I keep hearing the same argument: all those scenarios where you put $1,000 on a single number in roulette to squeeze the most out of a cashback or deposit bonus are pure theory. Nice on paper, useless in practice. Nobody is going to put $1,000 on a number when there are simpler and safer ways.
Here’s a recent example from X that finally pushed me to write about it:
First, let’s look at what those safer ways are. We’ll compare high stakes, high risk play with low stakes, low risk play. And we’ll look at what happens when there’s no other choice.
Most of the US advantage players I’ve talked to use the same scheme. Say a casino offers 100% cashback on losses up to $1,000. These players bet both sides. On one account they put $1,000 on Banker in baccarat, on another $1,000 on Player.1 One account wins, the other loses and gets its thousand back as cashback.
Simple math: if Player wins, you’re up exactly $1,000. If Banker wins, you’re up $950 because of the 5% commission. Banker wins a bit more often, so on average that’s about +$975. But that used up two promos, so the $975 has to be split in half. That’s about $487 per promo.
Almost 50% ROI on a promo with zero risk. Sounds great. But you can do better.
A Brief History Lesson
People were already doing this back in the 2000s at offshore casinos, when bonuses looked pretty similar. You could deposit $500, get a $500 bonus and clear it by betting $480 on red, $480 on black and the rest on zero2.
When I started wagering bonuses in 2016 at offshore European casinos, a lot of people thought bonuses were dead. Almost everywhere, low risk bets like baccarat or red/black in roulette were banned by the bonus terms. Low house edge blackjack was banned too, of course. On top of that, wagering requirements started at 35x, which made small risk free bets pointless. So from day one, this scheme just wasn’t an option for me.
The House Doesn’t Always Win: How I’ve Been Beating Casinos Since 2016
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When we were talking about max bets and max EV, one of my US subscribers told me that European casinos are way too sophisticated with all their terms. In the US it’s much simpler. The terms are simple, the bonuses are big, and nobody needs extra risk. Everyone plays it as safe as possible.
US casinos aren’t that sophisticated yet. Neither are the players, so the casinos don’t really have to try. The market is still immature.
I think a big part of it is that online casinos in the US haven’t been legal for very long. The market is huge and rich, and nobody worries about a small percentage of players exploiting bonuses.
To me, that explains why DraftKings in 2023 was spending hundreds of millions a year on promotions without really knowing how they worked3.
By 2025 they were spending $3 billion on promotions out of the $8.7 billion players lost. And this time they had a model that gives promos to the people who lose the most.
It’s quite possible they’ll eventually build a model to stop giving bonuses to the people who win. And to spot those players early, right after sign up or the first deposit, the way sportsbooks already do.
Bookmakers Hate Winners
In December, The Economist published an excellent article titled “The Battle to Stop Clever People Betting”. Their journalist, who built probability models and dabbled in sports betting as a hobby, was fed up with getting banned by every bookmaker in the UK and decided to write an investigation. Here's the good stuff.
In Europe the market is smaller and more players are exploiting bonuses. It’s been around for a long time and the terms aren’t that good anymore. But the US could go the same way.
That said, as we saw above, this method still works in the US. So let’s compare the pros and cons of this strategy.
Min Bet, Min EV and Min Risk
The biggest upside of this approach is that you play it safe, risk nothing and steadily take profit. And if the casino refuses to pay you out, you won’t lose that much in winnings.
But there are downsides too, and some of them aren’t obvious right away. First, it’s not exactly legit. I’d even call it cheating. Not that I judge anyone for it. But technically it gives the casino a great reason to keep your money if it ever comes out. Maybe even sue you. Hypothetically.
Advantage player — pro or cheat?
Earlier this year, two men from Connecticut made around $3 million through bonus hunting at online casinos and sportsbooks. Unfortunately, I could not exactly cheer for my fellow grinders, because to pull it off, they had to buy personal data for about 3,000 people on the dark web. Accounts were registered in those people's names without their knowledge…
Second, it gets obvious really fast. If you clear every bonus this way, anyone at the casino who looks at your account will instantly see you’re exploiting the system. And sooner or later they’ll shut it down.
