7 Gambling Strategy Tips for Online Casino Games

If only someone had written a concise online casino games guide that could help you win more often when gambling on the internet.


I haven’t seen one yet, at least not one that covered all the major gambling games online with tips for how to get the most out of each of them.

With that in mind, I decided to write this post consisting of the seven best gambling strategy tips for online gamblers.

1 – Find a Reputable Online Casino

The first step in having a successful online gambling experience is to find a reputable online casino. If you live in a state where online casinos have been legalized, you’ll have a short list of casinos to choose from.

But you should probably stick with those casinos, as they’re regulated by various state authorities. If they try to withhold your winnings for specious reasons, or you’re having trouble getting your withdrawal processed, you have recourse with that agency.

You should be more cautious when playing casino games online for real money at offshore gambling sites. These sites are regulated and licensed, too, but let’s face it. The governmental authorities regulating them are less stringent when it comes to United States players.

After all, if you’re the gambling licensing authority in a developing country, how interested are you going to be in helping a player from the United States? And what about when you contrast that with the risk of losing the licensing fees from the company in question?

The solution is to only play at reputable online casinos.

As luck would have it, the properties recommended on this site have been thoroughly vetted for trustworthiness. You can read detailed reviews of multiple online casinos here to find a property that’s perfect for you to play at.

2 – Choose Online Casino Games With a Low House Edge

You’ll see lots of less reputable casino guides on the internet claiming that the slots at such-and-such online casino have payback percentages of higher than 99%.

Take that with a grain of salt.

Some of them are just flat-out lying. Others are describing a single slot machine game out of 600+ games.

Generally, the slot machine games have the highest house edge in the casino—online or offline. Since you’re also making 500 or 600 spins per hour playing them, you’re putting a huge amount of money into action.

And the house edge works against your total action. The lower you can keep your total action at the casino, the less money you stand to lose.

In fact, it increases your probability of winning.

Which games have a low house edge?

Stick with baccarat and blackjack. Always make the banker bet in baccarat, and memorize and use basic strategy when playing blackjack.

Craps is another good choice, but stick with the basic bets like pass and don’t pass. Take as much of the free odds bet as you can afford.

And if you can find the right pay tables, video poker can be a good choice.

3 – Be Careful of the Casino Signup Bonuses

When you research online casinos, you’ll find plenty of promotional offers where you get free money in exchange for opening an account and making a deposit. These take the form of signup bonuses. They’re usually a percentage of your first deposit (or even your first few deposits).

For example, you might get a 300% signup bonus on your first deposit of up to $500. This means if you deposit $500, you get $1,500 in bonus money. You start the game with $2,000.

This sounds like a great deal, and in a sense, it is. You get way more time gambling than you would if you just started with $500.


But the casino signup bonuses come with a big catch.

I cover that catch in the next section.

4 – Understand How Wagering Requirements Work

The big catch that I alluded to in the last section include the wagering requirements that the casino attaches to the signup bonus. This is also sometimes called the “playthrough” or “rollover requirement.”

It just means that you’re required to wager a minimum amount of money before you can cash out of the casino. This minimum amount is usually a multiple of your deposit plus any bonus money.

In the previous example, if the casino’s rollover requirements are 35x, you’d be required to place 35 x $2,000 in wagers before you’re allowed to cash out.

That’s $70,000 in wagers.

The first time I saw this, I thought it was impossible to achieve $70,000 in wagers on a $2,000 bankroll. I wasn’t accounting for that fact that I was going to win some money on some of those wagers.

But the casino has stacked the deck in their favor. They usually only count wagers on the slot machine games toward your wagering requirement.

If you assume that the average house edge at an online casino’s slots games is 5% — which is giving them a huge benefit of the doubt, by the way — your expected loss on $70,000 in wagers is $3,500.

Since you started with $3,500, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up losing all your money before achieving your wagering requirements.

Sure, you could win a big jackpot at some point during your sessions, but that’s unlikely. After all, big jackpots are big because you seldom hit them.

As long as you understand this fact about online casino bonuses, you can adjust your expectations accordingly.

5 – Cash Out or Play Low House Edge Games

If you have money left in your account after achieving your wagering requirements, you have two options:

1. You can cash out.
2. You can keep gambling.

If you decide to keep gambling, I recommend switching to a game with a low house edge. Your best bet is blackjack played with perfect basic strategy. At some online casinos, you can get the house edge down to less than 0.5% just by using basic strategy on the right blackjack game.

Your goal should be to go on a winning streak and hitting a certain amount of dollars that signal you to quit.

Let’s say you take advantage of the hypothetical bonus in the previous example and still have $500 left after achieving your rollover requirement.

You could take your $500 to the blackjack table with a goal of winning $500. Once you’ve won $500 (if you do), cash out that $500 and use the other $500 as your stake to try to keep running up your wins.

That $500 target is just an arbitrary goal. You could just as easily cash out when you’re up $200 or up $1,000.

It all depends on your risk tolerance and temperament.

6 – The Best Strategy for Online Slot Machines

In my experience with playing online slot machines, the best strategy is to play the games with the highest stakes per spin. This might feel uncomfortable if you’re a low roller, but I can promise you this — you’ll see a higher payback percentage from the higher denomination slots.

Also, the lower denomination slots—especially the penny slots—force you to wager a minimum number of coins per line. And they usually require you to wager on a minimum number of lines, too.

You could easily wind up risking $5 per spin on a penny machine without realizing it.

So, pay attention, and try to play the flat-top games for high denominations.

What’s a flat-top game?

See the next section.

7 – Other Strategies for Online Slots

The 2nd best strategy for playing online slot is to only play flat-top games. A flat-top slot machine game is one with a fixed top jackpot, usually 1,000 coins, although that can vary.

You can contrast a flat-top slot machine game with a progressive slot machine game because the jackpot on a progressive game continues to grow over time.

Progressives have two problems:

• They use a small percentage of each bet you place to increase the size of the jackpot. This has a direct effect on your payback percentage.
• The likelihood of hitting the jackpot is much smaller. Once the probability of hitting a jackpot gets high enough, it might as well be impossible. In that case, you shouldn’t even count the jackpot amount toward the payback percentage for the machine. It’s just a theoretical, mathematical construct in that situation.

And it’s safe to ignore something that’s so unlikely as to be effectively impossible.

Conclusion

What can you say in a short blog post about online casino games?

The most important thing is to be careful of how online casino bonuses work and, when you can, stick with the games with the lowest house edge.

For most gamblers, this means playing the good blackjack games. Good luck!