also a bit over £50 of my bank. But that's OK. Half the WR is gone and I am running right on target for the EV. But I wasn't banking on two stinking sessions at the tables on Sunday afternoon and evening, dropping £30 or more in each. Ok, I took out another £950 of the WR but my bankroll was now down to about £20, despite me trimming the stakes at the baccarat tables. I was in trouble. The cards had turned and bit me so I sought solace in the dice, and it came - thank goodness. I managed to play up my £20 into £35 with some very aggressive staking at the craps table. It was poo or bust time really so I went for it. Playing with 20p credits (giving me 100 credits) I was placing 1 coin pass bets backed up with 3x odds plus as many come bets as I could, starting at 1 coin and going up to 2 coins after I started to hit some numbers. Each come bet was always backed up with 3x odds. Sure it meant that a seven at the wrong time could wipe 50 coins or more off the board and once or twice I was basically down to what I had on the table and nothing else in the bank but I rode my luck, hit the numbers and made the cash.

That left less than £100 to play on the WR and a £35 bankroll with which to do it. I did manage to get that up to £55 but it was only temporary and it slipped back down and I had to settle for a takeout of £40 in the end. Not quite the EV but it's a nice offset against the loss from City Club, and I had met the deadline to be entered into the prize draw.

Then tonight I gave Billy H's bonus a bash. This is a dead easy one that can usually be claimed in an hour, hour and a half tops. Straight BJ for this one, although I did find a multi-split version with decent rules so I played that. One losing session before tea dropped me £7 from £350 out of the £500 WR but I won back £20 from the remaining WR (plus a bit extra, kinda like a tip) to see the £25 bonus come out as £38 actual. That'll do me nicely.

I think a bit of non-WR gambling on the video poker at Totesport and it'll be time for bed y'know. :)

[mathare]

17th January
Ladbrokes £25 bonus (4B WR)

A word to the wise - don't follow too closely in my footsteps because every now and then I need to dodge a turd on the footpath and you may not see me move out the way till it's too late.

What the hell am I talking about? Normally I try and be instructive when it comes to casino gaming and try and help people along. For example, through this thread I have highlighted a number of fantastic casino bonuses that pretty much any one of you can claim, but I bet very few of you are. Ok, you may not get all the Paddy Power ones that I get, who knows. But the principle remains the same. So having claimed this Ladbrokes bonus I must effectively be endorsing and recommending it, yes? Almost. Well, yes, but with a big proviso - it seems like a nice innocent little bonus with a really generous WR but it can't half bite you if it wants to. Let me explain by way of a tale of tonight's session...

Rule 1: Read the Terms and Conditions

I can't stress enough how important this is when it comes to grabbing casino bonuses. I have drummed this into myself in the past. I look at the banner ads for bonuses and then immediately go to the associated Ts&Cs to see if the bonus is any good to me or not. Tonight I did just that but it went in one eye and out the other.

To claim the bonus I need to deposit £25 from my bank card (OK) and stake at least £100 (OK, easy enough). No low/no risk bets on roulette, craps or sic bo (OK) and for baccarat, blackjack, 3 card poker, video poker, pai gow poker, casino war and red dog only bets of 2.5 chips and over count towards the staking requirements. OK, gotcha. But a £25 bankroll isn't going to help me much so I slam £50 in from my bank card. Let's go!

So off I go to play 4-line Jacks or Better video poker. The smallest coin is 25p so I play 1 coin, per line. It has an autoplay mode that uses a pre-determined strategy to decide which cards to hold. So I review this and use this autoplay to determine my strategy one hand at a time. It seems OK so I then start to let it go 10 hands at a time. And it's impressively quick. I can rattle through the already low WR in a few minutes. Great. I lose a bit, win a bit then lose a bit more. But as long as I don't lose more than £25 I haven't really lost as the bonus will cover that. But I want to make something off this bonus so I set myself a target of at least £45 bank at the end of it (whenever the end comes). I battle my bank up again to £48.25 and decide enough is enough and leave the video poker behind. Back to the website that explains the bonus to fill in the claim form. Quick check - have I made a qualifying deposit? Yep. Have I read the terms and conditions? Yep. Double check those. £25 from the bank (OK), £100 staked (yep, done that and much more), no low risk bets (OK), 2.5chip (£2.50) minimum bet on BJ, baccarat...video poker.. WHAT!

Remember Rule 1? I hadn't.

