Two balances, and only one of them is money

A play-money product sells you a currency and keeps the only door marked Exit on a second one you did not buy. This desk explains the price of the first, the rules of the second, what the coins can be spent on, and what happens to a player when the whole arrangement is classified as something other than gambling.

Open the partner account Start with the six clauses

Bought: priced, spendable, not redeemableGranted: unpriced, the only route outNo route: no sale price exists

The bundle ladder - the same currency at four prices, with the exit column on the right
Bundle	Price	Coins received	Coins per GBP 1	Granted currency attached	Bought currency with a route out
Bundle 1	GBP 5.00	5,000	1,000	1 coin (GBP 1.00)	0% · granted share 20%
Bundle 2	GBP 10.00	12,000	1,200	2 coins (GBP 2.00)	0% · granted share 20%
Bundle 3	GBP 20.00	28,000	1,400	4 coins (GBP 4.00)	0% · granted share 20%
Bundle 4	GBP 50.00	80,000	1,600	10 coins (GBP 10.00)	0% · granted share 20%

Read the two right-hand columns before the middle one. Coins per pound rises 60% from Bundle 1 to Bundle 4 - (1,600 − 1,000) ÷ 1,000 - which is a 37.5% fall in the cost of a single coin. What does not move: the bought currency has a route out in none of the four bundles, and the granted currency attached is a flat 20% of the money spent in every one of them (£1 granted per £5 of coins). A discount on a currency with no sale price makes the purchase cheaper, not recoverable.

Direct answerA play-money casino sells a virtual currency that can be bought but not sold, and it may grant a second currency that carries a redemption route governed by its own rules. The first has a published price in one direction only, so a balance in it is worth whatever the shop says it is worth and nothing on the way out. Where the second exists, it is normally granted - attached to a purchase or to a free entry route - because a currency that is granted rather than sold is the arrangement that keeps the product outside gambling law in several markets. The consequence for a player is not the coins. It is the removal of the protections that come with being a gambling customer.

Why a desk about play money exists at all

Every other desk in this network explains something inside a regulated gambling product: the bonus, the withdrawal, the odds, the verification, the licence, the money. This one explains the product class next door, which is built from the same game builds, the same lobby and often the same supplier, and which is marketed to the same audience with a different set of rules attached. The games are familiar; the arrangement around them is not, and the difference is entirely a matter of currency and classification.

The mechanism is worth understanding on its own terms because it is genuinely unusual. A real-money casino sells a service and pays out money. A play-money product sells a good - a quantity of an in-product currency - and what happens to that good afterwards is decided by a licence agreement rather than by a stake. That single change moves the transaction out of one body of law and into another, and it changes what you can do when the arrangement goes wrong.

What the two balances are

The first balance is bought. It is priced in bundles, it can be spent on games and on in-product items, and it has no route back to a bank. The second balance, where it exists, is granted: it is attached to the purchase as a promotional award, or made available through a separate free route, and it is the only part of the arrangement that can ever be redeemed. The two are not interchangeable, they are usually not even denominated at the same scale, and the whole design of the product is that only one of them was ever money.

The two balances takes this in order. The short version: the bought coin has a purchase price and no sale price, and the granted coin has a sale price and (usually) no purchase price. Everything that follows - the bundle ladder, the shop, the redemption, the classification, the crossover to real money - is a consequence of that asymmetry.

Worked example - the round trip (illustrative) Measured with the rates used on this desk: 1,000 coins per GBP 1 at the smallest bundle, rising to 1,600 coins per GBP 1 at the largest.
You spend GBP 1.00. You receive 1,000 coins.
You try to sell the coins back. Published sale price: none. Coin value on the return trip: GBP 0.00.
Value retained on the round trip: 0% (GBP 0.00 ÷ GBP 1.00).
For comparison, the same GBP 1.00 spent on the largest bundle buys 1,600 coins - 60% more of the same currency, (1,600 − 1,000) ÷ 1,000, for exactly the same money.
The two figures in this block are the whole desk in miniature: one number is a price, the other is the absence of one, and the discount between bundles moves the first without touching the second.

