The importance of rating guidelines
Rating guidelines are a critical component of our online casino evaluation process, ensuring:
- Objectivity. Instead of relying on personal perceptions and introducing bias, we use these guidelines with clear requirements and scoring guidelines.
- Consistency. Using the same principles to score dozens of casinos lets us compare them and recognize the best and worst platforms.
- Transparency. We share our rating guidelines openly to ensure you understand our process and can make the most of our findings.
Criteria we pay attention to when rating online casinos
To create our ranking, we evaluate each online casino across nine criteria. To help you understand our scoring methodology, we’ll go over each of these criteria and explain their value and our evaluation approach.
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License and security
Licensing is critical for online gambling platforms, as it ensures your protection and helps you avoid online scams. Before researching and testing any casino, we verify its gambling license with the relevant authorities, such as the UK Gambling Commission, Malta Gambling Authority, and other licensing institutions. Only the platforms with gambling licenses from reputable authorities make it to our list.
At the same time, we evaluate security measures in place, such as SSL encryption, data privacy and protection terms, including the right to be forgotten. Most importantly, we assess the payment platforms and only recommend casinos with reliable payment options. -
Game variety
First, we look at the list of software providers an online casino offers. We prioritize platforms that partner with multiple reputable developers, such as Playtech, Netent, Yggdrasil, and others.
Next, we analyze the game catalog to evaluate its diversity. Our team estimates the number of slots and their variety, including three-reel and five-reel slots, bonus games, and other features. Moreover, we assess casino games on offer, including game shows and live dealer games. Although most gamblers have a few select favorites, wide game variety is a sign of excellence when it comes to customer satisfaction and reliability. -
User experience
User-friendliness is not as subjective as you may believe. The best online casinos rely on established layout and navigation patterns that minimize confusion and the number of steps necessary to perform any action. That’s what we like to see and what we rate highest. On the other hand, outdated websites with glitchy animations, broken links, and misleading information rank lowest on our list.
To make our score objective, we usually test online casinos on Windows and iOS devices using several browsers, including Safari, Chrome, and Edge. This eliminates any technological bias our hardware and software may introduce. -
Payment methods
Most gamblers are eager to get their first payouts, but we always start our assessment with a test deposit. After creating a profile and account, we check all the available deposit message methods, limits, and fees. We put our deposit to use while testing the game variety before testing the withdrawal options. Once again, we focus on limits and fees, but we pay special attention to withdrawal times. Our experts compare the actual processing time with what the casinos promise.
This hands-on approach ensures that we share personal experiences, along with fellow gambler reviews, to provide you with a clear idea of how payments work. As a result, you can choose an online casino that won't disappoint. -
Bonuses and promotions
Online casinos are never shy about their bonuses, but we look beyond the astronomical sums to get to the bottom of things. We study the promotion terms to understand if it’s a one-time bonus or if it’s spread across several deposits. We also pay attention to deposit limits, as well as wagering requirements and other conditions that can prevent you from making the most of the bonus. We share all the potential pitfalls and only give high scores to casinos that offer reasonable promotion terms.
Aside from welcome bonuses, we analyze special offers for regular players and compare them to other platforms. As always, we monitor the fine print to notify you of any potential issues. -
Fairness and reputation
Although our research, testing, and data analysis follow industry standards, we cannot remain objective by using the limited data points from our trials. That’s why we study the online casino’s reputation among other industry experts and gamblers. The former may use different scoring methodologies, but if their findings correlate with our own, we know we’re on the right track. The latter offer their insights, even if most player reviews tend to be negative, the same as in any other market.
When researching online reputation, we do not focus on the rankings or stats. Instead, we look through reviews to separate genuine posts from fake and doctored reviews promoting other platforms. This approach ensures we only use valid data to assess casino reputation. -
Customer support
At a perfect online casino, you would never need to contact customer support. Yet our experts are realistic enough to realize issues can arise even with the best platforms. To ensure you can always get in touch with the casino representatives, we study the contact information available and test different contact means, including email, live chat, and hotline. We evaluate the response time, response relevance, and humanity since chatbots are still far from being useful.
