| GamblingPhD menu | Can You Really Play for Free? February 28, 2008 Many people want to know if the idea of a truly �no deposit� casino is true or if it is some kind of wives tale. Some online casinos say that they are free, when really they are anything but � and that just seems to be false advertising. They lure you in with the idea of no deposit, how you are gambling with their money, etc. However, nothing comes for free and if it sounds too good to be true�well, you know the rest. The fact of the matter is that almost all online casinos will let you play in free mode, or without paying, but you won�t actually get any money back. This is their way of getting you in to play the game and getting you hooked far enough that you want to play for money. So yes, they will let you play for free, but don�t expect any kind of return for it. They usually limit the number of times you can play, and the games that you can play, and many times they will start you out with �free� money which is pretty much just Monopoly money � it�s fun to look at but I wouldn�t try to use it in a store. This casino is fair and fun at the same time, and the most honest of the no deposit type casinos as they usually let you know right up front what the dealy-o is. However, then there is the other kind of �free� casino. There is the kind that �gives� you money but in order to actually claim the money you have to deposit money into your account. Let�s say that a casino says that you can play for an hour with $500 and you get to keep all that you win. Well, sure, it sounds good, but with these types of deals, to actually keep the money that they are offering you, you have to deposit several times the amount that you are taking. The amount of wagering requirements, as they are referred to, are usually many times the amount that you would even have thought about betting if you hadn�t been thinking that you were getting it free. So before you sign up for any deals, or go looking for your free money, go read the fine print first. Once you have done that, if you can meet the requirements then by all means take their �free� money � but only once you know how much it really costs. Back to February 2008 Archive. |