Roulette Bonus Playthrough Question
I got a £10 casino bonus with 1X playthrough requirements upon £10 deposit. I bet £10 on Red and win and withdraw my winnings of £20 (actually £30 due to an apparent glitch) - no issues here.
But the roulette table offered a great deal: if the ball lands on zero you get half of your stake returned. My question is, how would I have gone from there?
The minimum withdrawal amount is £10, so I cannot withdraw the £5 for this reason. Otherwise I'd do that and still have the bonus to play with. I would make the withdrawal before playing through the bonus, as the rules state that cash balance will be used first towards clearing the bonus - if there is no cash then it can't be used for bonus playthrough purposes, which is what we want.
I can't figure out what the best strategy would be. My overall strategy when exploiting similar deposit bonuses is to (in the long term, across multiple sites) break even on deposits (let's ignore the zero for the sake of simplicity - I know it's quite a bit less than 50/50), and make money on the bonuses or other extras which I might be offered down the line. The aim is never to lose the deposit (or to put it differently, to lose with half of the deposits and win with half, thus breaking roughly even). Consider the deposits as a tool which unlocks the bonuses.
If someone could express this in mathematical terms or explain it in another way it would be very helpful. For clarity, the bonus amount needs playing through once. The options seem to be:
1. Bet £5 - but you still need to bet another £5 to clear the bonus.
2. Bet £10 - this clears the bonus. Also leaves £5 bonus to play with.
3. Bet £15.
4. Bet other amount/s.
I'm thinking 2. is best, as the bonus is now cleared and it offers two chances to at least get your initial deposit back.
Not only that, option 1. will need at least two bets to achieve a similar result - I prefer to minimise the amount of bets I make for reasons which we don't need to get into.
Option 3. will result in either a £20 profit or a £10 loss, so that needs to be weighed against the other options, always bearing in mind that not losing our deposit is more important than making a profit - but at the same time considering any mathematical advantage involved in making one decision over another. So, for example, if £10 can be cashed out, but could instead be gambled with and result in a £15 win/profit on an even money chance, then it's obvious that that bet should be made - it would be mathematically correct to not cash out, as betting would be mathematically advantageous. This example may not apply here but it does make clear that the main line of intent is to make bets only when we have to - but that if the odds are in our favour we will be mathematically compeled to risk losing some or all of our deposit.
