Casino Tips: 4 Steps To Identifying Your Next Casino Platform
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Estimates for the number of casinos and gaming platforms operating online today vary from 2,500 to 7,000, depending on which estimate you use. Either way, that’s an impressive range of options for any gamer to explore.
What’s more, the vast majority of these are feature-rich, secure and reliable—but not all of them.
Knowing what to look for to ensure you can enjoy gaming within the confines of a secure and quality platform makes all the difference. In light of this, here we’re breaking down our top online casino tips for identifying and choosing the right gaming platform for you.
Licensing
When assessing a new online casino or iGaming platform you’re interested in patronizing, the first thing you should check is that it is licensed and regulated by one of the leading gambling authorities.
Often these agencies cover specific regions—such as the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC), which verifies that UK-based platforms are in compliance with British gambling laws. Other times, online casinos are covered by gambling commissions that license coverage internationally online.
Popular examples of these include Curaçao eGaming (CEG), the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC). Suffice to say, if the platform you’re looking at is entirely unlicensed, this should be considered a serious red flag.
Variety
Another deceptively simple way of rooting out the platforms that's worth your time and money is to survey what each offers in the way of variations and alternative rule-sets for popular games. There are numerous reasons for this.
For one, by offering multiple versions of the same game, a casino provider demonstrates that it has the resources at its disposal to invest in diversifying its offerings. Secondly, multiple variants can also be an expression of a provider’s global reach and appeal, particularly when regional versions of popular titles such as roulette are offered.
Finally, variety highlights a commitment to deliver a quality experience for patrons, replete with all the features they would reasonably expect.
Security
Being able to trust that a website or app will keep your confidential information secure is vital, irrespective of its focus. But when it comes to real-money gaming, it’s especially important to make sure that the platform you’re going to use has up-to-date security features.
By far the simplest way to assess at a glance whether the site you’re looking at is in compliance with modern web-standard security protocols, is to check whether it has SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certification.
In effect, this means that information traveling between the site’s servers and your IP is encrypted, which significantly limits the chance for your data to be intercepted. To identify whether a website has SSL, simply look to its URL (web address). If it begins with “https://”, you’re good to go. If, however, it begins with “http://” it should be treated with caution.
Likewise, if a website looks old or outdated, this can be a signal that its security components are equally out of touch with current web standards.
Compatibility
In 2022, gaming on mobile accounted for almost half of the industry’s revenue. After all, approximately 83% of the global population owns a smartphone—a figure far higher than the proportion of people who own a game console, desktop PC or laptop. This makes the mobile market incredibly important to gaming providers across the industry, including those belonging to the iGaming sector.
If you find a platform that offers broad compatibility with mobile platforms—i.e. its website is designed in such a way that it renders well and is completely functional on a smartphone or tablet, this is a good sign that the platform is aware of its key demographics, which bodes well for the features and services it will likely offer.
Some platforms even offer dedicated apps for use on mobile platforms. These kinds of optimizations represent critical quality-of-life improvements for the end user, and as such are definitely a good sign of a platform worth your interest.
