Last updated: 05-07-2026
Casino terminology gets used loosely, and that's exactly where players lose money — mostly in the gap between what a bonus banner promises and what its terms actually mean. This is the reference for a casino glossary Australia players can actually use: the words that show up across 28Mars's cashier, bonus terms and support replies, in plain English rather than fine print. Where a number matters, it's the real 28Mars figure, not an industry average. Search this page rather than read it top to bottom — each term stands on its own.
Core casino terms
These are the words used in almost every review on this site, this one included.
Bonus Round
A bonus round is a separate mini-game or feature triggered by specific symbols — usually three or more scatters — that pays out independently of the base game. Some pay a fixed multiplier, others let you pick from options with hidden values. On high-volatility pokies, the bonus round often carries most of a title's real winning potential, which is why some players buy straight into it rather than spin for it.
Free Spins
Free spins let you play a set number of pokie rounds without staking your own balance, though any win typically still carries a wagering requirement before it's withdrawable. Spins usually apply to one or two named titles rather than the whole library, and the value of each spin is fixed by the casino, not chosen by you.
House Edge
House edge is the mirror image of RTP — if a pokie returns 96%, the house edge is the remaining 4%. It's the average amount the casino keeps over a very long run of bets, not a guarantee on any single session. A 4% house edge on pokies is fairly typical; table games like blackjack run closer to 0.5%.
Jackpot
A fixed jackpot pays a set amount regardless of how many people have played. A progressive jackpot grows with every bet placed across a network of games until someone hits it, then resets to a seed amount. Progressive jackpots usually mean a slightly lower base RTP on the rest of the game, since a slice of every bet feeds the pool.
Payline
A payline is the pattern a winning combination has to land on, read left to right unless the game says otherwise. Older pokies used a fixed number of paylines you couldn't change; most modern titles use adjustable paylines or a Megaways/cluster structure that does away with fixed lines altogether.
RTP (Return to Player)
RTP is the theoretical percentage of everything wagered on a game that gets paid back to players over its full lifetime — the question people mean when they search what does RTP mean pokies. A 96% RTP means, on average and over a very long run, A$96 comes back for every A$100 wagered. It says nothing about any single spin, and it's calculated by the game studio, not by 28Mars.
Scatter Symbol
A scatter symbol usually triggers free spins or a bonus round when enough of them land anywhere on the reels — unlike a payline win, position doesn't matter. Scatters are also commonly the symbol used in a buy-bonus feature, since landing three naturally is what a feature buy skips you past.
Volatility (Variance)
Volatility describes how a pokie pays, not how often it pays fairly. Low volatility means smaller, more frequent wins that keep a balance ticking over; high volatility means long dry stretches broken up by rare, much larger hits. Neither is better — it's a bankroll and temperament question, covered in more detail in the comparison chart further down this page.
Wagering Requirement (Playthrough)
This is the number of times a bonus — and sometimes the deposit with it — has to be bet before any of it can be withdrawn, the term behind most what is wagering requirement online casino Australia searches. At 28Mars, a A$100 deposit plus the 250% match credits A$350 to the account; at a 35x wagering requirement, that's A$12,250 in total bets required before withdrawal. It's the most misunderstood term on this page, and the one most likely to cost a player their bonus if ignored.
Wild Symbol
A wild substitutes for most other symbols to help complete a winning line, similar to a joker in a card deck. Expanding wilds grow to fill a full reel, sticky wilds stay in place across multiple spins, and multiplier wilds boost the value of any win they're part of. Scatter and jackpot symbols usually can't be substituted by a wild.
Bonus and promotion terms
Where 28Mars publishes a real number, it's here instead of a generic example.
Bonus Code / Promo Code
A bonus code is entered during deposit to activate a specific offer; a promo code sometimes applies at registration instead. 28Mars doesn't appear to require a code for its main 250% welcome match based on the material reviewed — check the promotions page for anything current before assuming you need one.
Cashback
Cashback returns a percentage of losses over a set period, rather than matching a deposit. 28Mars runs two versions: 25% on live casino losses up to A$360, and a broader 15% weekly cashback up to A$5,400 across the account. Whether cashback itself carries a wagering requirement varies by casino and isn't always published upfront.
