Tips on spotting the best online casino

You may have noticed that it is almost impossible to get truthful and unbiased information on anything to do with online casinos! Almost every site is full of advertising and you get the feeling the websites are more interested in selling, rather than helping you. This has been my experience when trying to choose between different casino companies.

Here we will cover the basics, suggest a site where you can find the best operators and help you avoid the pitfalls that we have experienced in the past. They say knowledge is power, well we will make you feel like a king! You can count on us to give you a few tips when choosing a site that is right for you.

So let's start by considering what an online casino should feature to make your time playing online both enjoyable but safe. Fairness has a huge bearing on your choice of casino, there is no point receiving a fantastic bonus to play the games, if the games themselves are not fair! Thankfully it is now pretty easy to tell if an online casino meets the standard for fairness. Since late 2014, all online casino companies who accept UK customers have to be licensed by the UK gambling commission. You can read more about the best online casinos by visiting this site, all sites featured here are fully licensed and regulated. The Gambling commissions stated purpose is to “keep crime out of gambling, to ensure that gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and to protect children and vulnerable people”, this commitment is of course great news for the consumer as it ensures licensed companies are transparent and the games are honest. So always look for the Gambling commission logo.

One of the biggest attractions to signing up with an online casino company is that they offer new players a welcome bonus to attract you to join them. These bonuses can be a great low cost way to test drive a company to see if they are right for you. However, welcome bonuses are also the number cause of complaints against online casino customers as many people do not realise that there are terms and conditions attached to them.

Play-through or wagering requirements as they are also known are conditions attached to the bonus, this is to prevent a player taking the bonus cash and then withdrawing that money and walking away. Problems arise due to there being differences from company to company in the wagering requirements, we of course strongly advise you check very carefully the terms and conditions of any offer before playing but let us cover the basics.

Let's imagine the casino is offering a “100% matched first deposit”, I check the terms and conditions and it states that the wagering requirement is 15x. What this means in simple terms is that I must place bets and play games to the value of x15 my initial deposit, before I am allowed to cash out the money. So in this example I deposit £100, the casino match my £100 so I have £200 as my bank roll. Under the wagering requirement, I would need to place bets to the value of £1,500 before I am able to cash out any winnings. This may seem high but any winnings I continue to play with count towards this wagering requirement. As mentioned before, this rule is there to prevent bonus abuse. The wagering requirement can vary massively between different companies so ensure you shop around to get the best deal for you.

To make matters a bit more complicated, not all games count the same for wagering requirements! It usually follows a simple rule that the more risk there is in a game, the higher the percentage towards the wagering requirement. For example slots on the vast majority of sites will contribute 100% towards the wagering requirement, so bet a quid and a quid counts towards satisfying the requirement. Lower risk games such as blackjack may only count as 10% towards the requirement, so in that example you need to bet £10 to use £1 of the wagering requirement. This does vary for each online casino so ensure you check that your favourite game does contribute.

So let's recap the two steps we have covered on this page which will ensure you have fun playing online whilst staying safe. Always check for the Gambling Commission logo, this guarantees that the site you are using is fair and regulated. Check the terms and conditions to fully understand the conditions of any bonus you receive, having this understanding can save you a lot of frustration in the future.