How to read the bundle ladder

The figure at the top of this page is four bundles of the same currency, priced the way these products price them: a small bundle, a slightly better one, a better one again, and a large one whose per-coin cost is the lowest on the page. Read the two right-hand columns before the middle ones. Coins per pound rise by 60% from Bundle 1 to Bundle 4, which is a 37.5% fall in the cost of a single coin - a normal volume discount, presented in the product exactly as you would expect. What does not move is either of the columns that decide what the purchase is worth: the bought currency has a route out in none of the four bundles, and the granted currency attached is a flat 20% of the money spent in every one of them.

This is the shape a bundle ladder takes, and it does not require bad faith to work: the fall in the per-coin price is real, and it is the reason a player buys the larger bundle. But it is a discount on a purchase, and a discount on something with no resale value makes the purchase cheaper, not better. What a coin buys does the arithmetic of a stake in that currency, and the shop does it for the items the coins are for.

What this desk takes in turn

The two balances

The bought coin and the granted coin: what each is, which one is priced, and why the product needs both.

What a coin buys

The stake, measured in money, and the volume discount that is not a discount on value.

The closed economy

Virtual items, gifting and entries: what the coins are actually for, and why nothing leaves.

Where a route out exists

The granted currency only: eligibility, verification, minimums, processing and what voids a request.

Why it is not called gambling

The classification test, the operator argument, and the protections a player gives up when it succeeds.

The door between the two

The prompt, the offer and the first real-money deposit - and the controls that only exist on one side of it.

What this desk refuses to do

It does not rank these products, recommend one, or say which is the best of anything; there is no page on this site that does, and there never will be. It does not explain how to convert coins into money by a route the terms do not allow, how to defeat a verified redemption or how to run a second account past an eligibility rule, because those rules exist for reasons and a reader who wants past them is not the reader this desk is written for. And it does not take a position on whether any particular product is or is not gambling where you live: the mechanism is described, the classification is decided by the law of the market you are in, and that is checked at the source.

Where the numbers in this desk come from. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and shows its arithmetic so it can be re-derived, challenged or corrected. Bundle prices, grant rates, minimums and processing times differ between products and change often; what does not differ is the shape of the arrangement, which is what is being explained. Where a figure describes a real published rule or a real market position it is described in words rather than pinned to a product this desk has not verified, and no operator is named as a place to buy anything.

If you only read one page

Six clauses to find before you buy coins is the practical one and it takes about four minutes. It is written so that a reader who is looking at a bundle screen right now can find, in order, what the terms say a coin is, what can be taken away, when it expires, what the granted currency requires, and which courts get the argument if it goes wrong.

Spend it on the gamesA coin stake per spin or per hand, priced by the game rather than by a rule.route: yesa rule decides: yes
Spend it on items in the shopVirtual items and upgrades, licensed to the account and priced in coins.route: yesa rule decides: yes
Redeem the granted currencyWhere the product offers it: eligibility, a minimum, verification and a processing period.route: yesa rule decides: yes
Move it to another playerGifting looks like generosity and is drafted as prohibited play whose consequence is forfeiture.route: noa rule decides: yes
Sell it outside the productNo sale price is published and transfer for value is prohibited by the terms.route: noa rule decides: yes
Keep it if the product closesNothing in the arrangement provides for the balance after access ends, and closure clauses lapse it.route: noa rule decides: no

The pattern, not a schedule · Eight of the twelve verdicts are a yes and four are a no, and the counts are asserted at build time so a rung cannot quietly change side. The reading that holds almost everywhere: there are routes to spend a play-money balance and no route to leave with it, and the two rungs where the answer is opposite versions of no - selling it, and keeping it after the product closes - are the two a player is most likely to have assumed.