Expiry Date
Every bonus has a window in which it has to be wagered before it's forfeited, typically counted in days from the moment it's credited rather than from the deposit. 28Mars hadn't published its exact expiry windows in the material reviewed for this glossary — confirm it in the bonus terms before relying on an offer still being there next week.
Game Contribution
Not every bet counts equally toward a wagering requirement. At 28Mars, pokies contribute 100% of what you stake, table games contribute somewhere between 5% and 10%, and live casino games typically contribute 0% — meaning a live blackjack session might do nothing at all to clear a bonus. This is one of the least disclosed terms in the industry, and one of the more expensive ones to get wrong.
Match Bonus
A match bonus adds a percentage of your deposit as bonus funds — a 250% match on a A$100 deposit adds A$250, for a A$350 total balance to play with. The bigger the percentage, the more attention the wagering requirement deserves, since a bigger bonus usually means a bigger number to clear before any of it is real.
Max Bet Rule
While wagering a bonus, most casinos cap the size of any single bet — often around A$5 to A$10, with 28Mars's own research pointing to a limit near A$7.50 during active wagering. Bet over that limit even once while a bonus is active and the whole bonus, plus any winnings from it, can be voided. It's one of the easiest rules to break without realising, especially on a pokie with a high default stake.
No Deposit Bonus
A no deposit bonus credits a small amount, or a set of free spins, just for registering — no card details, no deposit. It typically carries a higher wagering requirement than a deposit bonus (40x to 50x is common industry-wide) and a lower maximum cash-out, sometimes capped at A$50 to A$100 regardless of what you actually win.
Reload Bonus
A reload bonus matches a deposit made after the initial welcome offer, usually smaller in percentage and often tied to a specific day of the week rather than available on demand. It's the mechanism casinos use to keep depositing attractive once the one-time welcome bonus is gone.
Sticky Bonus (Non-cashable)
A sticky bonus can be wagered with but never withdrawn itself — only winnings generated from it become cashable once wagering is complete, and the bonus amount is deducted when you cash out. It behaves more like free spin credit than real money sitting in the account.
Welcome Bonus
The welcome bonus is the offer tied to a new account's first deposit — at 28Mars, a 250% match, among the highest percentage offers of any AU-facing Curaçao casino compared for this site. The percentage is only half the picture; the wagering requirement and expiry window decide whether it's actually worth claiming. Full terms sit on the bonus page.
Author's tip from Lachlan Reid, Casino Content Editor & Player Safety Analyst: "Read the wagering requirement before the bonus percentage. A 250% match sounds enormous until you've worked out what it actually costs to unlock — the percentage is marketing, the multiplier is the real number."
Payment and banking terms
Money terms — how it moves in, and what has to happen before it moves back out.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
AML rules require casinos to check where deposited funds come from, particularly for larger amounts or unusual deposit patterns. It sits alongside KYC rather than replacing it — KYC confirms who you are, AML checks confirm the money is clean. Neither is optional at a Curaçao-licensed casino, whatever the marketing implies about instant everything.
Chargeback
A chargeback is a reversal of a card payment initiated through your bank rather than the casino, usually after a dispute. Casinos treat chargebacks as a serious breach of terms — most will freeze or close an account the moment one is filed, even if the original deposit was legitimate. Contact support before your bank if something's wrong with a payment.
Cryptocurrency Withdrawal
28Mars processes withdrawals in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Litecoin and Ripple. The amount that lands in your wallet depends on the coin's price at the moment the withdrawal clears, not when you requested it — a detail that matters more during a volatile week for either coin than most players expect going in.
E-wallet
An e-wallet like PayPal, Skrill or Neteller sits between your bank and the casino, usually processing withdrawals faster than a direct bank transfer. 28Mars doesn't list a dedicated e-wallet option in the material reviewed for this brand — its non-crypto option is bank transfer via open banking rather than a wallet.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
KYC is the identity check every licensed casino runs before releasing a withdrawal — usually a photo ID plus a proof of address — and it's the most common thing people mean when they search what is KYC online casino. At 28Mars, it's requested before the first withdrawal specifically, not at registration, which catches some players off guard mid cash-out.
