A stake priced in a currency with no sale price

Every product publishes what a coin costs. None of them publishes what a coin is worth. The difference between those two sentences is the whole of this page, and it is measurable.

Open the partner account Start with the six clauses

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

Direct answerThe money cost of a stake is the coin stake divided by the coins-per-pound rate of the bundle you bought, not of the bundle you wish you had bought. At an illustrative 1,000 coins per GBP 1 a 1,000-coin spin costs GBP 1.00; at the largest bundle's 1,600 coins per GBP 1 the same spin costs GBP 0.63. The rate applies at purchase, so the cost of play is fixed by the bundle decision you already made, and the return on a session arrives in coins - a currency with no published sale price - which is why a 96% return figure cannot be read as 96% of your money coming back.

The three prices a product can publish, and the one it does not

A currency that is money has three published prices: what the operator sells it for, what the operator buys it back for, and what someone else will pay for it. A play-money currency has exactly one of the three. The purchase price is on the bundle screen, in coins per pound, with a volume discount that makes it fall as the bundle grows. There is no buy-back price, because there is no buy-back. And there is no market price, because the terms almost always prohibit transfer, sale or exchange of the balance, which removes the third price by contract rather than by economics.

One price out of three is not a partial market. It is a one-way valve, and the arithmetic of a one-way valve is always the same: you can put money in at a published rate and you cannot take a balance out, at any rate, by any route the terms allow.

Pricing a stake honestly

The bundle you buy sets the price of every stake you will ever place in that currency, and this is the part players get wrong in the opposite direction from the bundle ladder. Buying the largest bundle lowers the money cost of each spin, which sounds like better value for play, and it is - per spin. It also means a larger sum was converted from money into a non-redeemable good in a single transaction, and the more of it that is spent, the less of it is left to be spent later at that same good rate. The number that matters is not the rate. It is the money you transferred in, which is fixed at purchase and cannot be recovered.

Worked example - one spin, two bundles, and a session (illustrative) Stake: 1,000 coins per spin. Illustrative rates: 1,000 coins per GBP 1 (smallest bundle) and 1,600 coins per GBP 1 (largest).
Cost of one spin on the smallest bundle: 1,000 ÷ 1,000 = GBP 1.00.
Cost of one spin on the largest bundle: 1,000 ÷ 1,600 = GBP 0.625, shown as GBP 0.63.
Difference per spin: GBP 0.375, or 37.5% cheaper - (1.00 − 0.625) ÷ 1.00 - for the same stake in the same game.
A session of 20 spins: 20,000 coins, costing GBP 20.00 on the small bundle or GBP 12.50 on the large one.
Now the return. At an illustrative 96% return-to-player, a 20,000-coin session returns about 19,200 coins: 0.96 × 20,000. Those coins have a published purchase price of about GBP 19.20 at the small bundle's rate - and a sale price of none, so their value in your bank account is GBP 0.00.
The money you spent is gone whether or not the session went well. The return figure is a property of the game and is denominated in a currency you bought; it is not a return of the money you bought it with.

Four things to work out before the first purchase

The coin stake in moneyDivide the stake by the coins-per-pound rate of the bundle you are actually buying, not the headline rate of the largest one. That figure is your cost per spin, and it is the number to compare with the alternative of not playing.
The money you are transferringThe bundle price is a one-way conversion. Before paying it, decide whether that sum is money you intended to spend rather than money you intended to hold, because the second option is not available afterwards.
The pace the balance impliesDivide the balance by the coin stake to get a number of plays, then divide by the number of days the terms allow before expiry or inactivity rules bite. A large balance bought at a good rate and played slowly is a balance bought to be lost to a clock.
Where the return arrivesWinnings, if any, arrive in the same non-redeemable currency. Unless the product grants a redeemable currency and you satisfy its rules, a good session produces more of the thing you cannot sell.

What the shop does with the same arithmetic

Coins are also spent outside the games, on items that exist only inside the product. The closed economy prices those items in coins too, which means the money price of an item depends on the bundle rate in exactly the way a spin does - and a discount that falls out of a bundle decision is not a saving on the item, it is a saving on the currency. The clause list is where the expiry and forfeiture rules that decide whether the balance survives long enough to be spent are actually written down.

One thing this page is not saying. It is not saying a play-money product is a fraud, and it is not saying the games are not the games they claim to be. The currency is disclosed as virtual in the terms, the price in the bundle screen is the price, and the absence of a sale price is a design decision that the product is entitled to make. What the page is saying is narrower and harder to argue with: a balance whose purchase price is published and whose sale price is not has a value on the way in and no value on the way out, and every number a player reads about that balance should be understood in that direction.