High Roller Online Casinos – High Stakes Casino Bonuses
High Roller Online Casino Guide
The “High Roller” is a common trope or stereotype of gambling. It’s presented as an aspirational archetype in most cases: the high roller casino player has a lot of money to spend, is usually a high-status male, surrounded by the trappings of wealth and power.
There’s a very different truth to be told, both about what lies behind that stereotype, and the marketing of the high stakes casino stereotype to today’s online casino customers.
You should know the truth about the “high roller” before you start to aim for that lifestyle with too much zeal.
However, with a bit of education, you can spot what the marketing means and learn to use the system safely and for your own benefit.
That’s where the true high roller online casino players should be aiming.
What’s a High Roller Casino Player?
The term, high roller, probably comes from dice gambling of some sort. Craps has stereotypically been seen as an accessible form of street gambling game and street slang has an air of cool about it.
What’s a high roller casino player though? Someone that plays at no limit casinos?
It’s someone who rolls for big sums of money! So that means a high stakes casino player.
That’s the probable origin of the phrase, but it’s got a larger meaning today, and it has a specific meaning in the systemised and hierarchical world of online casino sites.
A high roller casino player is a big spender. In the stereotype from the Hollywood movies, these are the alpha male types (a bogus and redundant misreading of research on animal communities) who arrive at the Las Vegas airport and get picked up in a limousine and driven to the hotel/casino where you get a free suite and all the Champagne you can drink and beautiful women serve these drinks while you bet millions on roulette or whatever.
Players who are attracted to the high roller lifestyle – and why not, there’s a lot of attractive things in being given stuff for free and consuming high-quality products and so on – should take heed at that reputation.
Because none of that stuff is free!
High rollers are “given” “free” rooms and “free” drinks and “free” food because they will pay for those things many times over in the money they lose!
High rolling means big spending which means big losses.
Not always, of course, there are exceptional cases, and everyone gets big wins if they play long enough, but high roller casinos – particularly Las Vegas casinos are hugely profitable, and sometimes even ruthless, businesses. And high rollers are a big part of that revenue – because they lose a lot!
It’s not a case of the foolish rubes shoving nickels into slot machines subsidising the free caviar for the businessman from Hong Kong who drops $1 million dollars on each spin of a roulette wheel and who wins.
Nope, it’s more likely to be the other way around because the maths doesn’t care how rich you are. Take a look at the theoretical return to player or house edge figures and just accept them. Because that’s how it works.
So, if you bet a large amount of money you will lose probably the same proportion of it as someone who bets $10.
Gambling is about risk and probability. The mathematics of gambling is complex and involved, but it can really be all boiled down to those figures.
Most online gamblers know them through the “theoretical return to player” or RTP often expressed as “house edge”. For slots, these figures are typically 96% and 4%, or a game is expected over its lifetime, if players behave in a certain way, to return 96% of the money spent on it to players and to deliver a 4% profit to the house.
This is how gambling remains a hugely profitable business. It is possible to win a lot of money gambling, and possible to do so with almost no outlay. But such events are incredibly rare – that’s why they make the headlines (as well as being great marketing for casinos).
High roller casino players are very rarely professional gamblers who have built up a lot of money by gambling. They are almost always – like the rest of our ruling classes under capitalism – born into wealth, power, or privilege in some way and have a lot of spare money to spend on gambling.
If the casino industry would like you to believe they got that way by gambling then you can only wonder why.
You should bear this in mind as you gamble. Gamble not to make a fortune, because it almost certainly won’t happen (though it may well do, you need to acknowledge how enormously unlikely it is), gamble if you enjoy the thrill of some controlled risk or you love the games you play.
And get an understanding of how to gamble safely. Please: this is the most important thing you will ever read on gambling; you need to do it safely. Never gamble to chase losses or if you really need money, be careful around your moods, substance use, and your relationships and financial health.
There’s a lot of good information on safe gambling out there, do yourself a favour and check it out.
Can you be a High Roller Casino Player?
There’s a famous phrase that is sometimes used to try to explain the failure of socialism to make much headway in the United States:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
This is a useful lens through which to examine your gambling status!
Because high roller online casino sites would love you to think of yourself in those terms.
The reality is that it is only a very small number of people who should think of themselves as high rollers or aspiring high rollers, and that is people who have a large amount of spare money to gamble with. And by spare we mean money that you won’t need for any other purpose – gambling money is spending money in the way that money spent on a beer or a frivolous t-shirt purchase.
