"Bet $5, Get $1,000 in Bonus Bets!" The number is enormous on purpose. It's the loudest thing on the sign-up page because it's engineered to override the part of your brain that would otherwise read the fine print — where the actual, much smaller value lives. Learning to translate the headline into real dollars is one of the more useful skills a bettor can have, because promos can be +EV, just almost never at the value the marketing implies.
The critical distinction: bonus bets aren't cash
The single most important thing to understand is that "bonus bets" or "free bets" are not the same as money. When you win a bet placed with real cash, you get your stake back plus the winnings. When you win a bet placed with a bonus bet, you typically get only the winnings — the stake is not returned. That means a "$100 free bet" is not worth $100. Depending on the odds you use it on, it's realistically worth somewhere around 60-75% of its face value, because you're losing the stake portion you never got to keep. A "$1,000 bonus" made of bonus bets might carry $600-$700 of true expected value at absolute best, before any other restrictions.
The fine print that shrinks it further
Playthrough / rollover requirements. Many bonuses require you to bet the bonus amount some number of times before you can withdraw anything. A "$500 bonus" with a 10x rollover means wagering $5,000 first — and every one of those wagers pays the vig, which grinds the bonus down. High rollover requirements can reduce a bonus's real value to a fraction of its headline, or make it practically impossible to clear.
Minimum odds restrictions. Bonus bets often must be used on odds of -200 or longer, or +100 or higher — steering you toward riskier bets where the "stake not returned" penalty hurts more, and where you're less likely to actually win.
Time limits and expiration. Bonuses that expire in 7 days pressure you into betting more, and worse, than you otherwise would — the promo manufactures urgency, and urgency is the enemy of good betting.
Maximum cashout caps. Some promos cap how much you can win from the bonus, quietly slicing the top off any big result.
How to calculate the real number
The honest way to value a bonus: figure out what you must do to unlock it (the rollover), estimate the vig you'll pay clearing it, discount bonus-bet value to roughly two-thirds of face for the stake-not-returned penalty, and subtract anything you'd lose betting worse than you normally would just to satisfy the terms. What's left is the true expected value. Sometimes it's genuinely positive and worth doing. Often it's small, and occasionally the requirements are punishing enough that chasing the bonus makes you bet so much extra that you'd have been better off never touching it.
The trap inside the offer
The deepest cost of bonuses usually isn't the fine print — it's the behavior they induce. A promo that requires heavy rollover, or expires soon, or pushes you toward longshots, gets you betting more frequently, in larger amounts, on worse numbers than your normal discipline would ever allow. The bonus is the bait; your increased, sloppier volume is how the book comes out ahead even while "giving money away." A bonus that makes you abandon your process has a negative real value no matter how the math on the offer itself pencils out.
The bottom line
Treat every bonus as a math problem, not a gift. Read the terms before the headline. Discount bonus bets to their real worth. Never let a promo's requirements push you into bets or sizes you wouldn't otherwise make. Used coldly, the occasional genuinely-good offer is a small edge worth taking. Chased emotionally, bonuses are just a clever way to increase the amount you donate — dressed up as free money.
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