online casino guide

Hello and welcome to this definitive location for online casino information. This has become the only true casino watchdog site online. Think of it as your trustworthy online casino guide and online casino forum. You are welcome to become a member (takes 15 seconds!) of the online casino forum and be part of the growing number of players who have become informed enough to decide which casinos deserve their patronage. The beauty of the casino forum system is that the members can discuss any problems and ask any questions they would like to fellow members of the casino forum. Although a consensus of opinion in the casino forum may show some questionable casinos to be okay in general, you will often find such casinos blacklisted here due to unresolved problems from the distant past. This Online Casino Guide aims to show the REAL truth about online casinos.
Only reliable online casinos are promoted. I've been playing online casinos for nearly nine years now and you can trust my selection! It really is fun and can be especially lucrative if you put your mind to it and take advantage of promotional offers. If you play mainly for entertainment purposes then you really won't be disappointed with the range of online casinos available.
The online casinos listed have been in existence for a while and most license their customized software from Microgaming Systems. I've played many kinds of online casinos along the years and a large number have been powered by Microgaming. Microgaming software is very popular with players and seems honest and fair in my experience. I'll only list online casinos that have been reliable, have a good reputation and are legally licensed to operate. You will be pleased to know that Microgaming has in the past backed up players and paid them in rare cases of a licensee going out of business.
Do they pay? Are they fair?YES, online casinos do pay out and YES, the majority seem to play fair!There of course cannot be any guarantees. Online casinos have the technology to behave essentially the same as a physical casino and to simulate a roulette wheel or deck of cards almost perfectly by generating random numbers. It requires some understanding of statistics to believe this, but playing a game online should have identical odds to the game in a real casino. You should realise that it is still possible that online casinos cheat. It's arguable that the major software companies that license the online casinos have a lot to lose if they are found to cheat. Many smaller companies have been found out though which isn't a very good sign. Many are still going today that cheat or at one time cheated. Our forum will tell you which ones to avoid.
The fact is that many online casino software manufacturers take a percentage of player's losses as well as license fees for their software. They therefore may be tempted to cheat slightly to increase profits. It is possible that cheating goes undetected if it only occurs in special circumstances that are hard to detect. In my experience I've not had any cause for concern with most online casino software. I've occasionally had very bad streaks but also incredibly good ones, all of which is normal with a fair game. Microgaming Blackjack (single-deck) is one of the best in terms of theoretical payback and on average it returns nearly 99.9% of all bets if you play the best strategy. Being almost an even game, you will have as much chance of winning as of losing. If an online casino shaved off a fraction more (eg. another 0.02%), it could make more profit with little chance of detection. Even if it rigged the blackjack by 1% (returning nearly 99%), it would take around 100,000 blackjack bets to have a good chance of detecting this from the results.
Would you be concerned if the actual payback in blackjack was 99% instead of 99.9%? Well, it seems many thousands of internet gamblers take this added risk. It's possible to win in an online casino that is rigged, you just have less chance of doing it. If the cheating is more blatant, such as a 95% payback or less in blackjack, it is possible to detect cheating very easily with far less hands/bets needed in the test. One thing to remember is that anything is possible even if the outcome is extremely rare in a fair game but repeated testing should result in ever worsening odds if cheating continues. There is a calculator on this site (coming soon) to help you calculate the odds of a particular result. You will just need to enter the number of hands/games played and your final result in bet units won or lost (you will need to convert your result a bit if you didn't bet the same amount each hand). Of course, you will be bound to get very unlucky sometimes if you play regularly, but if a result is particularly unlikely and other players have similar terrible luck at the same online casino, then it is good evidence of cheating and not just bad luck.
If a skill based game in an online casino doesn't have identical odds to the real thing then that casino will be blacklisted here. It is hard to prove if something is amiss sometimes if the cheating is subtle but in many cases it can be found quite easily. Games such as slots are different because they are programmed for a particular payout and the odds aren't determined by the player's skill. Some online casino websites don't claim to be fair but it should be assumed that a player expects normal odds for games such as blackjack and roulette.