Onlince Casinos V Land based casinos

Online casinos have many advantages over land based casinos, one of these is the convenience they offer, especially since there aren’t that many land based casinos in the UK especially outside the main cities. There are however some disadvantages and risks to online casinos, but if you take some precautions then you should be absolutely safe.
The online casino industry has experienced explosive growth in the last few years, in fact sometimes I forget that the industry is in fact only about 8 eight years old!! The competition between the various online casinos has never been fiercer but this is fantastic for us the players as they end up offering bigger and better bonuses and incentives all the time to tempt you to play with them. At the same time the graphics and choice of games continues to improve at a staggering rate.
Bonuses
The majority of online casinos offer a registration bonus which is added to your account. This bonus can be anywhere between 20% to 400% depending on the casino.
This bonus will have a maximum amount associated with it, which again varies but is usually around £250, although the highest I have seen so far is £2450! The bonus is subject to various regulations and requirements which you should read about in the casinos terms and requirements but the most important is what is referred to as the playthrough rule. This rule stipulates the amount of wagering you need to do before you can take the bonus money out as cash. For example if the bonus is 100% and the playthrough is 8x then if you deposited £100 they would match that with £100 giving you an initial bankroll of £100, You would then need to make a total number of bets worth £800 (8 x £100) before you could take out the £100 bonus.
By playing in a smart way on games like Blackjack and going from casino to casino a smart player can use this bonus to maximise their winnings. Land base casinos also offer incentives like free hotel rooms, meals, entertainment etc but these are only for the high rollers, the beauty of the comps offered by online casinos is that it doesn’t matter how much you play for the bonuses are relative. This isn’t to say that high rollers don’t get rewarded, certain casinos actively target high rollers with special bonuses.
If you play optimal strategy at blackjack then you should end up with about £180 after having fulfilled the wagering requirements, in other words £80 profit.
As you can imagine this isn’t too popular with the casinos and you can quickly get blacklisted if you do it all the time, one way to get around it is to actually exceed the wagering requirement , in the example above I would recommend wagering a total of £1500 instead of the £800, doing this will make you less conspicuous but will reduce the money you can make. It is also important to stick to lots of small bets as this works in your favour.
Even if you take these precautions I still wouldn’t recommend this type of playing. The money to be earned really isn’t that much and it damages the bonus schemes for everyone. An example of this is with Denmark where because of widespread abuse they have different wagering requirements to other countries. In addition a lot of casinos have actually excluded blackjack from there bonus scheme. The best way to think of the bonus is that it gives you a bigger bankroll and that if you should loose this bonus then it’s not your own money you are loosing, just the casino winning back money it gave to you. It also gives you more opportunities to chase progressive jackpots
Other advantages with Online Casinos
As I already mentioned the bonuses offered at online casinos are a big advantage compared to land based casinos. Online casinos usually have rules which are more in the players favour and the overall payout percentage is often larger. Online casinos usually offer an overall payout percentage of between 95-99%.
Even though playing at a land based casino can be a lot of fun as you can sometimes almost cut the atmosphere with a knife there is something very convenient about being able to sit in your favourite chair at home, with some snacks and perhaps a refreshing beverage or two. It also works out a lot cheaper as you don’t have any additional expenses, like travel, taxi, paying for over priced drinks etc. As regards the atmosphere I think that it can often work against you because you get swept away with all the noise and flashing lights and loose your head whereas playing at home there are no distractions and you can focus much more on your game.
Dangers of online casinos
I would like to stress at this point that all the casinos that we list on our pages are quality casinos but there are unfortunately some shady casinos in the market, which use crooked software to cheat the player or don’t pay out when you win etc. The golden rule here is that if there is a casino that we haven’t listed in our table then treat it with suspicion. It is however possible that we haven’t got round to reviewing it yet, in that case we would be more than happy if you told us about it and we will check it out for you, just drop us an email. In addition if you particularly like or dislike one of the casinos we have reviewed please add a comment about it, this is not just useful to us but to all other players as well.