Sleuth: Researching Online Casinos

By Alex J. Coyne © 2018 Great Bridge Links

You should always research an online casino properly before you give them your money. That’s way easier said than done: Type online casino into your search bar and you’ve got a little over 6, 000, 000 results to look at. Let’s assume that at least a third of these are fake – and at least another third of those might not be worth your time. And, knowing how search results work, some of those search results might not be online casinos at all and instead relevant search results with “online casino” tagged.

Whoops. It doesn’t seem all that easy to pick one now, does it? Take a deep breath: Here’s how you can research your online casino to make sure they’re for real.

Registration and Accreditation

First, you should know that most online casinos and remote gambling operations (like sports betting websites) are required to be registered and accredited in the country in which they are registered. It’s a smart move to look for this information first: It should either be available on the casino’s website itself in the form of a registration number that you can confirm on the relevant authority’s website, or you should be able to request it by sending the casino an e-mail. If they’re able to prove that they’re an accredited gambling provider, then you can already feel safer choosing it as an option.

You might be interested in a new online casino with a European gambling license. Dreamz.com launched in mid 2018, and will soon open up for the UK players as well. Dreamz posts its registration and accreditation information in their footer.

Review Websites

There are plenty of review websites where you can read up on various casino reviews – and we’d suggest that you skim over a couple of these to get a general idea of the online casino you’re looking at. But you should also consider whether or not the review site you’re looking at is a trusted one: A lot of online casino reviews are written by paid writers – so you’ll be safer relying on bloggers and gambling websites you know that post about more than just casino reviews. Many review websites are paid for ones. Trust only sites with casino reviews that you normally would trust with other content, too. 

Getting in Touch

Not sure about the casino just yet? We’d suggest that you contact the casino’s customer support section with any questions that you might have. This gives you a better idea of where to find the customer service and how it works just in case you need to contact them again once you’ve signed up, and it should give you a general idea of what their response time is – if you’re happy with this and they’ve answered your questions, then score another point for this casino.

Forums

In almost any business, you can’t beat real-life word of mouth recommendations: They aren’t paid for, they’re by people just like you and they’ll quickly tell you exactly what their experience was whether it was good of bad. That’s the kind of honesty you need, right? There are a couple of great forums where you can post your questions. Here are some of the most popular ones – and note that many of these sites also post casino reviews that you can rely on:

• Ask Gamblers
• CasinoMeister
• Casino Listings
• About Slots
• Casino Advisor Forum