It's OK, I'm less than £2 down so just go play blackjack for a short while and meet the WR that way, but remember the £2.50 minimum stake, obviously. So that's what I do. Only the chips come in 1s as the smallest denomination so that'll be £3 bets then. Hmm, I only have 16 bets in my bankroll then. I usually won't sit down with less than 30. And with a small bonus like this and a small WR you're subject to a lot of short term fluctuations at those staking levels. I prefer to play several hundred hands at £1 stakes to get towards the long term but that's not really an option here. Oh well, deep breath and go for it. After all, swings go upwards as well as downwards.

The Ladbrokes dealer and I jousted for a few hands. I beat him, he beat me but at that stage we were both about level. The comes the first streak - down! My bankroll of nearly £50 drops radily with almost every split and double going against me. I win a few hands here and there but the direction my bank balance is heading in is all too clear. And pretty soon I'm tapped out and down to the felt. Ouch!

Decision time: is throwing another £50 in a good idea? The dealer has been damn hot. Will he eat up the next £50 in double quick time too? Or will that £50 be enough to get me back on the level. I need to get my bank up to at least £75 again to not be out of pocket. I umm, I ahh and then I think "sod it, it's only money" and deposit the £50.

Back to the tables and it becomes a slightly more even game. He steals piles of chips of me and I win them back. Then comes the second streak of the game and it's 1-1 as this one goes my way. I win hand after hand (and hell I needed to at that point) and even raise my stakes slightly (to £5 a hand). I'm back up to £70 now and we're nearly there. It's more even stevens then before I get another slight edge on him and get my bank over the starting figure of £100 again. I don't know how (alright, I kinda do and it involves well-played blackjack combined with luck) but I did it. And that'll do me. I take the money and run for the hills.

Back to the webpage and the same checks again, only this time I can tick all the mental boxes and fill in the claim form and send it off. I am sure I have qualified for the bonus but if not I have learned a lesson and made a couple of quid in the process. What have I learned?

have an adequate bankroll - 16 bets is not enough to sit down with
if you are expecting swings (as I was) expect them to go against you - pessimistic but somewhat realistic too
I know now what scared money feels like - I contemplated that second deposit for a while before making it and some of those bets were too big for the bankroll I had and I felt it. They may not have been the difference between my family eating and starving. Had I lost the whole £100 it is hardly the end of the world, but that's not the point. I had a feeling I wasn't comfortable with and I can learn from that.
read the terms and conditions, then read them again and make sure you understand them and pay attention to what they are telling you - I had a lucky escape on the video poker really and could have quit £25 down and assumed the bonus would recover that loss.


So there you go, the path I tread isn't always clear and sometimes I have to dodge unexpected obstacles. But at least now you know what to expect on the same path :)

[mathare]

19th January
Ladbrokes £25 bonus (another 4B WR)
EV: £24.00
Actual value: £35.25

Ladbrokes live dealer welcome bonus (10DB WR)
EV: £22.83
Actual value: -£74.78

OK, it seems I wasn't entirely clear on the Ts&Cs for the Laddies bonus. It was awarded after 4B WR and then withdrawable after 4B more. So I just set the autoplay up to play 100 £1 hands figuring that should come out about £110 or more. That lost me about £6 so I set it off again with the same parameters but told it to stop if total wins came to £10 or more. It ran for a short while then stopped with me £5.50 up in all. With the WR met and the £25 bonus realised as a little over £35 I was happy with that and stopped.

I was playing the live dealer casino at the same time tonight (and for a couple of hours last night) and boy does it suck big style. For those of you familiar with online blackjack it will seem incredibly slow and tedious. For those of you familiar with real casino blackjack it will seem incredibly slow and tedious. Yep, it really is that bad. Some dolly bird on a webcam deals out cards with a massive index while a display in the lower half of the screen shows the cards as though it were an online computerised game. But the two are often way out of sync making it all the more frustrating.

Online play, single player, runs at 200+ hands an hour. The Microgaming Viper casino on autoplay can probably do well over 500 an hour. A bricks and mortar casino will run the game at about 60 hands per hour. This live dealer stuff ran at maybe 50 hands per hour but the dealer was slow. In a real casino the dealers and fast and novice players slow. Here everything seemed slow. And there's no distractions from the craps pit or cocktail waitresses wiggling their way around the place either so it's nowhere near as much fun and engaging as a proper casino experience. It's kinda the worst of both worlds.

