Online Casino terms can be confusing and for new players, the lack of knowledge can even cause trouble. As most casinos protect themselves with a long list of terms and conditions, it is important that you know what you’re up against.

We’ve all been new to the world of Online Casino at some point and you might have found your way to this article because you want to know more. Words like “RTP”, and “Wagering”, might seem like a big mystery to you, but worry not, Bigwinboard.com is here to sort it all out for you with the casino terminology guide compiled below.

Online Casino Terminology

• Welcome Bonus – new customers are usually offered a Welcome Bonus when signing up to a casino, something that is used as an incentive to get you to register. Bonuses increase the expected value, thus improving your chances of beating the casino. There is usually wagering requirements attached to the bonus, but we’ll get to that later. A Welcome Bonus may often also include Free Spins and it is not uncommon for casinos to offer Welcome Bonuses on two, three or even four deposits. For a list of bonuses, visit our Best Casino Bonus page.
• Free Casino Bonus – some casinos offer new customers free cash when signing up without the requirement to make a deposit. There is almost always wagering attached to it and sometimes a max cap on the withdrawal.
• Wagering – when you accept a bonus or Free Spins, there is almost always wagering requirements attached to it. The wagering must be completed before any withdrawal can be made. Requesting a withdrawal before completing wagering can result in loss of bonus funds so beware. Wagering works as follow – the player accepts a 100% bonus and proceeds to make a 100 EUR deposit, which gives the player 200 EUR to play with. In this particular example, let’s pretend that the wagering requirement is 40x. This means that the player will have to play for a total of 4000 EUR before wagering is cleared (100 EUR x 40 = 4000 EUR).
• Casino License – for an online casino to be able to operate it must acquire a license. The most common licenses are the ones issued by Malta (MGA), UK (UKGC) and Curacao. Bear in mind that a casino must be licensed within the EU for winnings to be tax-free. Therefore you may want to make sure that the casino has a UK or Malta master license. This is most often displayed at the very bottom of the page on casinos. A casino may also hold multiple licenses.
• LifeLine Bonus (Parachute Bonus) – the lifeline type bonus is pretty much like any other bonus, but with one major difference. Say you deposit 100€ with a 100% bonus, giving you 200€ to play with. Using a lifeline bonus you first play with your own 100€, and if you win you can make a withdrawal right away! However, would you lose your 100€ and dip down into the other 100€ the bonus will have been triggered and you have to complete wager. Go here to see our non-sticky bonuses.

Slots Termonology

• Slots – One-Armed Bandit, Slot machine or Fruit machine. A game with spinning wheels and pay lines.
• Scatter – a symbol in slots used to trigger a feature, a bonus or free game. A player usually needs at least 3 to trigger the feature.
• Wild – the Wild symbol replaces all other symbols except the scatter and bonus symbols. These symbols may help you build winning paylines in games such as Dead or Alive.
• Random Feature – is a feature in a slot that happens randomly. You may be introduced into something completely different from the regular base game and even taken to another level. A well known random feature is the Wild Desire in the slot Immortal Romance.
• Free Spins – a very central feature in online slots usually triggered by landing scatter symbols. Balance is locked and the chances of landing big wins increase significantly.
• Sticky Wild – a kind of Wild that stays on the reel during multiple spins.
• Expanding Wild – will expand and cover a whole reel.
• RTP/Return to Player – RTP is a way to understand how much the slots give back to the players, long term. If a slot has an RTP of 98% it will pay back 98€ out of 100€. But this only evens out after millions of spins. Gameplay is heavily affected by variance.
• Variance/Volatility – helps explain the swings of slots. On a high variance slot you can generally expect very low payouts over many spins but when a winning spin finally lands it has potential to be massive. A low variance slot works in the opposite way. You can expect many decent wins, but the max win potential is not that great.