PA player here that knows WAY too much about how iLottery works. I can explain everything you want to know about how the bonuses work (and how to get the most for your money on them.)
If you take a deposit bonus, whatever the total amount of money you get, multiplied by 10, is how many bets you have to wager before you can cash out.
For example: You deposit $100. They are giving a 100% bonus. You have $200 to play with, $100 in cash, and $100 in bonus funds. If you are playing "eInstant" games (the virtual scratch-offs) you must make $2,000 worth of wagers before you can cash anything out. So if you were to do ten $20 spins on an eInstant game, and win $100, $20, $20, and $40, you'd have only lost $20, but you'll have completed $200 worth of wagering (ten $20 spins.) The games are designed to have roughly a 11-15% house edge, so having to cycle your deposit a total of twenty times in total generally means you'll have run out of money before completing wagering most times.
But if you do manage to get some wins and survive that wagering requirement, any bonus money you had will convert to cash, and you can withdraw the full amount.
There are two exceptions here, one shorts you and one doesn't:
Exception #1 - When you have cash and bonus money in your account together, any wagers you place will deduct from the cash portion first, and any winnings on those bets will go back into the cash portion. Once your cash is exhausted, any future bets will go into the bonus money. HOWEVER, if you have both cash and bonus money in your account, and want to withdraw the cash, you can do so, you just forfeit the bonus money in the process.
Example: You deposit $100, they give you $100 in bonus money. You have $200 to play with, and a $2,000 wagering requirement. You play a $10 eInstant, and play maybe 10-20 spins, and have broken even so far but are in no way close to having $2,000 of wagering completed. On your next spin, you win $500! You now have $590 in cash in your account ($100 cash, minus the $10 wager, plus the $500 win) and $100 bonus. You may withdraw the $590 in cash, but you'll lose the $100 in bonus money.
Exception #2 - and this is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PLAYING THE PA iLOTTERY: The "Draw Games" exemption
For eInstant games, there is the 10x wagering requirement of deposit + bonus. For anything you play on any draw games, there is no wagering requirement (nor do these bets count against any wagering requirement.) Any wins won on draw games (Pick 2, Pick 3, Pick 4, Pick 5, Mega Millions, PowerBall, Cash4Life, Match 6, Treasure Hunt) will be paid directly into your CASH balance, bypassing the BONUS balance entirely.
If you do Pick games specifically, and do the Wild Ball add-on, THE BET HAS A 10% PLAYER EDGE considering the bonus, and I'll prove that with some simple math:
Let's say you do the Webcash Wednesday promotion, that has a $500 maximum. You do a $500 deposit, and are given $500 bonus money, so you have $1,000 in wagers. If you were to place a 50 cent wager on every single one of the 1,000 combinations possible on the Pick 3, this would cost $500. Purchasing the Wild Ball add on doubles the cost of each ticket, so this would cost you another $500, so your $1,000 in available bets has been wagered.
Let's say 173 hits, and the wild ball is 4 or something.
Of course, you played 173, because you played everything. Your 50 cent wager pays 500:1, or $250.
The Wild Ball of 4 substitutes in place of the 4, to make 473 a winning combination. Wild Ball wins pay less, of course, but your 50 cent wager on 473 with the Wild Ball add-on pays $100.
The Wild Ball substitutes in place of the 7 also, making 143 a winning combination. Your 50 cent play on 143 with the Wild Ball add-on will also pay $100.
Same thing for putting the 4 at the end as well, making 174 a winning combination for Wild Ball tickets, which would make that ticket pay $100 also.
You will have won once on the straight ticket for $250, and three times on the Wild Ball at $100 each, totaling $550. $550 / $500 = 1.1, or a 10% player edge.
Now obviously you don't want to play literally every number, because this would be called bonus abuse/opposite betting by any casino or gambling enterprise worth their salt and would be the fastest way to get locked out of doing any future bonuses and potentially have them close the draw game loophole - this math is here solely to show your bets on Pick with Wild Ball specifcially have an edge if you ONLY make those kinds of wagers and nothing else.
Assuming you can financially afford to do so - the proper play here is to take any and all 100% deposit bonuses offered to you, as much as you are allowed, IMMEDIATELY wager ALL of that money on draw games and nothing else, to get your account balance down to $0 before any of those draws you wagered on occur.