All the tables were at least a $5 minimum (oh yeah, currency is US$ for some reason so you need to transfer from Ladbrokes online casino wallet to Ladbrokes live dealer casino wallet :ermmm) so I transferred £50 and picked up the $50 bonus to give me around $148 or roughly 30 hands. That's a decent enough bankroll. Last night's session saw me clip off $735 off the WR without loss. Tonight it all turned on me and I died a slow, painful death. I never got ahead and I saw the dealer hit more 20s, 21s and blackjacks than I care to think about. I met the WR and a whole lot more but it didn't do me any good. Should I have quit before I went bust? Yeah, probably but with these bonuses when my bank has been hit so hard there is little difference between busting out and quitting. I could have quit with maybe £10 or £15 of my £50 still or I could play on and try and get out with a loss of no more than £25. That's what I aimed for and I missed. Ah well. I have a lot of live dealer BJ under my belt now and I am 100% sure the game is not for me.

Sessions like this evening's don't bother me that much. I know when I sit down with a 30 unit bankroll I stand a chance of losing it and so it proved. And this way I lost it slower than I would with the same hands played on a computerised online game I guess. Worth it for an evening's entertainment? No, not really. But lesson learned and I know now to never go near a live dealer casino online again, pretty much regardless of the bonus offer.

[mathare]

21st January

Rather unusually I don't have a bonus on the go at the minute. I have looked at the details for a few this weekend but nothing has grabbed me yet. I have been able to dismiss almost all of the ones I have seen recently as being not worth it, or at least not meeting my criteria. I have been gambling a little putside the bonuses though. I have played a bit of video poker at both Totesport and Golden Palace, just for fun. The idea was to make around £10/$10 and then stop, and it has worked pretty well. :)

Just because I'm not actively money grabbing at the minute doesn't mean I am wasting my time though. I continue to read all sorts of literature on casino gaming and the latest book (The Most Powerful Blackjack Manual by Jay Moore) proposes a new basic strategy. The author claims he varies a number of plays from the recognised norm because he copes mentally better with the results of his strategy even if it is giving up a little bit of an extra edge to the casino. Personally I think he fears the dealer's 9 upcard may too much but who am I to argue? But what I can do is study his strategy and then run it through a few simulations to see how much extra he is giving up this way.

Before I begin let me say that I am doing this mainly for my benefit and by posting here it will reinforce the results in my mind and also give me somewhere I can refer back to if I need to dig out these results in the future. Also the author states that he's not that bothered about giving up a little more in terms of a house edge because comouter simulations are usually done over millions of hands and no-one is going to live long enough to play that much blackjack. He has a point, but I want that edge as low as I can get it when playing online because a low house edge means I make more from these bonuses in the long run. Anyway...

I ran Moore's strategy through PowerSim to compare it with traditional basic strategy. Over 1 million hands (which takes less than 30s on my PC :yikes:) run under standard online rules (6 decks, double after splits, split to 4 hands, one card to split aces, dealer stands on all 17s, shoe shuffled after each hand) the house edge for a player using traditional basic strategy is 0.513% whereas a player following Moore's strategy is giving up 0.644%. Increase that simulation to 10 million hands and we give up 0.617% using Moore's advice and 0.412% using 'proper' basic strategy.

So is it worth giving up this extra 0.1-0.2% by following Jay Moore's strategy? I don't think it is. I learned basic strategy very early on in my blackjack career and consequently a lot of his plays really feel quite wrong, and he even admits that the percentage plays are not what he's about in several cases. For example, he doesn't always split 8s and Aces despite the fact that these are recognised and proven plays. He will not split against a 9, T or A and will hit instead. OK, splitting Aces and getting a 2 as the additional card to one of those Aces when facing a 9 is annoying but it happens and it's part of the game. I can't not split those Aces.

It's nice to see a fresh strategy on the market and what I have read of the rest of the book so far makes sense. His staking plan looks interesting and I will hopefully be running some simulations with that at some stage. But I just can't agree with some of his plays.

[mathare]

13th February

Wow! I haven't updated this for 3 weeks. It's about time I brought you up to date with what has happened in that time, although I must admit it's not a great deal.

I haven't run the staking plan simulations I had planned to run. I still need to develop the spreadsheets for that and I've ben busy doing other things such as playing poker I'm afraid. I have found time for a bit of bonus hustling though...

