Online Casinos

Online Casinos & The USA

Since the UIGEA law passed in 2006, for many American residents the options for gambling at online casinos seem to be getting more limited by the day. Many top operations pulled out of the US in fear, leaving many shady operators with more exposure to the market - bad news for the US gambling public.

But there is some help at hand. OnlinecasinosUSA.net has a section that allows US residents to select their State and see which of the good casinos will still accept them. The list only deals with the reputable casinos (I know as I was tasked with doing the research!).

Worth checking out if you want to play it safe, but bear in mind that even if a casino will accept your bets, that is no guarantee that online gambling is legal in your State so check your laws before you play.

Here’s the link: Online Casinos By US State

William Hill, CPays and Webroute To Team Up

An interesting development in my inbox this morning. It appears WIlliam Hill casino is ditching the Cryptologic casino platform and moving to Playtech, while at the same time merging with the infamous CPays brand and the lesser known offshoot Webroute Services.

Interesting and probably good too. For those that don’t know, CPays are a very aggressive and generally unpopular online casino operator who manage a few brands. I’ve never liked them myself - they are happy to have spamming affiliates and do whatever it takes to get players and keep them, and complaints are numerous. Whenever I came across a website with their brands on I intuitively knew the affiliate cared more about their commissions than about the players they were trying to inform. They are very closely linked to Playtech and recently, Webroute Services appeared  

New Online Casinos Reviewed

I’ve been busy playing a couple of new online casinos recently for the purpose of reviewing them. Well, new to me anyway, although the companies behind them are long established. Both these casinos are focused on the UK, European and in the case of Canbet, the Asian markets, so no US players allowed, but if you want to read the reviews, follow the links below to my casino reviews site:

Canbet casino review (Microgaming)

Cantor casino review (Proprietary)

Worth noting that Canbet casino also has live dealer games, poker room and a sportsbook, while Cantor casino is run by the large globally known Cantor Fitzgerald - unusual for a financial institution to launch an online casino but this one is a bit different and has some original games too.

Update: Here’s a nice touch from Cantor (my review). I played on their “Beta” slot, “Heavy Metal Steel”…they say it’s beta and only available in fun mode and give an email address where you can send feedback. So I did - nice slot (nudity and violence!) - but areas where I felt it could improve. Today I received a thank you email and they credited my real money account with £50! Now that’s good service.

Top 10 Online Casinos

As a regular player who has played way more online casinos than I care to mention, I thought it would be a neat idea to put together a list of my Top 10 for UK players. As I live in the UK I feel well qualified enough to justify my choices, so I stuck the full list up at Casino UK. Clearly any list like this is going to be subjective, but at least I can say I have played at them all and know my way around.

Many of the names you will know, but a handful you may not and there are some very good reasons to check them out. I think I might follow this up with a list of 10 casinos not to play! Ooh…controversial!

Incidentally, none of the casinos on the list will take US players.

Aladdins Palace Casino

A new online casino has launched this week. Aladdin’s Palace Casino ( I keep spelling it Alladins Palace d’oh!) is a new RTG (Realtime Gaming) online casino that is  part of the successful Club World Casinos brand. Now personally, I am very wary of new RTG casinos as they have a reputation for being less than strict who licences them, but in this instance, bearing in mind Club World’s good reputation, I think it’s going to be OK.

From what I read, it’s got all the games but is finding it’s feet. Not many players have stumbled across it yet so it’s difficult to know just how it will perform, but  

Ladbrooks? Ladbrookes? Uh-uh…try Ladbrokes!

Looking through some stuff on the web today and it amazed me how many people mis-spell “Ladbrokes”. Apparently last month there were over 60,000 Google searches for “Ladbrookes” and nearly 50,000 for “Ladbrooks”. It made me think how the Internet has changed branding concepts.

I mean back in the day, pre Internet, no-one probably thought twice about naming a brand with a pronunciation that sounded different to the spelling. But these days, potentially it not only allows traffic to bypass you, but also opens the door for competitors to capitalise. Or in Ladbrokes case, affiliates. That said, I notice that ahead of all the mis-spellings when you search on “Ladbrooks” or “Ladbrookes”, the real Ladbrokes still come top. But that’s largely down to Google’s intelligence I guess.

And even more amazingly we recently had the much hyped launch of the “Cuil” search engine (pronounced “cool”). Well I would have thought that, while clearly original, the name “Cuil” is going to miss out on some traffic. Ironic it’s a search engine, and even more ironic than on the day it launched, it didn’t even appear on the first page of it’s own search results.

Anyway, there you go…my thought for the day.

King Neptunes Casino Joins Belle Rock

Just received a mail from a casino I used to play at - King Neptunes - to say that they have been brought under the Belle Rock Entertainment brand banner. King Neptunes was part of the excellent Trident Lounge group but a while back was sold (with Trident Lounge Casino) to Carmen Media. No surprise here bearing in mind carmen own Belle Rock, who in turn manage the Carmen casino brands Jackpot City, Lucky Nugget, Gaming Club and River Belle. Good Microgaming casinos - like Neptunes - with a long and pretty solid history. The only downside is that BR support is pretty slow - it takes me anything up to 12 hours to get a response on a bad day. Otherwise, a pretty positive move.

Online Casinos & The Law

It goes without saying that different jurisdictions have different laws to govern online gambling, and as a player you need to be aware of your local laws before you deposit. A common mistake is to think that because you can find a way to deposit, you’ll be okay, but the laws also govern the casinos so getting paid might be trickier than you think if you live in a country where gambling online is illegal.

Below, I’ll look at the law in the USA nd Europe in a bit more detail, but always be sure your country of residence is comfortable with the thought of allowing you freedom to spend your own money before you play an online casino or poker room.

The US

The law regards online gambling has always been fuzzy in the US since the inception of the web. Until relatively recently, many casinos were generally happy to take US players, but in October 2006, the US slid in the “UIGEA” legislation that forbade banks and financial institutions from allowing their customers to place