Top online casinos

What to look for in an online casino

Even with the carefully selected list above, you're given a lot of options to choose from. So how do you go about finding your perfect online casino?

Ultimately, it comes down to knowing what you want and then seeing where you can find it. That sounds easy enough, but unless you know how to differentiate, you'll be left searching in the dark!

To help you, we've listed below some factors you should consider when comparing online casinos.

---

Games selection

A casino may have over 2000 games but if 1900 of them are Slots and you're looking to play Pai Gow Poker, that number is irrelevant. For Slots players, it's relatively simple as the games list of most casinos will cater for you, so it comes more down to knowing the games you enjoy (see Software below) and finding which casinos offer them.

For Table Games players, it's quite a bit harder as not every casino will offer what you're looking for. Most will probably have versions of Roulette and Blackjack, but not all will offer Baccarat and very few will offer Pai Gow Poker and Sic Bo. Even for Blackjack fans, it can be difficult to find casinos that offer the specific variety (Switch, Surrender etc) that you like.

Before registering, have a good look through the entire games list (it should be easy enough to find on the home page) and check that they offer what you want.

---

Software providers

Linked in with the above, after you've played online for a while, you'll start to get an idea of the software you enjoy. Each provider has a different look and feel to their games and it may be that you prefer the card visuals or even the background music of one provider over another, whether that's NetEnt, Rival, Microgaming etc.

Many modern casinos offer games from a number of suppliers, but when you know which provider(s) you like, you'll have another factor to help with your future decision making.

---

Licences

The early days of online gambling were a little like the Wild West, with a lot of unscupulous operators setting up with a mindset of making a quick profit out of unsuspecting, slightly naive gamblers. These rogue operators have largely been run out of town by the various national regulators who now monitor the industry. No genuine casino has anything to fear from being licensed in their jurisdiction - if nothing else, it proves their legitimacy. All of our casino are licensed (and proudly display thise licences) but if you find one that isn't, our advice is to ignore it, no matter how tempting the offers may be.

---

Finance options

The ability to easily fund your account is vital in making online gambling as frictionless as possible. Different countries have different levels of friction, but the bottom line is that you should have a number of different methods available to you for both depositing and withdrawing, with short timescales and minimal fees. If you can't get money into your account or, worse still, out again, just walk away!

---

Customer Support

Unlike a land-based casino, where pit bosses, croupiers and cashiers are very visible, playing online can feel like a solitary experience. So, if something goes wrong, or you just need some advice on the subtleties of a game, you need to know you have someone to speak to.

Our casino review pages include Customer Support as one of the aspects that feed into the overall casino rating. Our preference is for 24/7 Live Chat, manned by experts, not automated responses, with separate sections for Games help, Financial support and general queries.

---

Player Safeguards

These days, a lot of attention is quite rightly placed on ensuring that players view online gambling as a leisure pursuit, one in which you can choose to spend some of your hard-earned money on entertainment, much as you would by going to a restaurant, cinema or sporting event. Although casino gambling gives you the potential for occasional financial reward, it should never be seen as a guaranteed way to make money. Once people start to chase losses and get into a situation where they're spending more than they can afford to lose, then gambling becomes a big problem, with potentially huge repercussions for the players and their families, friends and jobs.

For this reason, we give a lot of credit to those casinos who have safeguarding measures in place such as weekly deposit limits, session time limits, self-exclusion, time outs etc. No casino should have anything to fear from allowing players to make sensible choices. A casino that doesn't allow this is one you should stay away from.

---

Bonus offers

It may seem strange to list bonus offers as the last item on this list, when bonuses are one of the major ways online casinos promote themselves to a new audience. But that level of promotion should give you a clue as to why they do it! Ask yourself if any casino would heavily push anything that made them a loss. Of course not. So the implication is that bonuses are not really as 'free' as they sound.

We cover this in detail in our article 'The casino bonus trap' and it makes sense to read that before signing up at a new casino but the basic point to bear in mind is that casinos don't take risks. They've very carefully and cleverly assessed the bonus offers to ensure that they're enticing enough to draw in new players, but not so reckless that they could lose money in the long run. Hence why bonuses are generally aimed at Slots games and Slots players, and you have to look very hard to find a bonus aimed at Blackjack, Roulette or Baccarat players.

You don't need to take out a bonus offer to register at a new casino, and in many cases it would be the wrong thing to do - if you were a Baccarat player looking to get down to serious play on the tables, having to rip through a wagering requirement by playing on Slots before you can play Baccarat would not be the best use of your playing time, or budget!