Legal Online Casinos Manipulate Players. Here Are 16 Proven Tactics
A report from the Dutch regulator exposes manipulative design tricks in legal casinos
Everyone knows casinos use tricks to keep people gambling longer. In land-based casinos, there are no windows or clocks, so you lose track of time. Online casinos have their own version of this playbook.
A recent report on the Dutch regulated market analyzed 21 platforms and 35 games to identify manipulative design elements. Offshore casinos, without oversight, go even further — but even in “legal” settings the findings are disturbing.
Researchers identified 16 systematic tactics used to push players to deposit more, play longer, and make it harder to quit.
How you’re pushed to deposit more
Preset high deposit amounts
When you load your account, you’re shown default options — usually big numbers. The minimum amount is hidden or requires extra clicks. The easiest choice is to deposit far more than you intended.
Bonuses only above the minimum
Deposit bonuses are structured to make larger deposits look “smart.” Technically you can deposit the bare minimum, but the way the offers are framed makes that option look unattractive. Two-thirds of the casinos in the study did this directly on the deposit screen.
Hiding the minimum deposit
The minimum amount (often €5–10) is rarely shown upfront. It only appears after you try to deposit less than the hidden threshold.
Bypassing your own limits in 3 seconds
Set yourself a €100 monthly deposit cap? The report found you could raise it to €700 by clicking “yes” three times in a chatbot. No waiting period, no cooling-off time, no pause for reflection.
Blocking withdrawals if you have an active bonus
Illegal under Dutch law — but casinos still do it. If you have any bonus attached to your account, even if you didn’t claim it, withdrawals are locked until you meet the wagering requirement.
These five tricks all work the same way: make it easy to put money in, and painful to take money out.
How you’re kept inside the game
Short-deadline tournaments
One promo required €290 in deposits and 600 spins across six different games in a week — for a €10 bonus. It’s not about the prize. It’s about streak psychology: once you’ve done 400 spins, quitting before 600 feels unbearable.
Forcing play across multiple slots
Bonus terms often require you to place bets in 10 different games. This isn’t just volume — it conditions you to hop from slot to slot instead of stopping.
Autospins
Automated spins remove the natural pause between bets. The game keeps running nonstop, and so do your losses.
Only showing big wins
Pop-ups constantly announce “Player X just won €5,000” or “Player Y hit €12,000.” You never see the thousands of small losses. The message is simple: everyone else is winning, so keep going.
Showing other players’ wins while you lose
Your losing spin is accompanied by someone else’s jackpot. The distorted picture makes you feel like you’re the only one not getting lucky.
Masking losses as wins
Bet €5, get €2 back — and the slot celebrates with sounds and animations. You’ve actually lost money, but it feels like a victory.
All of these tricks have one goal: stop you from hitting the pause button.
How they make sure you come back
Live dealers for emotional pull
Chatting with a real person on screen makes it much harder to walk away, even though the math of the game hasn’t changed. Researchers describe this as “social pressure.”
Aggressive email marketing
Casinos send two or three emails a week, often timed around weekends and holidays when people spend more. The study found spikes around Halloween and Christmas.
Pre-ticked boxes for marketing consent
During signup, the box agreeing to emails is already checked. Most players don’t notice and end up opted in automatically.
The aim: never let you forget the casino exists. If you stay away for a week, an “exclusive bonus” will land in your inbox.
How they make leaving difficult
One checkbox for everything
By ticking a single box, you accept the game rules, data processing, marketing consent, and cookies. There’s no way to separate them.
Minimum withdrawal thresholds
If your balance is below the set minimum, you can’t cash out. The only way to reach it is to keep playing.
Account deletion made deliberately painful
There’s no “delete account” button. You have to contact support, send documents, and wait days. Instead of closure, they’ll offer you “temporary breaks” or “cooling-off periods.”
The Digital Services Act requires account closure to be as simple as opening one. In practice, registration takes 2 minutes. Closing an account takes days.
Why this works
Online casinos earn the majority of their revenue from a small group of high-spending players. The competition isn’t about who offers the most fun — it’s about who fine-tunes manipulative design elements most effectively, increasingly with the help of AI.
For casual players, one or two tricks may not matter. But taken together, the system pushes everyone to gamble more than they intended — through predatory bonuses, exhausting tournaments, nonstop reminders, and endless obstacles to quitting.
Deposit limits should be a safeguard. But the ease of bypassing them shows casinos have designed the system to render that protection meaningless.
The report makes one thing clear: manipulative design isn’t accidental. It’s deliberate, systemic, and it works.
1. Many sites I use recommend that my next deposit be 50% higher than the previous one. If I deposit $100, the recommended option next time will be $150, for example.
2. Two to three emails a week is an understatement for many sites: DraftKings sends me more like 2-3 emails per DAY.