Don’t want to/can’t afford to make a deposit? Here’s some tips on how to keep playing.
Last month, I nearly depleted my casino bankroll from $80 to $7 in a matter of minutes when I caught a bad break playing the online slot, Lobster Bob’s Crazy Crab Shack. It just wasn’t my lucky night with that game.
If you’re an online casino player (or any casino player), I imagine you can relate in your own way to my experience. It’s extremely frustrating (and deflating) to start with a decent sized casino bankroll that you bleed through quickly when you hit a losing streak.
This situation is even more frustrating when you’d like to keep playing, but you don’t want to make another deposit due to having reached your gambling budget limit for the day/week/month.
So, if you only have a few bucks left in your casino bankroll, and you can’t or don’t want to make a deposit, what do you do? Here are a few quick tips I’ve tried to give my bankroll a little boost.
Boosting your bankroll casino tips
The following are some of the things I’ve tried (with varying degrees of success):
- Play slots with high RTP (96%+) โ More specifically, high RTP slots that have low/medium volatility and minimum bets of $0.10 or less. Remember volatility matters. Low/medium volatility online slots payout smaller amounts more frequently and high volatility slots payout less regularly but bigger payouts (ultimately more risk – such as the case with Pragmatic Play’s Lobster Bob’s Crazy Crab Shack slot). Also, the lower the minimum bet amount, the further you can take your gambling bankroll.
- Play roulette and/or craps with low minimum bets – Learn the rules of the games and stick to Roulette and Craps tables with minimum wagers of $1 (or less) per game and place bets with the best odds: Bets with a 1:1 payout, which are more likely to result. These include bets such as “outside bets” (e.g. even or odd, red or black or numbers 1-18 or 19-36) in Roulette, and “pass bets”, “don’t pass bets”, and “laying odds bets” in Craps.

- Play blackjack games with low minimum bets – Learn the rules of the games and stick to Blackjack games with minimum wagers of $1 (or less) per game. Also, don’t forget to use a blackjack strategy chart to help you learn the basics of making better odds-based choices based on the cards in your hand and what the dealer’s face up card is showing.
- Freerolls for the chance to win free spins – If the online casino where you play offers daily freeroll tournaments, you can enter tournaments (without having to pay anything to join), and play the spins you get, to try and rank in one of the top prize positions. If you manage to land one of the top spots on the leaderboard, you’ll be awarded a free spins (or other reward) prize that you can use with no deposit necessary. Just be sure to read the T&Cs and the online casinos’ player policy to make sure you understand the rules of tournaments.
Essentially, the casino bankroll strategy I use is to make low bets with the best odds and the least amount of risk.
Casino bankroll management โ Face the hard truth
Of course, no game you play and no bankroll casino strategy will ensure you’ll get money back you lost. That’s why casino bankroll management is so very important to safe play.
Logically, I know this, and I’m sure you do too. Yet, as strict as I am with my responsible playing habits most of the time, even I can sucker myself into thinking that if I just play that game that I had a big win on the last time I played it, I’ll win again and give my depleted casino bankroll a boost without having to make a deposit.
This type of thinking led me to play Sweet Alchemy, after I lost on Lobster Bob’s Crazy Crab Shack. Previously, I’d had a lot of luck playing Sweet Alchemy, but not this most recent time. I did manage to get lucky with only $0.75 left in my balance and triggered the free spins feature which gave me five candy spells and took my bankroll to just over $10, once the feature was finished.
Naturally, I thought I’d keep playing to see if my luck would take me further…nope. I should have called it quits with my $10+ bucks, because by the end of my play session (which literally lasted less than a minute after my free spins win) my balance was down to $0.02. ๐
Oh well, you win some you lose some. That’s what gambling is all about, after all. And that’s why while you can have fun risking whatever’s in your bankroll for casino real money play, you always need to have deposit limits to ensure that you never spend more on your gambling pastime than you can afford to.
Until next time, good luck and have fun (and try not to get suckered into chasing those losses)!
Mia ๐ฉ๐ป
*All links and images in this post are for information purposes only.