Every industry develops its own dictionary over time, whether it’s business, movies, gardening, or something more technical, like science. While these terms can help a person present themselves as somebody in the know, they can also scare off newcomers. As an effort to get around this problem, casinos often go to great lengths to define every word they’ve invented.
The Experience
A page describing the latest Betfair casino promotions includes a few brief definitions at the bottom of the page so that brand-new players don’t get confused. In no particular order, these are the deposit bonus, a “spend and get” bonus, and a no-deposit bonus. For the sake of completeness, the website also describes the process customers must use to claim each promotion.
Both the deposit and no-deposit bonus are explained in the Ts&Cs of a current promotion, namely, the fifty free spins for new players on the Dynamite Riches slot game. This campaign automatically applies the bonus to new players’ accounts when they sign-up with a special code. This is what’s known as a no-deposit promotion, as no money needs to change hands for customers to claim it.
The same promotion also includes a deposit bonus. When players opt into receiving their free spins, they also have the option of making a £10 deposit to receive fifty more. These spins have the equivalent value of 10p per turn. While that might not sound like a lot, the value of the deposit and no deposit promotions is in the experience it gives newcomers with the casino platform itself.
As for the “spend and get” bonus, this is just another term for a deposit-style bonus, where the requirement is a purchase of some description – just like a buy-one-get-one-free deal in supermarkets.
Return to Player
Of course, there’s more to casino lingo than promotional terms. Slot games actually have quite an extensive glossary attached to every game. For instance, the term RTP or Return to Player describes how much of a wager will be returned to the player over time. The Dynamite Riches game above has an RTP of 95.7%, which means that 95.7% of a £10 bet will be given back over a set amount of spins, usually in the millions.
Source: Pexels.
Another word associated with slot games is volatility. While describing the degree of risk that each game offers, it does reveal some deeper complexities of the standard slot. Slots are usually either high or low volatility, with the latter describing games that pay out little and often. High volatility slots do the opposite, i.e. they pay out rarely but often in large amounts. Games with huge jackpots usually come with high volatility.
There are plenty of other terms out there that help put the slots experience together for players. For example, the game structure itself is often defined with terms like reels (the vertical columns in play), paylines (where symbols have to land to payout), and several different words for symbols, such as wilds, scatters, and bonus icons. With new slots coming out all the time, the vocab continues to increase too.
Overall, there’s much more to slots than just lining up a few symbols.