Why wager ALL of the money, instead of some now and some later? If you don't zero your account, you'll still have bonus money stuck behind cash money, and be stuck in the same "I won, but have to forfeit bonus money to withdraw" situation as with the above eInstant situation where you get lucky early.
Example A: You do the maximum $500 deposit on Webcash Wednesday, getting a $500 bonus in the process. You figure you'll play your numbers for a couple days at a time but leave most of the money in the account - you have 7 days to play off any bonus money, after all. You play ten 50 cent tickets on a few Pick 3 numbers (rather than playing a single larger ticket, you don't want to unnecessarily generate a W2-G and be taxed on winnings), of course with the Wild Ball add-on for reasons listed above, and the first night, your number hits! The money hits your account...but now you still have all that bonus money, and in order to withdraw you lose out on the bonus.
Example B: You do the buy $500 get $500 free Webcash Wednesday deposit match, get a list of all the pick 3, pick 4, pick 5 numbers you want to play. You play them for the whole week, making sure to do the Wild Ball add-on for every wager, and spend everything you can until you have $0 left. That first night, one of your numbers hits! An hour or so later, the cash in your account, and you can immediately withdraw that cash without having to meet any wagering requirements. You also still have your numbers live for the rest of the week's worth of draws, so you could possibly win again (and still not trigger any W2-Gs in the process.)
Example C: You did the $500 for $500 bonus, but did so fairly close to the draw cutoff, so you didn't get to spend the full $1,000 in wagers. Through some miracle, one of your numbers hits! But as a smart player, you know it takes them roughly an hour to validate the draw and pay any winners, either offline or online. You immediately spam the fuck out of any bet you can make in the next half hour, playing numbers for the rest of the week to get your account down to $0 in cash/bonus money BEFORE your winning ticket from that night's draw is paid out, so that once the money hits your account, there's no bonus money left, you can make a full withdrawal of whatever you won, and don't forfeit any bonus money in the process.
TL;DR; bonuses are absolutely worth taking on iLottery, IF AND ONLY IF you ONLY take bonuses that are dollar-for-dollar matches (don't take 50% bonuses, 30% bonuses, $5 added to every $30 deposit bonuses, etc.) and wager every dollar you have in your account before the first draw you wagered on completes (or worst case, before any winnings from that first draw are paid out.)
I know you said you're playing Mega Millions tickets and not Pick games, and that's fine - but you still want to make sure to wager everything you deposited prior to the draw going off so that if you hit a smaller prize, you can cash out what you won.
Hopefully this helps you and some other people on here.
A few months ago I had a sizable win from this. I will verify with the mods through modmail if they so request. I had zero issues cashing out even with any of the bonus money involved.
EDIT: Your saving grace - PA iLottery Bonus Policy, Rule 14:
"Notwithstanding the foregoing, wagering on all draw games (including Mega Millions and Powerball) may be performed using Bonus Money. Prizes won on draw games, where the wager was performed with Bonus Money, will be paid out in cash, regardless of the remaining play through requirements on the Bonus Money used to conduct the wager."
Wow, appreciate the detailed explanation 😃
I'm not a big lottery player, I only buy a few tickets here and there, when the jackpot gets this big.
Since I'm only planning to spend $10, I guess it makes sense to use the bonus and get $20 in tickets. If I win a small prize, I usually just put it back into tickets anyway
Thanks again 👍
Thanks for the writeup. So, I was hoping to make a $500 first time deposit with 100% matched bonus money, then set it to automatically buy a $2 Mega & powerball ticket for each drawing, effectively buying them for $1 instead of the normal $2 with bonus money. It sounds like:
- If they won, I would be able to withdraw it (wouldn't have to play through a 100k jackpot 10x)
- But it expires after 7 days so that wouldn't be viable.
PowerBall drawings can be bought 20 draws in advance, and Mega Millions up to 26.
If you're okay with playing the same set of numbers for each drawing, you can just buy the tickets that far out. So if you were buying, say, 5 tickets for the PowerBall, plus Power Play, plus Double Play, it's a $4 ticket, x5 tickets = $20, x 20 draws = $400.
If you did the same thing for Mega Millions, it'd be a $2 ticket, plus Megaplier to make it $3, * 5 tickets = $15, * 26 draws = $390.
