Online casinos, articles and information. I have played or reviewed all of the casinos in this section at one time or another. I generally only play the better casinos so I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t find any that treat the player badly, or don’t pay, but obviously everyone has a different idea about how an online casino should treat them. Safe to say, these all have good reputations in the industry.
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.
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.
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 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