Sometimes you’re so familiar with something that you forget that most people don’t really understand what you’re talking about. I’m like that with most things (except that I’m not sure that familiarity is the whole problem!) but today I’m going to go over the various types of online casino bonuses and promotions.

First of all, what are they? Well, it’s really just a way for online casinos to attract a little business…no different than a store having a sale or a gym having a special membership offer. You get a little bit extra, and the business gets a new (and hopefully regular) customer.

With online casinos for US players, you usually see the main promotion as soon as you visit the site (or even before, if you see their ads on another site). It’s typically called a Welcome Bonus or a Sign-Up Bonus or a New Member Bonus, but the technical term (for those of us in the biz, LOL) is a “deposit-matching bonus”.

Pretty easy to understand: the casino will put a bunch of free credits int your account based on the amount that you deposit. For example, with a 100% match bonus, if you put in $75, the casino will match it for another $75, so you end up with $150 to play with. If the match bonus is 250%, that same $75 will get you $187.50 extra, for a total of $262.50 to play with!

Technically, you could do this to infinity, but pretty much any smart online casino puts a maximum amount with the bonus just to be on the safe side. These amounts are still generally high; while European casinos tend to be more conservative (with maximums in the hundreds), US casinos will offer four or even five-figure maximums.

Go Casino, for example, allows you to get a bonus of up to $20,000 — which is at least ten times the average bonus amount that you’ll see from a casino online (even in the US!).