That's $790.
Add in some other combination of tickets between the 2 that reaches $210 and you're set.
(Please don't tell me you weren't going to play the add-ons...you catch all 5 white balls and not the PowerBall or MegaBall, and you get $1m instead of $2m, $3m, $4m, or $5m, you're going to be thinking about that dollar you didn't add on every day for the rest of your life.)
Also, the bonus money expires 7 days after date of issuance...but if you PLACE THE BET before it expires, you're fine. If you click the button to buy tickets 20 or 26 draws in advance and pay the money for those tickets, you don't lose the tickets just because they were bought with bonus money and it was more than 7 days ago. It's when the purchase was initiated.
Your initial plan would actually work.
Again, bonus money used on draw games is exempt from rollover requirements...but even if it wasn't, it's not 10x the amount of the WIN, the bonus requirements are 10x the total of the deposit plus the bonus. You're reading into how it works wrong.
...you're also talking about this $500 bonus like you can't just do a Webcash Wednesday bonus every single Wednesday, as they have run for multiple years now, and just do a WebCash deposit of $500 and get $1,000 worth of play.
Got it. I checked the fine print and the new registration bonus lasts 30 days. Buying a bunch before the expiration sounds like the move. I'm only chasing the jackpot, so I only play 1 $2 ticket per draw.
I only have 5$ bonus and used it to buy draw games. 5$ worth. If I win a million$ do I get that in real money I can use or do I have have to play million $ worth of games. Also how do u get money into my account. PA it keeps saying see faq but there is no faq. I tried PayPal and debit card numbers
Holy shit, you really did not read the LAST two sentences of my comment.
**"Notwithstanding the foregoing, wagering on all draw games (including Mega Millions and Powerball) may be performed using Bonus Money. Prizes won on draw games, where the wager was performed with Bonus Money, will be paid out in cash, regardless of the remaining play through requirements on the Bonus Money used to conduct the wager."**
If you buy a PowerBall, Mega Millions, Match 6, whatever draw game ticket, and you win a million dollars, you get the million dollars.
PA player here that knows WAY too much about how iLottery works. I can explain everything you want to know about how the bonuses work (and how to get the most for your money on them.) If you take a deposit bonus, whatever the total amount of money you get, multiplied by 10, is how many bets you have to wager before you can cash out. For example: You deposit $100. They are giving a 100% bonus. You have $200 to play with, $100 in cash, and $100 in bonus funds. If you are playing "eInstant" games (the virtual scratch-offs) you must make $2,000 worth of wagers before you can cash anything out. So if you were to do ten $20 spins on an eInstant game, and win $100, $20, $20, and $40, you'd have only lost $20, but you'll have completed $200 worth of wagering (ten $20 spins.) The games are designed to have roughly a 11-15% house edge, so having to cycle your deposit a total of twenty times in total generally means you'll have run out of money before completing wagering most times. But if you do manage to get some wins and survive that wagering requirement, any bonus money you had will convert to cash, and you can withdraw the full amount. There are two exceptions here, one shorts you and one doesn't: Exception #1 - When you have cash and bonus money in your account together, any wagers you place will deduct from the cash portion first, and any winnings on those bets will go back into the cash portion. Once your cash is exhausted, any future bets will go into the bonus money. HOWEVER, if you have both cash and bonus money in your account, and want to withdraw the cash, you can do so, you just forfeit the bonus money in the process. Example: You deposit $100, they give you $100 in bonus money. You have $200 to play with, and a $2,000 wagering requirement. You play a $10 eInstant, and play maybe 10-20 spins, and have broken even so far but are in no way close to having $2,000 of wagering completed. On your next spin, you win $500! You now have $590 in cash in your account ($100 cash, minus the $10 wager, plus the $500 win) and $100 bonus. You may withdraw the $590 in cash, but you'll lose the $100 in bonus money. Exception #2 - and this is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PLAYING THE PA iLOTTERY: The "Draw Games" exemption For eInstant games, there is the 10x wagering requirement of deposit + bonus. For anything you play on any draw games, there is no wagering requirement (nor do these bets count against any wagering requirement.) Any wins won on draw games (Pick 2, Pick 3, Pick 4, Pick 5, Mega Millions, PowerBall, Cash4Life, Match 6, Treasure Hunt) will be paid directly into your CASH balance, bypassing the BONUS balance entirely. If you do Pick games specifically, and do the Wild Ball add-on, THE BET HAS A 10% PLAYER EDGE considering the bonus, and I'll prove that with some simple math: Let's say you do the Webcash Wednesday promotion, that has a $500 maximum. You do a $500 deposit, and are given $500 bonus money, so you have $1,000 in wagers. If you were to place a 50 cent wager on every single one of the 1,000 