The terms that actually cost money

Glossaries of gambling terms are usually long and useless, because they define the colourful vocabulary — the slang for a hand, the nickname for a bet — and skip the words that appear in the clause someone is about to quote at you.

This one is restricted to the second kind: terms that turn up in terms and conditions, in a cashier, or in a refusal. Each entry says what the word means and what it does to you.

Money in and out

These are the words that decide whether a balance can leave an account, and they are the ones that appear in a refusal. Three of them describe a state the money is in rather than an action anybody has taken, which is why they are so easy to misread: a withdrawal can be requested, approved, reversed or held for a check, and only one of those four is the money actually moving.

Pending

A withdrawal has been requested and not yet approved. The money has not moved and the operator still has it. Distinguishing this from sent is the whole of the pending period.

Reverse withdrawal

Cancelling a pending withdrawal and returning the money to the playable balance. Usually offered as a convenience, and usually worth locking — here is why.

Closed loop

The requirement that money returns by the method it arrived by. Not the operator's preference but an anti-money-laundering obligation, with consequences that are entirely predictable.

KYC

Know Your Customer: the identity verification an operator must complete. Normally triggered at the first withdrawal, which is why the first payout is the slow one. What it changes about the account is a piece of its own.

Source of funds

A further check, beyond identity, asking where the money came from. Triggered by amount or pattern rather than by suspicion of you specifically.

Instalments

A clause permitting a large win to be paid over time rather than at once. Legitimate where stated, and item five on the list in the withdrawal-terms piece.

Bonuses

Bonus vocabulary is where the headline number and the actual offer part company. The size of a bonus is set by marketing; what it is worth is set by five terms, and all five of them are in the conditions rather than on the banner. Read in the order below, they answer one question: how much has to be staked, on what, at what maximum, before what proportion of the winnings can be withdrawn.

Wagering requirement

The turnover that must be staked before bonus money or its winnings can be withdrawn. The decisive detail is what it multiplies: bonus alone, or bonus plus deposit.

Maximum cash-out

A cap on what can be withdrawn from bonus winnings. The clause responsible for most partially refused payouts.

Maximum bet

The largest stake permitted while bonus funds are in play. Exceeding it once can void the bonus and everything won with it. A feature purchase can breach it in a single click.

Game weighting

The rate at which a game's stakes count towards a wagering requirement. A low rate turns a short requirement into a long one.

Sticky and non-sticky

Whether the bonus amount itself can ever be withdrawn or only the winnings from it. Changes what the offer is worth more than its headline size does.

Games

Two of the five terms below are published numbers, and the other three are rules. The numbers describe the long run and are often quoted as if they described an evening; the rules describe exactly what happens at the table and are rarely quoted at all. Keeping the two kinds apart is most of what separates a game that was understood from a game that was merely chosen.

RTP

The share of stakes a game returns over its full cycle. Real, measurable, and nearly silent about one evening — which is what volatility decides.

Volatility, or variance

How a given return is delivered: frequent small wins, or rare large ones. The number that describes what an hour feels like.

Pay table

The schedule of what each outcome pays. The same game ships with different ones, which is the quietest difference between two lobbies.

House way

The fixed published rule by which the dealer plays their hand in games like pai gow poker. Readable, and usable.

Provably fair

A scheme letting you verify that a result was not altered after your bet. A narrow guarantee that is frequently sold as a broad one — the scope.

Betting

Betting terms describe a bet's state and a bet's price, and the two are easy to confuse because both appear in the same slip. A state tells you whether the stake is still at risk; a price tells you what the book is charging for taking it off your hands. The five words here are the ones that turn up in a dispute, which is a fair sign of how much they carry.

Void

A bet treated as never placed, with the stake returned. In an accumulator a void leg is removed and the bet recalculated at lower odds.

Early payout

A rule settling a bet as a win before the event ends, once a stated condition is met. Once it fires it cannot be undone — void, settled or open.

Cash-out

Selling a bet back to the book at a price it sets, including its margin. Not a valuation, an offer.

Margin, or overround

The bookmaker's built-in cut. The largest and most consistent reason two books price the same match differently.

Limit

The maximum stake a book will accept from you on a market. Often the binding constraint in a thin market.

Crypto

Crypto vocabulary sounds technical and is mostly operational: each of these words marks a point where a transfer can sit, fail or cost more than expected. None of them is a property of the coin itself, which is why the same asset behaves differently on two sites. Read them as steps in a transfer rather than as features, and the sequence below is the order they occur in.

Confirmation

A block built on top of the one containing your transfer. Not progress towards being noticed, but distance from being reversed.

Memo, or destination tag

A routing field some assets need alongside the address. Omit it and the transfer arrives with no account attached — recoverable, manually.

Network, or chain

Which ledger a transfer settles on. The same address can be valid on several, and the casino watches one, which is the single most common deposit failure.

Whitelist

A list of addresses a payout may go to, with a delay on additions. The control that still works after someone has your password — by design.

Gas, or network fee

What the chain charges to process a transfer. Paid by you, not by the casino, and one of four reasons a deposit arrives smaller.