To round up our customer support evaluation, we study the FAQ sections and Help Centers. Convenient navigation and search tools can make them even more helpful than contacting the support team. -
Mobile usability
Considering the ongoing shift from desktop to mobile gambling, we assess every casino’s mobile performance. We start by downloading and installing any casino apps available in official stores and testing their functionality by trying several slot and casino games. If no official mobile apps are available, our team will test the mobile interface to gauge its responsiveness and ability to handle graphics and video streaming via mobile networks. Our ranking criteria include user-friendliness, navigation, as well as overall app or website performance on smartphones and tablets. You can ignore this factor if you don’t intend to gamble on mobile. However, it’s still a useful gauge of how committed the casino is to technological advances and regulatory compliance. -
Responsible gambling tools
Responsible gambling practices differ across jurisdictions, so we focus on the toolset available at the online casino. The more features designed to protect vulnerable gamblers there are, the higher the score the platform earns from our team. At the same time, not all responsible gambling tools are equal. For example, sharing a hotline for gambling addiction isn’t as valuable (or highly ranked in our methodology) as daily deposit limits or self-withdrawal functionality. We will specify which responsible gambling tools are in place in each case to help you make an informed decision if you fall into the high-risk gambler category. -
Analyzing data we collected
We use Z-score normalization to analyze the rating criteria and make our comparisons objective and information. The normalization process eliminates the impact of outliers and lets us compare platforms falling on different ends of the spectrum.
It works like this. First, we determine the average across all the casinos and calculate the standard deviation. From there, we normalize the results. Any parameters that are below average gain negative scores, and those above average have positive scores. For example, if the average number of games across all casinos is 1,000, then any platform with under 1,000 games would have a negative Z-score. It would be positive for any casino with over 1,000 games.
Z-score normalization also helps us keep our rating up to date. As our casino database is always increasing, we add new data points to the average and standard deviation calculations, which affect Z-scores. Thanks to automatic calculations, all our rankings remain up to date.
How do we give our scores
After collecting information and running our trials, we score each of the criteria above on a scale of 1 to 5. Five is the highest score that signifies excellent performance, while one is the lowest. Here is a full breakdown of our grading system:
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1 or 2.9 rating
We do not recommend using casinos with any criteria ranking one or two. Such low rankings signify serious problems with security, licensing, payout processing, or customer feedback. Such casinos may try to lure you in with high welcome bonuses, but they are usually not worth the risk.
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3 to 3.9 rating
You can use these casinos at your own discretion. They are relatively safe but have some room for improvement across one or more criteria. You should always weigh the pros and cons and consider your priorities before choosing a casino with a rating under 4.
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4 to 5 rating
These are the best of the best gambling platforms. They have a solid reputation, excellent security, positive customer feedback, and a history of successful payouts.
Please check our rankings regularly since we update our scores and casino information to reflect current regulatory requirements and platform performance.
The team behind the review process
Our team is a small community of online gambling aficionados. Our oldest experts have seen the rise of the industry in the early 2000s, while the rest joined the trend in the last decade.
All of us have first-hand experience with online gambling, including slots, live dealer games, and sports betting. This allows us to combine personal insights with objective data and quantitative analysis results to rank online casinos and offer data-driven recommendations.
We constantly update our rating methodology
We want to help you make informed decisions, and that requires reliable, up-to-date information. That's why we keep a close eye on the changing gambling regulations, technology advancements, and special offers. We account for all of these changes at least once every 3 months.
This ensures our reviews and rankings remain relevant throughout the years.
You will learn about any changes in our rating methodology to ensure you understand how our scores work and guarantee your decisions are based on solid facts.
You will learn about any changes in our rating methodology to ensure you understand how our scores work and guarantee your decisions are based on solid facts.
Why should you trust our reviews?
We have your best interests at heart. Our team is full of gambling experts and data analysts dedicated to testing online casinos and presenting objective findings. We openly share our evaluation methodology and its evolution, and we’re constantly working on improving it and our reviews. Our testing is a lengthy and complex process,
but it allows us to share reliable insights and build trust with Bahrain gamblers. Our commitment to transparency and objectivity has made us a leading authority on online gambling in Bahrain.