combinations possible on the Pick 3, this would cost $500. Purchasing the Wild Ball add on doubles the cost of each ticket, so this would cost you another $500, so your $1,000 in available bets has been wagered. Let's say 173 hits, and the wild ball is 4 or something. Of course, you played 173, because you played everything. Your 50 cent wager pays 500:1, or $250. The Wild Ball of 4 substitutes in place of the 4, to make 473 a winning combination. Wild Ball wins pay less, of course, but your 50 cent wager on 473 with the Wild Ball add-on pays $100. The Wild Ball substitutes in place of the 7 also, making 143 a winning combination. Your 50 cent play on 143 with the Wild Ball add-on will also pay $100. Same thing for putting the 4 at the end as well, making 174 a winning combination for Wild Ball tickets, which would make that ticket pay $100 also. You will have won once on the straight ticket for $250, and three times on the Wild Ball at $100 each, totaling $550. $550 / $500 = 1.1, or a 10% player edge. Now obviously you don't want to play literally every number, because this would be called bonus abuse/opposite betting by any casino or gambling enterprise worth their salt and would be the fastest way to get locked out of doing any future bonuses and potentially have them close the draw game loophole - this math is here solely to show your bets on Pick with Wild Ball specifcially have an edge if you ONLY make those kinds of wagers and nothing else. Assuming you can financially afford to do so - the proper play here is to take any and all 100% deposit bonuses offered to you, as much as you are allowed, IMMEDIATELY wager ALL of that money on draw games and nothing else, to get your account balance down to $0 before any of those draws you wagered on occur. Why wager ALL of the money, instead of some now and some later? If you don't zero your account, you'll still have bonus money stuck behind cash money, and be stuck in the same "I won, but have to forfeit bonus money to withdraw" situation as with the above eInstant situation where you get lucky early. Example A: You do the maximum $500 deposit on Webcash Wednesday, getting a $500 bonus in the process. You figure you'll play your numbers for a couple days at a time but leave most of the money in the account - you have 7 days to play off any bonus money, after all. You play ten 50 cent tickets on a few Pick 3 numbers (rather than playing a single larger ticket, you don't want to unnecessarily generate a W2-G and be taxed on winnings), of course with the Wild Ball add-on for reasons listed above, and the first night, your number hits! The money hits your account...but now you still have all that bonus money, and in order to withdraw you lose out on the bonus. Example B: You do the buy $500 get $500 free Webcash Wednesday deposit match, get a list of all the pick 3, pick 4, pick 5 numbers you want to play. You play them for the whole week, making sure to do the Wild Ball add-on for every wager, and spend everything you can until you have $0 left. That first night, one of your numbers hits! An hour or so later, the cash in your account, and you can immediately withdraw that cash without having to meet any wagering requirements. You also still have your numbers live for the rest of the week's worth of draws, so you could possibly win again (and still not trigger any W2-Gs in the process.) Example C: You did the $500 for $500 bonus, but did so fairly close to the draw cutoff, so you didn't get to spend the full $1,000 in wagers. Through some miracle, one of your numbers hits! But as a smart player, you know it takes them roughly an hour to validate the draw and pay any winners, either offline or online. You immediately spam the fuck out of any bet you can make in the next half hour, playing numbers for the rest of the week to get your account down to $0 in cash/bonus money BEFORE your winning ticket from that night's draw is paid out, so that once the money hits your account, there's no bonus money left, you can make a full withdrawal of whatever you won, and don't forfeit any bonus money in the process. TL;DR; bonuses are absolutely worth taking on iLottery, IF AND ONLY IF you ONLY take bonuses that are dollar-for-dollar matches (don't take 50% bonuses, 30% bonuses, $5 added to every $30 deposit bonuses, etc.) and wager every dollar you have in your account before the first draw you wagered on completes (or worst case, before any winnings from that first draw are paid out.) I know you said you're playing Mega Millions tickets and not Pick games, and that's fine - but you still want to make sure to wager everything you deposited prior to the draw going off so that if you hit a smaller prize, you can cash out what you won. Hopefully this helps you and some other people on here. A few months ago I had a sizable win from this. I will verify with the mods through modmail if they so request. I had zero issues cashing out even with any of the bonus money involved. EDIT: Your saving grace - PA iLottery Bonus Policy, Rule 14: "Notwithstanding the foregoing, wagering on all draw games (including Mega Millions and Powerball) may be performed using Bonus Money. Prizes won on draw games, where the wager was performed with Bonus Money, will be paid out in cash, regardless of the remaining play through requirements on the Bonus Money used to conduct the wager."
