Wager $10, the bonus ledger logs it as $2.50

A $10 bet on a 96.2% RTP slot counts as $10 toward your wagering requirement at most casinos. At a growing number of them, it counts as $2.50. Same bet, same spin, same outcome — four times the work. The gap between what you wager and what the ledger records is called game weighting, and it's the most quietly expensive line in any bonus's terms.

Where the other $7.50 goes

Weighting is a percentage applied to each bet before it's credited against your playthrough. Slots usually sit at 100%. Everything else gets discounted, because everything else gives the house less edge per dollar wagered.

Typical figures across mainstream operators:

• Slots and most instant-win games: 100%
• Video poker, blackjack, baccarat: 10% — sometimes 5% on low-house-edge variants
• Roulette: 20%, occasionally 25%
• Live dealer tables: 10% or excluded outright
• Craps: frequently 0%, meaning it doesn't count at all

Run the $10 example through the 10% column. You wager $10 on blackjack, the ledger records $2.50. To clear a $2,000 playthrough requirement you'd need $20,000 in actual blackjack handle, not $2,000. At a 0.5% house edge on decent basic-strategy play, that's roughly $100 in expected loss before the bonus is even yours to keep.

Now the same $2,000 requirement on a 96.2% RTP slot: $2,000 of handle, about $76 in expected loss. The slot player risks less real money than the blackjack player to clear the same bonus, even though blackjack is the better game by house edge. That inversion is the whole point of weighting, and it's why "play slots to clear your bonus" isn't lazy advice — it's arithmetic.

Why operators do it

A bonus is a rebate on expected loss. If you clear $2,000 of playthrough on a game with a 0.5% edge, the operator expects to make $10. On a 4% slot, they expect $80. Weighting exists to make the rebate roughly equivalent regardless of which game you pick.

The problem is the calibration. A 10% weight on blackjack assumes the game is ten times kinder to the player than a slot. For a player using basic strategy, that's close enough. For a player guessing, blackjack's effective edge can exceed 2%, and the weighting punishes them for a game they're already losing at. The operator doesn't care which kind of blackjack player you are. The ledger applies the same 10%.

The math on a real bonus

Take a standard offer: 100% match up to $200, 40x wagering on the bonus, 30-day expiry. That's $8,000 in required playthrough.

All slots, 96.2% RTP: expected loss on $8,000 of handle is about $304. The bonus is worth $200. You are, in expectation, paying $104 for the privilege of a $200 bonus — before you consider that RTP is a long-run average and your actual result over 8,000 spins has a wide spread.

The same bonus cleared entirely on blackjack at 10% weighting: $80,000 of handle. At 0.5% edge, $400 expected loss. The bonus is now negative EV by $200, and that's assuming flawless basic strategy and a table that allows the bet sizes you need.

This is why the honest answer to "is this bonus worth it" is usually "only on slots, only if you'd have played anyway." Weighting doesn't make bonuses bad. It makes them narrow.

The expiry trap

A 30-day window sounds generous until you do the daily math. $8,000 of playthrough in 30 days is $267 a day in credited wagering. On slots at $1 a spin, that's 267 spins a day — about 45 minutes at a normal pace. Manageable.

Run it on blackjack at 10% weighting and you need $2,670 a day in credited play, which means $26,700 in actual handle. At $25 a hand and 60 hands an hour, that's nearly 18 hours a day. The bonus isn't just worse on tables. It's often mathematically impossible inside the expiry window, which means the playthrough you did log expires with the bonus.

Some operators apply weighting and expiry to the same ledger, and the combination is where most players actually lose. Not to a bad game, but to a clock.

What the terms don't say clearly

Weighting is disclosed. It's in the terms, usually in a table, usually accurate. What's less clear is how it interacts with the rest of the bonus mechanics.

Three things worth checking before you opt in:

Maximum bet while a bonus is active. Commonly $5 or $10 per spin or hand. Exceed it and you can forfeit the bonus and any winnings from it. A $10 bet that logs as $2.50 is still a $10 bet for the max-bet rule, and that asymmetry catches people.

Whether weighting applies to the bet or the win. It applies to the bet. A $10 winning blackjack hand doesn't credit $2.50 of playthrough plus winnings toward the requirement — the winnings go to your balance, and only the weighted stake counts.

Game classification. "Video poker" can mean 100% weighting on one variant and 0% on another, depending on the operator's internal RTP thresholds. A game at 99.5% RTP is often excluded or heavily weighted; a game at 97% is often at 100%. The line isn't about the game type, it's about the house edge.

The 2023 shift

A number of operators moved from flat weighting tables to RTP-banded weighting around 2023, where the percentage is calculated from the game's published RTP rather than its category. A 96.5% slot might sit at 100%, a 99.5% video poker game at 5%, a 97.8% blackjack variant at 15%. It's more honest in principle and more confusing in practice, because the number you need is buried in the game's info screen rather than the bonus terms.

If you're comparing two bonuses, the useful figure isn't the headline match percentage. It's the effective playthrough: required playthrough divided by the weighting of the game you'll actually play, multiplied by the house edge of that game. That gives you expected loss in dollars. Everything else is marketing.

The question the ledger can't answer

Weighting assumes you're a rational player who'll pick the highest-weighted game available. Most players don't. They play what they enjoy, clear what they clear, and the bonus either works out or it doesn't.

So the open question isn't whether a $10 bet logging as $2.50 is fair. It's whether a bonus structure that only pays off on one category of game — and only for players who read the terms closely enough to notice — is a bonus at all, or a discount coupon with a loyalty test attached. The operators have the data to answer that. They've had it for years.