OnlineCasino.eu:
Online Casino Guide & Top Best Online Gambling Sites

Flash or instant casinos vs download casinos

There’s a huge amount of choice in the marketplace. The most basic, binary choice you’ll have to make is between an instant online casino or a downloadable casino app. The birth of mobile casinos has made this choice much more prevalent. Download casinos were never as popular on desktops where big-screen browsing and great quality internet connections made using online casinos a no-brainer. The choice is less clear-cut on mobiles. Apps are an established way to access a lot of services on smaller screens. Online casinos have been quick to offer apps to their customers.

Online vs Apps

Most players – 65% is one figure, though it’s hard to be accurate with these things – now use phones to gamble. Apps generally offer a better experience than browsing on mobile. But don’t instantly dive in and download, even if you are playing on a small-screen device. Playing online via a browser will always give you access to the most recent version of a game, using the latest technology and software – usually HTML5 and Flash.

Gambling with an App

With an app, you need to make sure you keep your app updated. You’re also going to have another icon on your desktop and another process using up your memory and connection – and we all know apps do stuff when we’re not interacting with them. There are advantages to apps though. Accessing them via the online stores of the big operators – Google, Apple, Windows – means you’re guaranteed that some sort of quality check has gone into approving the product for sale (don’t take this for granted though and always play safe).

Apps are almost always quicker to use. Again, we recommend you don’t take this as read. Apps cover a wide range of sophistication – it might be nothing more than a bookmark to a website – so check each one individually. We see one major drawback with apps though, even as companies pour more resources into them and improve service and operation all the time. That is that an app might force you to stay on one site longer than you should.

All the way through this guide we’ll emphasise choice, the benefits of choice for customers in pushing innovation, improvement and generosity from operators. That only works if customers move around though! It’s an established fact that consumer inertia is a big driver for the terrible experience customers have with banks, utilities, and transport companies. So, by all means, download an app, but don’t be afraid to delete it if it stops being the best option for you. Keep checking sites like ours for the latest online casino sites, which might be offering more games, better bonuses and a better experience.

EU Gambling Laws

The first thing you should do at any casino is to check that it is legal for you to use this particular casino site from the location where you currently are. Failure to do this leaves you open to a whole load of hassle, pain and disappointment. Trying to get around these restrictions is a big way in which scammers pick out vulnerable players to rip off. Just accept the law!

The sector is not yet covered by any specific EU legislation. That means each country can set its own regulations so long as they respect the EU’s founding principles, which means that businesses from one EU country should be able to operate in other EU countries without unreasonable restrictions. That right though doesn’t override the legal rights of EU countries to make their own decisions on the legality of gambling or particular gambling games.

The EU says it would like countries to work together in order to give consumers more protection. In order to do this, there is an effort to produce a voluntary EU-wide standard on regulation. This is likely to focus on issues like keeping minors away from EU online casino sites and cracking down on the use of online gambling sites for money laundering.

Nothing in EU gambling laws should stop players from enjoying their favourite casino sites. Wherever you are you need to make sure that what you are doing is legal in the jurisdiction you are in. It’s a good idea to check up on the licensing of your internet casino site every time you use it.

What makes an online casino safe and legal?

How do you keep a check on the safety of your favourite sites? Again, this is a possible weakness of using mobile apps to access your favourite sites, as you might find yourself simply returning again and again to the same place without checking that licences are up to date. This is something that you should always do. Make no exceptions!

The regulatory authorities haven’t always kept pace with the Internet. For example, in the UK it used to be legal to offer gambling services if you were licensed in another country. They have since cracked down, and these days you’ll need to see a UK Gambling Commission licence on the site if you want to play safely and legally in the UK.

Other countries have their own regimes. It has been common – for tax and regulatory reasons – to register sites in Malta. That’s fine, Mala is in the EU, but make sure that there is local licensing too if that’s what the law in your country says.

Safe gambling is a matter of reputation

Safe online casinos should be relatively easy to spot. A name you’ve heard of is useful. A good reputation in review sites and on forums – gamblers love to talk! – is an added extra. It should go without saying that your site should look good. Top online casinos should work when you click around the site. Best internet casinos should be well-designed and functional and well written in the language you want to use it in.

Best online casinos should have numerous help options, including as a gold standard, a telephone number if the country where you’re playing. You can go further if you like, and we don’t think that there’s any harm in being ultra-careful. This is your money, so if you want to throw it away then be our guests. Further checks you could make are the existence of a street address that you can check in an EU country or one with a high legal standard.

How to avoid gambling/casino scams

Avoiding bad casino sites can be harder. Why? Because they’re set up to fool you. So all the things that we tell you to look for in a good and reputable online casino site, a scammer will try to replicate! Do you want good baking partners? Fine, the scammer will Photoshop the logo and stick them no their front page. The same with licensing. The same with game partnerships. We don’t want you to be scared when you gamble online, but we do want you to be cautious. Follow safe browsing rules all the time – HTTPS in the address bar, please!