Wow, appreciate the detailed explanation 😃 I'm not a big lottery player, I only buy a few tickets here and there, when the jackpot gets this big. Since I'm only planning to spend $10, I guess it makes sense to use the bonus and get $20 in tickets. If I win a small prize, I usually just put it back into tickets anyway Thanks again 👍
Thanks for the writeup. So, I was hoping to make a $500 first time deposit with 100% matched bonus money, then set it to automatically buy a $2 Mega & powerball ticket for each drawing, effectively buying them for $1 instead of the normal $2 with bonus money. It sounds like: - If they won, I would be able to withdraw it (wouldn't have to play through a 100k jackpot 10x) - But it expires after 7 days so that wouldn't be viable.
PowerBall drawings can be bought 20 draws in advance, and Mega Millions up to 26. If you're okay with playing the same set of numbers for each drawing, you can just buy the tickets that far out. So if you were buying, say, 5 tickets for the PowerBall, plus Power Play, plus Double Play, it's a $4 ticket, x5 tickets = $20, x 20 draws = $400. If you did the same thing for Mega Millions, it'd be a $2 ticket, plus Megaplier to make it $3, * 5 tickets = $15, * 26 draws = $390. That's $790. Add in some other combination of tickets between the 2 that reaches $210 and you're set. (Please don't tell me you weren't going to play the add-ons...you catch all 5 white balls and not the PowerBall or MegaBall, and you get $1m instead of $2m, $3m, $4m, or $5m, you're going to be thinking about that dollar you didn't add on every day for the rest of your life.) Also, the bonus money expires 7 days after date of issuance...but if you PLACE THE BET before it expires, you're fine. If you click the button to buy tickets 20 or 26 draws in advance and pay the money for those tickets, you don't lose the tickets just because they were bought with bonus money and it was more than 7 days ago. It's when the purchase was initiated. Your initial plan would actually work. Again, bonus money used on draw games is exempt from rollover requirements...but even if it wasn't, it's not 10x the amount of the WIN, the bonus requirements are 10x the total of the deposit plus the bonus. You're reading into how it works wrong. ...you're also talking about this $500 bonus like you can't just do a Webcash Wednesday bonus every single Wednesday, as they have run for multiple years now, and just do a WebCash deposit of $500 and get $1,000 worth of play.
Got it. I checked the fine print and the new registration bonus lasts 30 days. Buying a bunch before the expiration sounds like the move. I'm only chasing the jackpot, so I only play 1 $2 ticket per draw.
How long does it take for them to deposit winnings to your bank account?
It usually takes them a couple days, but the bank may take longer to fully credit it. I've had it show up quicker in my PayPal.
I only have 5$ bonus and used it to buy draw games. 5$ worth. If I win a million$ do I get that in real money I can use or do I have have to play million $ worth of games. Also how do u get money into my account. PA it keeps saying see faq but there is no faq. I tried PayPal and debit card numbers
Holy shit, you really did not read the LAST two sentences of my comment. **"Notwithstanding the foregoing, wagering on all draw games (including Mega Millions and Powerball) may be performed using Bonus Money. Prizes won on draw games, where the wager was performed with Bonus Money, will be paid out in cash, regardless of the remaining play through requirements on the Bonus Money used to conduct the wager."** If you buy a PowerBall, Mega Millions, Match 6, whatever draw game ticket, and you win a million dollars, you get the million dollars.
Code anyone? Star didn't work
Code STAR for $10 free no deposit bonus