If you can afford it and enjoy it then you can be a high roller.
And, a high roller online casino site will allow you to enjoy some of the benefits of that stereotypical Las Vegas high roller we’ve seen before.
A lot of what high stakes online casinos sell (in common with most other businesses) is fantasy. The fantasy of what you can do with all that money if you had it.
But there is a reality behind this fantasy that you can enjoy, and, in fact, that you should demand. A high roller in the online casino world is a high-spending regular customer, and anyone can become that if they have the cash in their account.
How to be a High Roller Online Casino Player
To be an online casino high roller you need to be:
Loyal to a site. High roller status isn’t normally doled out as soon as you log on, no matter how much money you put into your account. It is earned over time. So if you want to be a high roller you need to find a site that you like and that you’re happy to stay at.
That means that you need to enjoy the site and it needs to have the games you like. If you like live casino games play at a site which uses the provider – Evolution Gaming and NetEnt are the big names – that you prefer.
You’ll also need to spend a lot of cash.
How Does a High Roller Online Casino System Works?
Almost every casino site will log you into its loyalty programme as soon as you join.
And this is how you end up – in the vast majority of cases – as a high limit casino player.
Recent research from gambling charities in the UK has shown how important these schemes are, because it’s long-term customers and particularly high rollers who provide most of the revenue and profit for sites.
Spend more – lose more.
Loyalty programmes are fair enough. It’s right that you should be rewarded for returning to a site, and a good loyalty programme is something that it’s worth looking at when you sign up for a site: look for rewards that you’ll actually use.
Loyalty Programmes for High Stakes Casino Players
Loyalty programmes do start to reward you from the off in most cases. There’s a trade-off here: you’ll “earn” these rewards by spending money, so always keep safe gambling at the front of your mind rather than progressing over the stages of a loyalty programme.
Usually, the amount you spend will be translated into loyalty points of some sort, and when you have a certain number of points you’ll advance another level up a ladder of increasing rewards.
Rewards can be: cashback, deposit bonuses, free spins, and as you progress up the ladder may grow into real-life rewards like days out, and into better customer service and support.
The Details are Important
Be aware of the small print when you sign up with a site, and that includes a loyalty programme and a high roller status.
This is most important with the welcome bonus and this only reinforces what we’ve said about looking for and signing up at sites you really like, particularly if you’re going to aim for high roller status.
And always remember that welcome bonuses and loyalty schemes are designed to make the casino site more money.
How a Casino Loyalty Scheme Works
We’re going to take a look at a loyalty scheme now.
Most casinos have them. They are controversial in some places and may even be restricted in some jurisdictions because they are thought to encourage too much spending by vulnerable players.
888 is a massive casino with a huge audience of users across Europe and beyond. So let’s have a look at their scheme.
The scheme is branded as “Comp points”. Comp Points is a very conscious echo of how real-life casinos offer “comp”-limentary goods and services to high rollers. It’s an ice link.
This loyalty scheme is really very simple: you log in and spend money and you get points for each sum you spend on a game. When you have enough points you can redeem the money as bonus funds that you spend on games.
Like most loyalty schemes 888 Comp Points doesn’t sound hugely generous. You have to spend £1,000 to earn £1 for example. And your funds are bonus funds, not just cash, and there are a number of restrictions on what counts towards your Comp Points – no bonus funds can be recycled for example
Beyond Loyalty and to High Roller VIP Casino Status
888 Casino also has a high roller scheme. In this case, it is called a VIP Programme.
888 are a big brand, and these offers are very generous, you should not expect to see a High Roller scheme of this scope at a small, localised casino site.
The VIP Programme at 888 shows all the examples of using a massive site like this: they have the cash to get good deals, they have connections, particularly in the sports world, and they have the staff to offer things like individual account management.
888 VIP Casino Club offers extras in five sections.
These include “hospitality events”, “promotions” and “personal account management” services.
Some offers are very simple like the prize draws that are open to VIP Programme members. VIP members also get to share in cash bonuses. And they can play at VIP tables in the live casino.
VIP casino players at 888 Casino might also be able to enjoy days out and high-profile sporting events courtesy of 888 Casino.
In the UK these events have been very glamourous indeed, including top-level sporting fixtures in the Premier League, trips to Las Vegas, helicopter tours and more. (This was written during the COVID lockdown when such offers were greatly curtailed, but we will assume that they will return in some form).