William Hill £25 monthly bonus
EV: £22.50
Actual value: -£15

A bad month at Hills really. The cards just weren't running for me and that combined with my inability to leave the table when stuck for a few quid means I ended up losing more than I should have done after I stayed and tried to play through to get myself back level again. I had got to the stage where I was prepared to settle for this bonus being worth 0 but in the end it cost me £15. Such is life.

Captain Cook's Casino £200 Welcome bonus
EV: £100
Actual value: -£50

Although I lost more on this one than the Billy H monthly bonus I don'r really mind as this was a riskier bonus. This was one of those casinos that offers you £500 of their money to play games for an hour (albeit a restricted range of games and to restricted stakes) to try and win as mich as you can and at the end of the hour what you have won transfers to your account and when you deposit £50 you can gamble to release the bonus money won with their £500. That makes it sound more complicated than it is. But it basically uses the EZ bonus scheme so you're never looking to meet the WR (which would be 300B for blackjack), you're looking to make a few risky bets and try and win as much as you can and then withdraw. This is exactly what I did with Mummy's Gold and netted a couple of hundred quid. Here I netted bugger all. Ah well.

Paddy Power £75 bonus (45xB WR)
EV: £58.13
Current value: £25
Remaining WR: ~£2000

I can't be bothered to work out the exact figures for this but it's a high WR/small edge bonus but one of Paddy Power's regular e-mail bonuses so it seems a shame to turn too many of them down and I have declined the last couple for various reasons. This one is limited to BJ, slots and leisure games - so that's BJ then. It also includes their new BJ variety though, Power Blackjack. And it's a little odd but has a lower house edge than standard BJ assuming perfect strategy.

The main differences between regular and power BJ are:

push on dealer 22
power doubling on 9, 10 and 11 - can swap double card at no extra cost if you don't like the first double card
power split of hard 15 and 16 - can split hard 15 and 16 (2 card totals only) as though they were a pair


Not sure I have got perfect strategy nailed for this as I'm not up to simulating the game or running all the rule variations through some magic black box to work out how to play each hand but I am playing normal basic strategy for the most part, swapping duff double down cards on 9, 10 and 11 where applicable and splitting 15 and 16 when facing a weak dealer upcard. Generally speaking I am splitting when the dealer upcard is equal to or less than both the cards in my hand. So I'd split T5 against a 4 for example, 97 against 6 etc.

It's not going great but I am sticking too it. For now at least.

Other than that it's been pretty quiet. A bit of VP thrown in here and there for a laugh but that's just gambling rather than bonus hustling.

There are plenty more bonuses out there and I have signed up to a few e-mail lists that seem to bombard me with bonuses but as always it is a case of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

[mathare]

18th February
Paddy Power £75 bonus (45xB WR)
EV: £58.13
Current value: -£55.50
Remaining WR: ~£800

Paddy Power have got their revenge on me here and no mistake. I've played Power Blackjack for maybe half an hour this afternoon and lost £60 in the process, and that's off a £1 stake per hand. I admit I still haven't got the perfect strategy nailed but to lose £60 after gambling just under £300 is BAD!So I quit playing power blackjack and give standard BJ a chance to get me through another wedge of the WR for minimal losses. Much as I would have liked to win a big chunk bank I was now prepared for damage limitation. But oh no, the casino had other ideas as another £20 slipped away with only £164 gambled. They are huge loss rates bearing in mind I was playing good (but by no means perfect) basic strategy. I can believe I would have been playing with perhaps a 1% house edge but to lose at rates exceeding 10% is staggering. Yes, quite short sessions so the stats aren't that meaningful but when things go as badly as they did for me in the past hour or so it's time to get the hell out of dodge!

[mathare]

20th February
Paddy Power £75 bonus (45xB WR)
EV: £58.13
Actual value: -£67.00

Not the best bonus I have ever claimed I must admit. Those sessions on the 18th really did for me. But hey, these things happen.

Paddy Power are giving me the opportunity to get straight back on the horse and start riding again though. There is another £100 bonus to be had tomorrow night, although this one excludes BJ, roulette etc so it's a baccarat or video poker bonus really.

I have a few more in the pipeline too. I'll update again soon...