Minimum Withdrawal
The smallest amount a casino will process as a single withdrawal, below which the funds simply stay in the account. 28Mars hadn't published a specific minimum withdrawal figure in the material reviewed for this page — confirm it in the cashier before assuming any amount is small enough to skip.
PayID / Osko (Instant Payments)
PayID and Osko are Australia's instant bank-transfer systems, letting money move between banks in seconds using a phone number or email instead of BSB and account number. Most AU-facing casinos lead with PayID as their fastest option — 28Mars doesn't currently list it, relying on standard open banking transfer instead.
Pending Period
The pending period is the delay between requesting a withdrawal and the casino actually starting to process it — separate from, and stacked on top of, however long the payment method itself takes. 28Mars runs a 72-hour pending period, longer than several AU-facing competitors, and it's one of the least understood terms on this page until someone hits it for the first time.
Withdrawal Limit
A cap on how much can be cashed out in a given period — daily, weekly or monthly. 28Mars sets a A$750 daily cap and a A$10,500 monthly cap, tighter than several competitors in this comparison, and worth knowing before a big win rather than after.
Responsible gambling terms
Tools for staying in control, not just definitions for a compliance page.
Cool-off Period
A short, temporary break from an account — typically days to a few weeks — after which access returns automatically. It sits between a reality check and full self-exclusion, useful when the goal is a pause rather than a permanent close.
Deposit Limit
A cap you set yourself on how much can go into the account over a day, week or month. Once set, most casinos apply a cooling-off period before you can raise it again, specifically so a limit can't be undone in the heat of a losing session.
Problem Gambling
Signs include chasing losses, gambling with money set aside for other things, and hiding play from people close to you. Gambling Help Online (1800 858 858) operates independently of any casino and is free to contact regardless of which site you play on.
Reality Check
A pop-up reminder, usually every 30 to 60 minutes, showing how long you've been playing and sometimes the net result so far. It's designed to interrupt the kind of session where time stops registering — worth leaving switched on even if it feels unnecessary at the start of a night.
Self-exclusion
A self-requested block from an account, typically for a minimum period set by the casino rather than something you can shorten once it's active. Australia doesn't have a single national self-exclusion scheme covering offshore casinos the way GAMSTOP covers licensed UK operators — each offshore brand handles it individually, so it has to be requested directly with 28Mars.
Author's tip from Lachlan Reid, Casino Content Editor & Player Safety Analyst: "Set a deposit limit before your first deposit, not after a big loss. It's the one responsible gambling tool that works better as prevention than as a reaction."
Slot mechanics terms
The mechanics that decide how a pokies session actually feels to play, whatever the RTP on the label says.
Buy Bonus (Feature Buy)
A feature buy lets you pay a multiple of your stake — commonly 80x to 100x — to trigger a bonus round directly, skipping the base game entirely. It's banned outright for UK-licensed sites but remains available on many Curaçao-licensed pokies serving the Australian market; check the individual game's rules rather than assuming it's available everywhere in the library.
Cascading Reels (Avalanche)
After a win, the winning symbols disappear and new ones drop in to fill the gaps, potentially triggering another win from the same spin without staking again. Multiple cascades in one spin often carry an increasing multiplier, which is where cascade-mechanic pokies generate their bigger hits.
Cluster Pays
Instead of matching symbols along a payline, cluster pays reward groups of matching symbols touching each other anywhere on the grid — five or more, depending on the title. It changes how a board is read entirely, since there's no fixed line to trace, just clumps of matching icons.
Hold and Win
A feature where special symbols lock in place and hold their position while the remaining reels re-spin a set number of times, re-triggering the count whenever another special symbol lands. It's the mechanic behind most coin-collecting bonus rounds on modern pokies, and can run for a long time once it gets going.
Max Win
The absolute ceiling a single spin can pay, expressed as a multiple of the stake — a 5,000x max win on a A$1 spin caps that spin's payout at A$5,000, however the maths behind the game might theoretically suggest more. It's a hard limit set by the studio, not a marketing figure.
