Started this whole thing back in 2019 when I got fed up with fake casino review sites. You know the type - glossy websites that give every casino five stars and suspiciously never mention any problems. I'd been playing online for years and knew the reality was different.
The idea was simple: test casinos the way actual players do. Make deposits, play games, try to withdraw money, contact support at weird hours. If something's dodgy, we say it. If a casino takes three weeks to pay out or has ridiculous wagering requirements buried in the small print, that goes in the review.
We're based in Newcastle and operate under UK regulations. Every casino we review must hold a valid UK Gambling Commission license - no exceptions. I've seen too many stories of people losing money at unlicensed sites with no recourse. The UKGC isn't perfect, but at least there's proper oversight and somewhere to complain if things go wrong.
Our testing process isn't complicated. We sign up like any normal player would. Verify our accounts, make deposits using different payment methods, play various games to check if they're fair and functioning properly. Then comes the important bit - withdrawing money. That's where you really see what a casino's made of. Some process withdrawals in hours. Others drag it out for days with endless verification requests.
Yeah, we earn affiliate commissions when people sign up at casinos through our links. That's how we fund the site and pay for all this testing. But here's the thing - we'd rather lose a commission than recommend a dodgy operator. Our reputation matters more than a quick payout from some casino that's going to mess people about.
The team's grown a bit since I started. Got a couple of other reviewers now who share the testing workload. We argue sometimes about ratings, which is probably healthy - means we're not just rubber-stamping everything. Between us, we've probably played at every major UK casino at least once, some of them dozens of times.
We focus exclusively on UK-licensed casinos because that's what we know and what we can verify. International sites might be fine, but without direct experience of their licensing jurisdictions and player protections, we can't review them honestly. Stick to what you know, right?
If you've got questions about a specific casino or think we've missed something important in a review, get in touch. We update reviews regularly when casinos change their terms or we discover new information. This isn't a set-it-and-forget-it operation.