[mathare]

20th February part II
Coral £25 monthly bonus
EV: £21.88
Current value: -£25
WR remaining: £349

I don't get this game sometimes. Perhaps it's karma following a good run at the back end of last year. Maybe I've lost my touch. Maybe I'm just running bad. But things are certainly looking bleak on the blackjack front. Another £50 dropped chasing a £25 bonus and I only got through £276 of the WR. It's been another one of those killer sessions that I seem to have a lot of these days.

I know losing is part of the game. I can't win every hand, in fact I won't win even half the hands long term (around 44% is about right). But to lose like I have been recently is bad. Am I making strategic errors? One or two every now and then but that's just human isn't it? At the heart of it I know I am playing well enough to be no worse than 1% off but this month I have wagered £9395.50 on blackjack and lost £482. That's over a 5% loss rate, 10 times what I should be losing playing blackjack to basic strategy.

Let's just get this straight, I'm not suggesting I am being robbed or anything here. I know this is perfectly within the norms as far as stats and probabilities are concerned but it's a right ballache at the minute. I could really do with a good session sometime soon to restore my confidence and get some drive back into this bonus grabbing. But it has largely been downhill in 2007.

It's been a bad run and I need to just check over my behaviour to make sure I am not making it worse. My staking is OK and the same as normal so that's not it. I think I am playing well enough. I know I am not playing badly enough to be giving up 5% to the house. I really reckon it's just a statistical blip but I really could do with booking a win soon just to reset my mental state slightly.

[Mavrick]

When I have times like that on the horses, I just take a break and re-read a book or two on the subject just to get my appetite back and to forget what I've lost so I don't feel like chasing my money.
Always works like a charm

[mathare]

28th February
Paddy Power monthly deposit bonus (30xD WR)
EV: £42.50
Actual value: £51.50
Paddy Power ppballs bonus (35xD WR)
EV: £82.50
Actual value: -£39.64

Thank :censored: that's over! ;fire

This year has been absolutely dreadful for me on the casino bonus front. Things just seem to go from bad to worse with no let up in the punishment. Yes, I know no-one is making me play these games and claim these bonuses but I should have an edge on each one so to be taking the hits as I am is pretty disheartening.

I didn't really mean to claim the monthly deposit bonus at PP, it just sorta happened. I actually set out to claim the 'ppballs' bonus but when I started playing video poker to work off the WR for that one I forgot that I would need to get the deposit bonus out the way first. So my first chunk of wagering went towards that and it seems from my figures that I actually made a reasonable job of that one and an absolute hash of the actual bonus I was after.

My losses this year add up to around £1300 from wagers summing just under £34,000. That's a house margin of 3.91% over all of that. Hmmm. Last year my losses were £330-odd from just under 48 grand giving a house edge of 0.69%. Overall of this the house has had an edge of 2.03% over me and that seems a bit too high when you think that probably 80%+ of this casino gaming has been on games with a house edge of ~0.5%.

Let's just say I am hoping for a statistical correction soon else I may seriously have to consider giving this up

[mathare]

28th February part II
Coral £25 monthly bonus (25xB WR)
EV: £21.88
Actual value: -£79.50

Another kick in the knackers from lady luck. :(

I figured I may as well finish this bonus off as it is the last day of the month and I might be able to turn around the previous losing session in this casino and claw back some respectability. But oh no!

It started well enough and we had a nice to and fro, give and take thing going on for a while. Then the dealer got replaced by Satan who made a lot of hands just 1 better than mine and my bank drifted away from me. When the bonus became available I took what little I had left and ran away.

This is really starting to annoy me now. Is it simply bad luck or am I playing poorly? I think I am playing as well as I always have been. I don't feel tired or mentally not in the game. I know the strategies and am following them almost to the letter (bar the odd inevitable human error). Which leaves rigged games (not likely) and chance as the determining factors.

Oh well, I guess at least luck can change...

[mathare]

18th March
Paddy Power 100% deposit bonus (39xB WR)
EV: £80.50
Actual value: £128.00

I thought I should blow the dust off this and write the next chapter in the great free money escapades. This was my first visit to the online casinos for a few weeks. I was a little down after the expensive Coral lesson so I had vowed to stay away from the tables for a while until I had got my head back into the right sort of shape and also done some staking plan testing for blackjack. I had dozens of ideas for plans, I just didn't know which was best and I didn't want to go gambling until I did know. I still don't know so I guess in that respect I have fallen off the wagon but this was too good to resist really.

