The internet has well and truly caught the attention of casinos and bookies, with more and more of the established players taking their places alongside the existing online gambling startups.

To encourage more users to sign up to their online gambling sites, online casinos are offering free money, in the form of a sign up bonus. Competition between online gambling sites is fierce, and due to this some of the amounts of money you can get just for creating an account are pretty spectacular.

Signing up solely to claim these sign up bonuses from online gambling sites is called scalping. As the amount of the bonus has increased, with online casinos vying for new users, so has the number of ingenuity of the scalpers. Gambling sites have tried to manage this by requiring new users to play a certain number of games, or to make a certain number of wagers, before allowing them to withdraw their bonuses.

Responding to this, the scalpers started ploughing their money into games which had low odds - like Roulette, Blackjack, Craps and Baccarat. Casinos replied by placing limits on how you can withdraw your money - for example, only letting you make withdrawals after wagering a certain amount, or having been a user for a certain period of time - or even making you play a number of games first.

By placing restrictions on how soon you can get your money out, and how much of it you can access at any one time, online casinos are hoping to tempt new users but without carrying much financial risk to themselves. However, by repeatedly placing smaller wagers on certain games, it's possible to quickly and easily claim this free money.

Many games have low odds, meaning it's just as likely that you or the house could win. These are ideal games to start using your sign up bonus on - the most popular 'low risk' ones being Blackjack and Roulette.

Rather than risking your free money by placing large wagers, the secret here is to gamble small amounts. Not only does this let you get familiar with the site's interface, and how the game is played - it also means any losses won't significantly eat into your pot.

In this way, even with no prior gambling experience, you can play a number of games and quickly satisfy the online casinos terms for withdrawing the sign up bonus. With a bit of luck and patience, you can even gain a big boost to your cash pot.