VIP online casino players also have a hierarchy up which they can advance, going from plain VIP to Gold, and then Platinum.
From the start you get a welcome bonus, raised deposit limits, promos, some events invites, your own live tables with higher stakes, a boost to your comp points value and dedicated staff.
The next level adds a bit of gloss to these extras – the bonuses are bigger, the comp points even better value, and the events more glitzy.
The Platinum VIP casino bonus is really generous, with shinier, bigger, and better than the preceding two levels.
Throughout this process, players are backed with a VIP team, who manage your account and welcome you on your VIP days out.
This is designed to make you feel really special. And frankly, it works. In the world of the giant multinational corporation, a few moments of someone’s time, and someone who knows your name and your needs can feel priceless. Personal service comes at a premium, and offering it as a VIP extra shows you where the casino industry online is at the moment.
How do you Join the Exclusive Club?
This, by the way, is a genuine high rollers club. You need to be invited to join. Now, of course, we have no way of knowing quite how these invitations are issued, but we’re going to imagine that it involves depositing and spending a large amount of money at the site.
Remember what we said about Las Vegas’ free suites for big spenders? They cover those costs, so 888.com will only be providing benefits that its high rollers more than pay for, and these things are not cheap, although we’ll assume that 888’s value to the sports industry gives them a fair number of free tickets and corporate boxes at the top sports stadiums in the country.
So if you want to be invited to an invite-only high roller scheme then you need to spend a lot of money. But this gives the scheme value to its users too. A scheme that you join just by playing games is probably not going to be so generous.
Make sure you know what you’re getting into when you sign up with either sort of scheme.
High roller rewards aren’t given away for free, they are earned with long hours of playing or with extravagant spending. If that’s not you, or if that’s not healthy for you then you should give up on the idea of attaining high roller status, and certainly, you should never chase it when it might do you harm.
Some Real-Life High Rollers
High rollers are fictional staples. But the truth is often not as pretty as the James Bond or even the Mafia film might have you believe.
There, high roller status comes with problem-free lifestyles and everything you could ever want on tap. Now, we know you know that that’s a fantasy, but let’s take a look at what the most often-cited high rollers in the real-life gambling world were like.
Terry Watanabe was a famous Vegas high roller casino player. He reportedly lost more than $100 million in 2007 and was said to have contributed – playing his beloved slots and roulette – nearly 6% of the revenues of Caesar’s Palace in that year. That is staggering.
Australian Kerry Packer gambled big on taking the old English game of cricket into the television era. On that gamble, he won, and it was one of many legendary deals he made in sports and broadcasting that helped make him a huge amount of money. Money that he loved to spend gambling. Sometimes, he won big, and he was said to enjoy giving away large amounts of money to people that he met. However, he also – like all gamblers lost a lot of money, including one night on the roulette in London that cost him a rumoured $30 million.
Las Vegas legend Anargyros Karabourniotis, aka Archie Karas, put his poor childhood behind him with gambling! So, were we wrong to tell you that it’s impossible to never climb to a high status unless you started out that way? Well, yes and now, Karas is something of an exception, but it’s also worth noting that he went on to lose the enormous fortune (said to be $40 million) that he won with business and gambling.
High roller casinos are out there and can be enjoyed, but enjoy them with your eyes open and an awareness of what the deal means.
You will need to spend a lot to even get into the club. High roller play is for those who can afford it, and should only be part of your life if you can afford it without your gambling impinging on the rest of your life.
It’s hard to imagine that the three high-profile examples of high roller play we’ve listed here weren’t gambling addicts in some way.
Don’t end up like them!
Safe and Healthy High Roller Play
If you have the money and you can afford to spend it on gambling them, by all means, enjoy your high roller games.
Remember when you do to:
Play games that you enjoy. If you like cards play cards if you like slots play slots.
Never play to recover money or to make money.
Play when you’re in a good mental place, and not to try to alter your mood or avoid real-life problems.
Live Casinos Online – the New Frontier for High Rollers
Live casino play has revolutionised the online casino scene in the past couple of years. Who would have thought that the gift that high tech would finally bestow on the casino industry was delivering the same experience that the bricks-and-mortar casino always delivered.
Now you really can enjoy something much more like the real high roller experience online because you can play at your own tables, for higher stakes, and with more expert staff, and in the company of other high rollers.
As ever, entry to the party comes at a cost, but if you can afford to pay that price then the live casino high roller experience is as close to the real thing as you’re going to get without moving to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.