If you’ve spent some time exploring online real money gaming, you may have at some point come across the term Playthrough Requirement, sometimes abbreviated to PTR, when it comes to the offers online casinos make.
This is a critical aspect of understanding a bonus offer, so in this post let’s dive in a bit deeper to understanding what the Playthrough Requirement means and how it impacts your offers.
What is a Playthrough Requirement?
In short, a Playthrough Requirement is simply how many times you have to play through the money or bonus before you can cash it out. If you’re familiar with physical casinos and free play, you know that you can’t just cash in free play – you have to play it through a machine once. In the online gaming world, this would be a 1x Playthrough Requirement.
Online casinos will often times set higher numbers, however. You may be 10x, 15x or even 25x PTR. This would mean you’d need to play through the amount 10, 15 or 25 times, respectively.
Doing the Math
Let’s take a look at an example. Let’s say a casino will give you a 100% deposit bonus, up to $1,000, with a 15x Playthrough Requirement. Let’s say you want to maximize the bonus, so you deposit the full $1,000. The math would be as follows:
$1,000 deposit
+$1,000 deposit bonus
=$2,000 total
x15 PTR
=$30,000 in wagers
This means that to be able to cash out any of the bonus, you would need to complete a total of $30,000 in wagers on this offer and whatever remains of your $2,000 after that amount of wagering could be cashed out.
Other Things to Know
Usually the PTR is based on slots. The PTR will often be higher for tables and video poker. Sometimes this will be listed as a “contribution rate,” where slots contribute at 100 percent and video poker and slots contribute at a lower rate. This can impact the math in terms of how much in wagers you need to make to achieve keeping the bonus.
When playing, it uses your deposit money first, and the deposit bonus is tapped next if you use the entirety of the amount deposited while working to achieve the Playthrough Requirement. This is important because if you do not fully complete the requirements for the bonus, you do not get to keep the full balance showing.
Oftentimes there is a time limit for you to complete the wagering requirements. If you do not complete the wagering requirements, the bonus amount will be removed from your account. If you played and had $1,000 or less left, you’d be left with nothing, as the deposit is used first before tapping the deposit bonus.
Finally, some sites are more transparent than others in showing you how you’re doing towards achieving your PTR. So there is a chance you’ll be on your own to keep track of where you are. All sites give you some sort of accounting of each wager you’ve made, so you can review and do the math if needed, but keeping track will help ensure you don’t make more wagers than you need to for your bonus to be cashed out.