Third, plenty of offers just don’t work with this method. More on that below.
Max Bet, Max EV and Max Risk
Putting $1,000 on 17 black has one feature that’s both its biggest advantage and its biggest disadvantage: huge variance. Because of the big downswings, the casino doesn’t immediately realize you’re playing with positive EV. That’s the upside. The downside is that you’re the one who has to sit through all those losses and downswings.
Biggest Bet on a Single Hand
My biggest bet was in blackjack. I was counting cards online and one time I bet 20k.
Your EV here comes from the cashback, so the more often you collect it, the higher your EV. There’s a big difference between getting cashback every other time, like with baccarat, and 36 times out of 37, like with a bet on a single number in roulette. That’s why putting everything on a number gives you an EV of about $9464.
The biggest upside: you’re playing with maximum EV. In the baccarat scheme, both accounts have a promo, but in each round only one of them loses. The cashback kicks in on that one, and on the other it just goes to waste. Bet $1,000 on a number on the same two accounts and you get $1,892 on average instead of $975.
There’s also no pattern of steady wins, which makes you harder to spot. The casino thinks you’re a good VIP player. It gives you better terms, sends gifts and so on.
Casino VIP Programs: Loyalty Rewards or Money Trap?
Gamblers worldwide lose over $500 billion a year. In the US alone, that figure exceeds $72 billion, with $25 billion coming from online betting and casinos.
And for some bonuses there’s simply no other way. You either pass or accept the risk.
The biggest disadvantage: the downswings can be brutal. Once I was down $200,000 while playing with positive EV, because my number didn’t hit 200 times in a row. That happens in about 0.4% of cases. Unfortunately, it wasn’t 100% cashback, so I didn’t get that $200,000 back. But I’ll write about that later.
When There’s No Other Choice
It’s easy to give up EV for peace of mind when you get 100% cashback up to $1,000. It’s much harder when it’s 10 or 15%. Or when the bonus comes with a 70x or 100x wagering requirement. Playing it safe doesn’t work here. The wagering just eats the whole bonus. So you either skip the bonus or go all in to clear it.
One of the craziest ways I’ve ever cleared a bonus went like this. I got a 100% bonus up to €200. So I could deposit €200 and get €200 in bonus money. By then they had changed the bonus terms so you could only play slots.
I ended up betting €400 on a single spin. I’m planning to break down the math behind bonuses like this in a separate post.
It ended with me hitting the bonus round and winning €40k. After that, they wouldn’t let me play on that site anymore. I’m planning a separate post about that too, so I don’t overload this one.
TL;DR
In the end, everyone picks what works for them. The smartest way to start is to play it as safe as possible. Taking on extra risk for extra EV makes sense once you have a bankroll and a solid grasp of how to manage it and how variance works.
That’s what I did too. To get my first bonuses I had to wager my deposit 3 times5. And at the very start, I did that wagering with low risk bets on red, black and zero. I only switched to max bets once I had enough bankroll. But not enough understanding of the risks.
So sometimes the “absurd” $1,000 on a single number is actually the most rational bet.
Sometimes playing it safe just means clearing a bonus with minimal risk and booking a profit 100% of the time. But in terms of EV, that only pays off with 1x wagering. And in terms of time spent, it means a lower EV per hour.
There’s even a documented case: Bonus Hunter: Confessions of an Online Gambler. The essay was published in the American literary magazine The Missouri Review in 2008.
New York Times investigation, September 2026. The article is paywalled, but you can read my short summary: The Best Player Is an Addicted Player.
You lose 36 times out of 37 and get all your money back as cashback. Once out of 37 you win +$35,000. So the EV of the promo is $35,000 / 37 = $945.94. For simplicity, I used an example where the cashback is paid in real money, although in practice that’s rare. That will be the topic of one of my next posts.
At the time, bets like these were banned while playing with an active bonus. But simply turning over your deposit 3 times this way wasn’t against the rules. Although I think it could have been a red flag on the account.