Megaways
A licensed mechanic, originally from Big Time Gaming, where the number of symbols per reel changes on every spin, creating up to 117,649 ways to win on some titles instead of fixed paylines. It's become common enough across studios that Megaways now functions almost like a genre label rather than a single brand.
Multiplier
A multiplier increases the value of a win by a set factor. Win multipliers apply after a spin lands, bet multipliers scale with your stake size, and progressive multipliers climb across consecutive wins within a bonus round or cascade sequence, often resetting once a spin ends without a win.
Tumble Feature
Another name for the same mechanic as cascading reels — winning symbols clear and new ones tumble into place. The naming just depends on which studio built the game; the mechanic underneath doesn't functionally differ between tumble, cascade and avalanche.
Live casino terms
Live and RNG tables use some of their own vocabulary on top of the terms above — here's what it means.
La Partage / En Prison
Two French Roulette rules that soften a loss on an even-money bet (red/black, odds/evens) when the ball lands on zero. La Partage returns half your stake immediately; En Prison lets the bet ride onto the next spin instead. Either rule drops the house edge on those specific bets to around 1.35%, roughly half the standard European Roulette edge.
Live Dealer
A real croupier runs the game via video stream from a studio, while you bet through a digital interface layered over the footage. The maths behind the game is identical to its RNG equivalent — the difference is pace, atmosphere, and the fact that a human is physically dealing every card or spinning every wheel.
Lobby
The selection screen where you pick a live table, usually filterable by game type, stake range, and which studio or dealer is running it. Higher-stakes tables typically show fewer open seats and slower turnover — worth checking before committing to sit down, since some cap the number of players per round.
RNG vs Live
RNG (Random Number Generator) games are computer-generated and instant; live games run at the pace of a real dealer and real cards or a real wheel. Both are certified fair, but RNG rounds finish in seconds while a live round can take a minute or more, which changes how quickly a bankroll actually moves.
Side Bet
An optional extra wager alongside the main hand, like Perfect Pairs in blackjack or a bonus bet in baccarat, usually with a completely different house edge to the main game. Perfect Pairs, for example, drops blackjack's overall RTP from around 99.5% to closer to 95.9% once you're betting on it every hand.
Squeeze
A dealer slowly reveals a card, corner first, drawing out the moment before a result is confirmed — mostly a blackjack and baccarat feature built for atmosphere rather than anything that changes the outcome. It's purely presentational, though it's one of the more talked-about parts of a live session.
Author's tip from Lachlan Reid, Casino Content Editor & Player Safety Analyst: "If a term on this page isn't clear after reading it once, that's the terms and conditions page's fault, not yours — support chat exists specifically to translate fine print into a straight answer."
How do the main casino games compare?
Put the numbers from every section above side by side and a couple of patterns become obvious: strategy only moves the needle on a handful of games, and volatility matters more than RTP for how a session actually feels.
- Strategy-dependent games — blackjack, video poker — reward getting the play right
- No-strategy games — roulette, most pokies — pay the same regardless of skill
- Live games mirror their RNG equivalent's house edge exactly, just at a slower pace
| Game | RTP range | House edge | Strategy affects it? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pokies | 94%–98% | ~4% average | No | Varies significantly by title and provider |
| Blackjack | ~99.5% | ~0.5% | Yes | Basic strategy required to hit this RTP |
| Roulette (EU) | 97.3% | 2.7% | No | Single-zero wheel |
| Roulette (US) | 94.74% | 5.26% | No | Double-zero wheel — avoid where EU is offered |
| Video Poker | up to 99.5%+ | ~0.5% | Yes | Full-pay tables required for the top RTP |
| Baccarat | ~98.94% | 1.06% | No | Banker bet carries the lowest edge of the three main bets |
| Live games | Matches RNG equivalent | Varies by game | Depends on the game | Same maths as the RNG version, run by a human dealer |
Curious how these numbers play out with an actual account? The pokies library and the bonus page put most of these terms to work with 28Mars's own figures attached, not a generic example.