Before we get to the details of the bonus, let me just take a few minutes out to talk about staking plans for casino games. Generally speaking, they should make no difference to the amount you win/lose - at least not in the long term. But what I am trying to do, as others have before me with the spinning wheel of numbers, is exploit short term fluctuations in statistics (aka luck) for financial gain. And for that I need to know what works best.

Suppose I need to wager £2000 to qualify for a bonus. I could stick that two grand on one hand of blackjack. The outcome of that hand could be win (+£2000), lose (-£2000) or push (+/- £0). It's a fact that long term you won;t win more hands than the dealer does. That's due to the rules of the game. You'll run at about 44% or so. My simulations show a push rate of about 9% so our EV on this one bet is 0.44*2000 - 0.47*2000 = -£60 (-3%). Or I could play two hands at £1000. Or many hands at a much lower stake. The more hands I play the more the EV tends towards the house edge (~-0.5% depending on rules in operation). What I aim to do is to play a lot of hands at a small stake and leave the tables when I get sufficiently ahead. 'Sufficiently ahead' is a very subjective measure I admit but it's the best I can do at the minute. I'd aim for maybe £30 profit off a £100 starting bankroll. I may still be a long way off the WR when I leave the tables for that session but part of this game is about banking the wins and maintaining a feelgood factor about it all. And playing a lot of blackjack, enough to complete the WR at low stakes, can be quite tiring on the mind and actually quite boring. I prefer to have a number of short sessions and try and book wins in some of them. I know that overall if I have played enough hands I should be approaching long term and I should be cashing in the bonus for approximately the calculated EV for that bonus.

As I am aiming to play a number of sessions and to book a few winners in there I need to try and maximise both short term gain and turnover. The reason for aiming to maximise short term gain should be obvious - I want to win money! But the turnover needs to maximised at the same time to minimise the amount I need to wager after this session and so to reduce the chance of me losing the profits back. These two can't be maximised in isolation really, and I'm not even sure of the best way to look to optimise the two of them in correlation. But what I can do is test a number of staking plans over multiple simulations. I have churned out a large number of blackjack hands using a simulator and put together a spreadsheet (what else?!) to test various staking plans on these hands. I'll run hundreds, thousands of trials of each plan across these hands, randomising the hands after every trial. I'll test the plans on various samples of hands from the whole parent population of hands. And I'll produce stats. Average profit/loss, ROI, bank high, bank low, risk of ruin etc for each plan. It's then just a case of picking the plan that ticks all the right boxes for what I want. Information, knowledge - can't beat it!

Anyway, I don't currently have that info to hand because I've been too lazy to finish the spreadsheet. I have the main structure in place though and that's the backbone of it all. But Paddy Power tempted me out of temporarry retirement with another £100 match bonus. And this one had a bonus bonus - a chance to win 1/12th of a racehorse. I accept the fact that loads of people may enter the draw to win the horse so I accept that my chances of winning are low. But they're not zero - and that's what matters. I have completed the WR for the bonus so I am in the draw. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I made a few quid on the bonus too so it's been a good day. Multi-hand blackjack using my staking plan and several sessions to crank through the WR (which was a bit high for my liking). I had the usual ups and downs (up over £100 after the first session; down by £30 overall earlier this evening) but finished with a flourish and am very happy with the result. 1/12th of a racehorse would be a very nice extra though :)

[mathare]

1st April
Paddy Power 200% deposit bonus (32xB WR)
EV: £36.00
Actual value: -£27.00
Paddy Power 100% deposit bonus (34xB WR)
EV: £32.00
Actual value: £29.40

Two more Paddy Power bonuses to report on, making a total of 9 bonuses so far this year. Be nice if they continued at the rate of 3 a month I can tell you.

Anyway, both bonuses had the same exclusions. Basically all the good games are out. So that's Blackjack, Roulette, Multiplier, Baccarat, Video Poker and Craps. Initially that left me in a bit of a quandary. I figured I was down to slots or forget the bonus, and as the first bonus on offer was a 200% bonus up to a maximum of £100 (£50 deposit) I figured it was worth claiming so I had to find a game worth playing that meant the bonus didn't lose all its value. After checking the returns on the slots I settled on Wan Doy Pairs Poker.

I won't go into detail on the game but it's you against the dealer, 7 cards each and best poker hand wins. Hands use all 7 cards but there are no straights or flushes. So it's pair, two pair, three of a kind, full house, three pair etc. I dug out a strategy and set out playing and it started well, as it so often does. The 'back to earth with a bump' session came along soon enough though, and poor bankroll management and staking meant I lost more than I probably should have during that session. Consequently I lost out on that bonus to the tune of £27.

