Betting Limits at Online Casinos

Think that you can sign up at any online casino and bet as much as you'd like in a single wager on any given game? Think again.

While one expects to see minimum betting limits on certain games like Roulette and Blackjack as these cover the operating costs for the overheads incurred by casinos such as licensing fees, staff wages and the like, it's hard to imagine that a casino would cap your bet!

Surely they want your money and have an edge anyway, so why would they need to limit a crazy high roller looking to drop some serious cash? Here's why...

Limiting Risk

Online casinos are a business, and as such they need to remain profitable over the long term in order to continue to exist. This means that they have to take measures to protect themselves from anything that could threaten their operation. While truly massive wins are great publicity, multiple winners of immense sums could spell disaster for online casinos.

As mentioned above, casino games are designed to give the house an edge over players, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the casino always wins, at least not over the short term. With no limits, multiple major league high rollers or "casino whales" as they are called, on winning streaks could potentially close down a casino.

And it doesn't always take high rollers of a grand size to land a casino in trouble. On certain ultra-high variance slots like Dead or Alive, players can easily achieve a payout of over 5000x their original bet. Playing with a mere $100 and hitting this kind of payout could potentially land a small casino operator in a lot of trouble.

So while casinos do expect winners, to prevent wins that could potentially end their operations, they impose limits on betting, restricting players to a predetermined amount per wager on any given game. This way they are assured of continuous profits with lower financial risks.

Betting Limits restrict the effectiveness of the Martingale System

When it comes to betting systems, the Martingale system is popular amongst many advantage players. When using this system in casino games, the player will double the value of their subsequent wager following each loss in order to ultimately recover their losses.

If online casinos had no betting limits on certain games, players with large enough bankrolls would generally be able to eventually recoup the money they lose to the casino in each session.

For example, if a player wagers $10 on his/her initial bet but suffers a losing streak and ends up suffering six losses in a row, the seventh wager would need to be a $640 bet. For most of us, this would be a considerable sum to have to put up to just make back what we'd lost plus our initial bet as a small profit, but for a high roller, it's not a big deal to cover.

Obviously casinos know this, and imposing limits helps them to curb the effectiveness of any systems that players may attempt to use.

Curbing Advantage Play

While they are the exception to the rule, advantage players who have the ability to minimise or eliminate the house advantage through skilful game play tactics like card counting in blackjack, do exist.

Obviously tactics like card counting in blackjack, dice control in craps and roulette wheel bias tracking can only be done in brick and mortar casinos. That doesn't mean that there are no advantage plays that can be used online. They just differ from the norm.

Some of these players will hunt bonuses with certain terms and conditions that they can exploit to make a profit, while others hunt for the rare casino games where the house edge can be significantly reduced by following certain game-play tactics.

No matter what the advantage play technique used, casinos still have the upper hand by limiting winning potential through implementing maximum betting limits.

As you can see from the above discussion, casino are all about protecting their profits and ensuring them for the future. No rules, limits, term and/or conditions exist without the purpose of helping them to do just that.