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THE RECOMMENDED LIST

Althought much of this information is still accurate, we believe this page is best viewed as a historcal document.

It's not my intention for this to be a non-changing list, but it will become a permanent feature here. Good casinos and good casino games come and go, so we'll be frequently revising this, all with the idea of telling you about places where you should consider playing, whether your game is Blackjack, Craps, Video Poker or Slots. Click on the game of your choice...

Background for the Recommended List

In all humility, I think it's fair to say that this site is at least a little "famous" for telling you which on-line casinos to avoid, but that's obviously only half the story. As we begin a new year, I'd like to begin a new series of articles that tell you about good casinos to consider, should you desire to play online. Please bear in mind that it might not be legal for you to gamble online, due to your local state laws I'm not a lawyer, so please don't take my comments as gospel, but I do believe players in Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin Illinois and Missouri are breaking the law by gambling at internet casinos. That said, I do not know of any player that has ever been prosecuted for doing it; in fact, only one casino/sports book owner has been charged by a state government and he lost his case and will be serving some prison time.

Anyway, what you should do is determine for yourself if gambling at an Internet casino is appropriate, both from a legal and financial point of view. This is my usual disclaimer: those who act on this information do so at their own risk. An additional important statement is that many of the casinos I'll be talking about here are currently advertisers on this site, may have been advertisers in the past or may do so in the future. There are two ways to look at that. The skeptic will think we've recommended these casinos because of the ad revenue we're getting from them and the long-term reader will know that we accept a limited amount of advertising only from casinos with which we feel comfortable; that is, casinos that we would recommend our readers play.

The gambler who chooses to play at Internet casinos has several issues to contend with: are the games honest and will I be paid if I win?

Do Online Casinos Cheat?

Unfortunately, some do. But this doesn't mean all of them cheat. As a person who has exposed quite a few cheaters, I feel qualified to speak on the topic and I can tell you that it's not easy to cheat and get away with it. One advantage we have with Internet casinos over brick-and-mortar casinos is that we can videotape all of our play at an online casino, which is something a brick-and-mortar casino would never permit. Can you imagine your local, friendly casino allowing your brother-in-law to stand behind you and tape your play at a Blackjack table? The accurate record we get from videotaping play at a suspected casino allows us to analyze what really happened, not what we think happened. All over the 'Net, you can find message boards where players are posting their tales of woe, like "XYZ Casino is a bunch of crooks, stay away!" The author then typically goes on to explain that they played some number of hands (usually a small or undefined amount) and lost "x" number of dollars and from that they've concluded that the casino is cheating. The fact is that it takes a large sample of hands to realistically determine if a casino is cheating.

And this doesn't apply to just Blackjack; other casino games can conceivably be "rigged", but many of them have such a large, built-in casino edge that cheating would be foolish. Oh, I know all too well that there are plenty of fools who are running online casinos and if they could cheat, they probably would. But those who are motivated by greed are usually caught because greed is an addiction that has to be fed in bigger and bigger doses. Somewhere along the way their greed will be their downfall.

Will I Get Paid?

This is a much bigger problem than cheating, because the top-rated casino of today can be the bankrupt casino of tomorrow. Those of us who evaluate online casinos have very few tools for rating the financial strength of a given casino, so there have been some surprises in the past. That said, there are also a few "early warning" indicators that have been helpful in the past. One is how they pay their advertising/marketing invoices. Generally speaking, if a casino is having cash flow problems, one of the first expenses they'll cut is banner-type ads at publications like ours. In addition to that, they'll also stop paying any outstanding invoices and word travels fast when that happens. In my 7 years involvement in this business, I have never seen a casino that's about to go out of business continue to pay their advertising bills right up to the very end, so I consider this a reliable indictor. Of course, not every casino advertises with us, so I seldom have first-hand experience with a casino that's in this kind of trouble, but the situation is usually very apparent from postings made on message boards that I frequent and I then try to pass on the information to our readers. Unfortunately, once a casino stops paying its customers in a timely manner, it's usually too late if you have $$$ on deposit there.

Another, albeit less reliable, indicator is a casino that begins offering "too good to be true" bonuses to both new and existing customers. Nearly every casino will try to entice you with a bonus from time-to time, but the ones I'm talking about are those that seem to have an air of desperation about them, especially those that apply to deposits of $500 or more. A casino with casflow problems may be hoping to attract enough new deposits to bail themselves out and that's a good thing if they owe you $$$, but you don't want to be one of the latecomers who gets "stuck." I'm sorry that I cannot be more definitive about this, but I know one when I see it and in time, so will you. Just remember the words, "too good to be true." Especially if you're getting an e-mail each and every day from them.