We’ll also mention safe gambling advice because it’s when you’re scrabbling after the money you’ve lost or you’re gambling to make money or to alter your feelings that you’re most vulnerable to being scammed. Please – we can’t say this loudly and often enough – play safely and play smart: accept that gambling is entertainment and that it might cost you money to play. Never play when you’re upset, and never play with money that you can’t afford to lose.

Safe online casino techniques

These safe gambling techniques are a great way to stay away from scam casino sites. Beware too of novelty. The appearance of new casino sites is exciting. Scammers know that. A decent designer can knock up a site in no time. Hosting is cheap. Advertising is cheap. So keep your wits about you when new online casinos come onto the market. It’s best not to just accept some anonymous posting in a forum as a sign that a site is good. You need to check it out properly before you sign up, look for publicity in mainstream gambling news sites and discussion. Everyone wants something for free, and scammers know this. So an offer that looks too good to be true is probably too good to be true.

No deposit bonuses are rare in the business because they’re not really a sustainable way to run a business. So if you see one then make sure you check out the site that’s offering it really thoroughly.

We’ll add an extra warning for banking options. It’s great to have a wide range of well-known banking sites listed on a casino’s front page. It’s fine if that includes a Bitcoin or other crypto payment option, but if the only way you can give money to a site is via cryptocurrencies then you should be on your guard.

How to find the best online casinos and what makes a top online casino stand out?

If all this sounds negative then we hope we’re not putting you off. The vast majority of players have fantastic online casino experiences and never come within a million gigabytes of a scammer. And the market has never been livelier – there are loads of brilliant new sites popping up all the time, most of them are high quality and getting better all the time and here at OnlineCasino.eu we actually list some of the best online casinos in Europe.

What grabs you will be down to your taste, particularly when it comes to design, but we think these are must-haves for a top online casino site:

Beautiful looks – on all platforms

It’s superficial, but a well-designed site makes playing an online casino a pleasure. Flashy graphics aren’t everything – and they aren’t to everyone’s taste – but a top online casino will clearly present your options in a way that’s easy to understand. If you want to play on a mobile or tablet platform that should be easy too. But don’t take words for granted, check out if the site you want to use actually works well on the platform you want to use it on.

Great performance – on all platforms

You should have a click round any web casino site before you sign up – and beware of sites that won’t let you look around but keep you on an endless loop of sign-up pop-ups. You’re looking for clear design and easy to use menus that take you where you want to go when you click or tap there. There’s now so much choice in the online slot market in particular that a good method of categorising slots is a big plus.

Well hello!

Your customers should be valued by the site you sign up at. The best way to see that at the moment is in the shape of a whopping big welcome bonus. Welcome bonuses are seldom as good as they appear at first sight. The small print will tie you to a site for a while at least. But that doesn’t mean that they’re to be sneezed at. Even better than a big upfront offer is a big upfront offer backed up with a good calendar of promotions or other community activities and deals. When you look at a site make sure you check out their upcoming events – it shouldn’t just be worthwhile to join, it should be worthwhile to stick around.

In conclusion, choose top online casinos if you would like to play the best online casino games in a safe format.

Don’t say NO to Free Online Casinos

All these warnings we’ve been throwing at you must have sounded pretty scary. Well, guess what? They only apply if you’re paying! Well almost. There are risks of hacking and data privacy wherever you go these days, but the real danger for bad decision making comes when you’re handing over real cash. So when you get offered the chance to play for free, grab it with both hands.

Not only can you play safely, but the free play also gives you the option to explore games, casino systems, and interfaces with no risk. You’d be a fool not to try out a free casino game before you shove a load of money in the slot. Even some slots can be sophisticated and complex these days, so you need to know that you’ll make the right call when the time comes. Some free online casino casinos will allow you to check out games in demo mode, but you may have to sign up to do so. That’s OK, but it might not be as good as playing the game at a dedicated demo or slot review site.

Real money casino gambling

Hopefully, that free play will stand you in good stead when you do have a balance-full of cash to spend. This is when you really need to keep your nerve and have your wits about you. We’ve covered a lot of this ground already, and hopefully, most of the people have enough common sense to navigate an online casino site safely. That’s not quite what the casino wants you to do though. While all the best online casinos offer advice on safe gambling – don’t play at ones that don’t – they really want you to stay and play as much as possible, and they are counting on you losing. It’s a hard fact, but that’s their business model. So be cool!

Don’t get swept up in winning streaks, flashing lights, beautiful dealers, amazing promos, superstitions or betting systems. Set limits. If you’re vulnerable perhaps it’s a good idea to make it difficult for you to overspend – never put too much cash in your account, use a dedicated online wallet for gambling only and limit the amount of cash in there, check out and use any self-limiting mechanisms on the sites you play at. And learn the games, before getting stuck in and enjoying your online casino experience.

Online casino tips

Enjoyment is the biggest key to a good online casino experience. Gambling is entertainment and you have to pay for entertainment – that’s as good a motto as an online game player can have. This doesn’t mean that you won’t win and that you won’t win big. That’s the magic that keeps us coming back. But don’t go into any gambling session expecting or needing to win money. Go in expecting to have a good time, switch off your financial antenna and enjoy yourself!