When you first visit a White Hat Gaming online casino, one of the first things you will be greeted with is usually an offer for a deposit bonus.  These offers are usually, but not exclusively, in the shape of welcome bonuses, where you will be offered a set amount of bonus money on top of your first deposit, or your first few deposits.  These offers always look exciting, but if you are a seasoned veteran of the online casino world, you will be aware that they rarely come without small print.  That isn’t to say these bonuses are not worth bothering with, that certainly isn’t what we’re saying here at all, but it is worth being aware of the small print that often comes attached to such bonuses.  So allow us to walk you through the confusing world of deposit bonuses, and answer a few questions. What are deposit bonuses? How do they work? And are they worth it?  For the sake of this article, we will aim our focus on welcome bonuses, mainly because these are the most common form of deposit bonuses.  If you find a White Hat site that offers deposit bonuses after the welcome bonus, these will normally operate in much the same way, so what you read here will stand true for those as well.
About Deposit Bonuses
The welcome deposit bonus at an online casino is usually not hard to find, it will normally be advertised in pretty huge letters across the homepage, and will tend to have a host of colour and design around it to make sure you don’t miss it.  The form of this bonus is almost always the same, deposit a certain amount, receive a bonus in the form of a percentage.  For our purpose, we shall use a 100% deposit bonus and a £100 as an example, because that’s a nice round number for us to work with. If you find a lower or higher offer, the rules will be the same, similarly if you deposit more or less (as long as you keep within the minimum or maximum limits for the offer) nothing will change except the amount of money being used.  So, if you have a site that offers a 100% deposit bonus, then when you make a deposit of £100, you will be given a £100 bonus.  In simple terms, that’s all there is to it, but obviously, it is not that simple.
The Small Print
So, you have deposited £100, and you’ve been given an extra £100, but what can you do with it?  The first thing to know, is that you cannot withdraw it. The reasons for this are pretty clear, it would be hard for a casino to make money if they simply gave you £100 for signing up.  Instead, the money you win will be bonus money, which means that while you cannot withdraw it, you can use it to play games at your chosen White Hat casino site, and if you win, you will then be able to withdraw those winnings.  However, again, it isn’t always that simple.  Most of these offers come with wagering requirements, to keep with the nice round numbers we’re working with here, we’ll make our hypothetical wagering requirement 10x the bonus.  This means that in order to be able to withdraw winnings from your bonus money, you have to wager 10x that. So, if you have been given a £100 deposit bonus, you will need to wager £1,000.  Obviously, this makes the ability to withdraw your winnings (unless you deposit more) a lot less likely, but not impossible.  If you get on a winning streak, then you can wager those winnings, and that will count towards your total, and once you get up past that £1,000 mark, anything you win from there can then be withdrawn.
Are Deposit Bonuses Worth It?
Some people choose to not bother with deposit bonuses at all, while others figure it’s worth having a go, and if you don’t win, there’s nothing lost.  It is very much a matter of personal choice, but the best way to look at it is that it’s free bonus money, so if you don’t win anything from it, you don’t lose anything either, and it’s a nice way to get to know the games at the site by having an extra stack of money to play with without depositing any more.  If you’re very lucky, you may even find yourself picking up some winnings as a result of the bonus money!