But I was straight back on the horse when I got another offer from PP, this time a 100% match bonus with a 34B WR. Without the decent games this bonus is almost worthless but I took it anyway. The EV was £32 and I came out of it £29.40 ahead so it's close enough. Plus it cancelled out the losses from the previous bonus.

This second bonus was claimed through 3 Card Poker play, as I was getting ticked off with Wan Doy Pairs Poker and had some bad sessions towards the end. Don't get me wrong, I had my 3 Card ups and downs too but I was prepared to accept bigger losses than normal for each session as I wanted to burn the WR as quickly as possible and the house edge is higher than I would normally go for at over 2%.

So not a big gain from these two bonuses, with the combined win of £2.40 a long way short of the £68 EV but this is gambling and these things happen. I gained experience of new games and picked up some valuable loyalty points along the way too.

I think in future I will mix in some slot play though. The losing sessions on the table games can grind you down a little. Slot losses are somehow easier to take as you just kinda expect them and the hope of a decent payout kinda keeps you going. As if the casinos didn't know that :laugh

[mathare]

1st April pt II

Not a bonus to tell you about but stick with me because this is casino related.

The story concerns Littlewoods Casino, one I stopped playing a while back because I kept getting stiffed on their monthly bonuses. In fact a casino that I have lost over half my initial deposit of £100 at, despite playing for the bonuses only. Anyway, when I stopped playing there I did just that - I just stopped. I didn't withdraw my remaining cash or close my account or anything. As a consequence I have had a few e-mails from them saying I am running out of time to claim monthly bonuses and also e-mails reminding me I still have cash waiting for me in my account.

My account preferences contain my e-mail address and state that Littlewoods can contact me so I don't really mind their e-mails. I know they are trying to tempt me back there and it won't really work unless they start to dangle very juicy bonuses in front of my face but they aren't really to know that are they.

I came home from work on Tuesday and saw a card through the door saying I had been sent a letter that had been sent with insufficient postage and I had to go to the Post Office to pay the remaining postage (5p) plus a £1 handling charge in order to get the letter. And of course I have no idea what this letter is so what option do I have but to go collect it. I half thought it might be my Vista upgrade, in which case I would be cross because I paid P&P on that so they should have got the postage right. And anyway I'd expect more than a letter for that. I'd expect the item to be a packet or whatever the Post Office class it as.

So yesterday morning I drag myself out of bed and trek to the Post Office (about a mile and a half away from home). And they close at midday which is not ideal either. But I get there and rummage around for the £1.05 in the correct change, otherwise I don't get my letter (the bloke in front of me got caught by that one). I pay the money, I get the envelope. A white A4 envelope which by the feel of it can only have one or two sheets of paper in it. It's a window envelope with a typed address showing. A normal (letter) 1s class stamp in in the top right corner. That explains the insufficient postage - this is now classed as a large letter.

I step back out the Post Office and open the envelope and pull it open to see the top of the letter.

"Mat, you have cash in your Littlewoods Account!"

At that point I went :censored: berserk! I have just had to pay £1.05 so a big company can tell me they have some of my money. Just like they told me by e-mail a week or so ago. Exactly what I already knew because I keep my own set of accounts for this casino gaming. And it's not just a big company, it's a casino so they should be loaded. I was not happy ;fire

Had they folded the letter and used an A5 envelope everything would have been fine. But oh no, I have had to pay to be told what I already knew. I was really not impressed. Fortunately the e-mail address of the casino manager was at the foot of the letter. Oh yeah, baby!

I came home and put my racing bets on then went shopping with the missus to buy her a birthday present (which she has now decided she doesn't want but that's a whole other story). I spent the evening with her watching a film. Littlewoods weren't getting away with this but I would deal with it tomorrow.

So when I woke up this morning I fired up my e-mail and blasted Simon Dexter, Littlewoods Casino Manager with both barrels. He cannot be in any doubt as to what I think of this incident as I I have told him in no uncertain terms, although I was polite about it all.

I haven't had a reply yet but if it isn't very apologetic and offers compensation for the inconvenience and expense then the follow-up e-mail I send will not be as polite and will be demanding the money back out of my account and telling him where he can shove all future correspondence from Littlewoods Casino.