I don't think anyone should post an offer is +EV unless they can back it up with some mathematics.

[Diamondgeezer]

Sorry Fella you are mistaken and KK is wrong to say that betsize does not affect EV. What Andy says above is correct.

I have no idea why KK continues to say this when it was proven to him on the CM thread that Etherz posted the other day:

http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...-strategy.html

Bryan the Casinomeister asked KK to remove his affiliate tags because it was deemed the lowrolling 'strategy' of gradually increasing bets he was advocating had no mathamatical validity. In other words it would not make you a winner but simply a recreational player. Which is fair enough it that's what you want to do but I assume most people here are interested in making money over recreational play.

The reason why it is better to bet big and go for say a 3x d+b target is because the bonus is PRE WAGER. The theory is the same on whatever pre wager bonus you do, it doesn't have to be slots. It is exactly the same as the sticky bonus idea.

By repeatedly busting you avoid most of the WR and only pay the WR tax when you make a big win. The higher the target the more EV you make. Ofcourse eventually you will end up mkaing a huge amount of EV but go completely broke . So in the real world you might want so set a moderate target of say a double up.

But what ever target you set the important thing is to bet big at the start so you either hit it or bust as early as possible. This is where it gets tricky with slots because getting the correct betsize is hard due to the different variances of different slots. Actually this is where KK's slots knowledge is useful because he has good data on the variance of Rival machines and also the average spin time you need to hit a feature. So on one slot even a £2 spin may be enough but on another one you may have to go £7.50 to get the same level of variance. Obviously once you hit your target you move to a low variance machine and bet small and grind.

This is where I will ALWAYS disagree with KK. He says 'start off small, if you don't hit a feature gradually up your bets.' But hopefully everyone here understands the features are random and your previous spins have no bearing on your next ones. If you are not clear on this you need to revisit the Martingale (aka Red Mist ) strategy and understand why that can never work.

I say bet big at the beginning, hit target, then grind. But use KK's data to get you betsize right so you are not over or under variancing yourself.

Please remember this will only work for a PRE WAGER bonus. Don't try this at Lads .

[Gibber]

Oh I didn't pick up this was pre wager. But surely what I said still rings true the offer still has an EV of around £50 if you do flat bet. I get what your saying diamond but the offer was +EV no matter how you play it. Laddies offers all used to be pre wager, and we all regularly flat betted on them to good effect on WRs up to 8xB (I know its less but where is the cut off point).

On another note can anyone confirm that two tier betting is the way to go with pre wager slot bonuses? I pass up a lot of good looking bonuses (wagerworks) because they are pre wager, is there ever any value in playing these?

[Diamondgeezer]

If you accept the argument above where it relates to the bonus KK posted is this. KK is correct in saying the EV was +£250 if the machines are returning 96%. But the crucial thing is we can't prove these machines are returning 96% in the same way we can at MG or Wagerworks.

This is because these are just Rival's own figures and there is no real proof they are correct. Also bear in mind Rival is full of bugs and glitches. It is not software that you would bet the house on. One Rival, Tradition Casino, has just been caught having a Blackjack game that was paying even money for a BJ. Also it was not allowing a double after split despite this being in the rules. Various affiliates have been asking if the payout of slots can be configured by each operator and we don't seem to have got an answer yet.

Did anyone actually see the % returns on the Orange Gamez slots? Hopefully they were not configured to a lower setting. I don't expect they were but hopefully someone did at least check this.

The big advantage of the big target approach is even if the slots are only returning say 94% you can still make good +EV as you are not exposing yourself to the HA nearly as much. But if you are lowrolling on a low % return then you will make no EV and could even be -EV if the RTP is even lower.

Regarding the Orange Gamez bonus hopefully the payouts are 96% and hopefully winners will get paid. It could all be a storm in a teacup. But if you do your research at CM you will see there are a number of issues with Rival casinos. Also you can't pile into many of them because they have this blanket bonus ban. But also bear in mind this a group that were caught by Visa charging deposits from US players as 'furniture' and consequently Visa cancelled a lot of the deposits leaving some Rivals short of cash. Not saying this applies to Orange Gamez but more the truth of the RTP's. If Rival are cheating at BJ and falsifying Visa deposit details should we really believe these RTP's?

I still play at Rival but for all the reasons listed above I keep my deposits on the low side. I would always deposit £100 and go for a target over depositing £500 and lowrolling trying to make WR. My faith in Rival is a lot lower than KK's at the end of the day. Rival have cheated players out of progressives too so they are not really to be trusted with a big deposit IMO.

[Gibber]

Well that's a different argument at the end of the day and I must confess I have no experience at Rival and I was not aware of all the issues you have identified. I was purely working from a mathematical point of view based on this apparent figure of 96% return. To be honest if I had done this offer there is no way I would have low rolled this one either.

[etherz]

To sum up my previous argument:

Grinding this offer was +EV. Two tier betting was more +EV. Betsize does affect EV.

[KasinoKing]

Sorry Fella you are mistaken and KK is wrong to say that betsize does not affect EV.

If I may correct you; I never said it doesn't effect EV - I said I don't understand how it effects EV. Not the same thing.
That thread at CM brought up some very valid points about some accidentally misleading information on my site. When I revisited what I had written I agreed and PM'd the OP to thank him. I then re-wrote the page to ensure there was no further misunderstanding. I was not able to report that I had done the updates because the thread got closed before I had the chance.

Thanks.
KK