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The Greatest Casino Bonus.
The most difficult decision that there is for any player testing out the waters at the world of online casino gaming is to decide whether the casino that they have chosen is worth depositing at.
It is with good reason that this is a decision to be mulled over. Just about every nook and cranny discovered while surfing forums or reading blogs about online casinos have some warning or another informing us of the latest rogue establishment that has just been found out. Understandably this complicates what should be an otherwise straightforward and exciting event.
Fortunately the same blogs and forums will keep us in the loop regarding the credibility of the online casinos that we stumble upon; however what you will not find included in the information available is whether or not the games are any good and ultimately how enjoyable the experience will be. Knowledge of that nature is born of experience, which surprisingly is not that difficult to be had.
In much the same way that you would not buy a car without taking it for a spin, you are able to test-drive online casinos before taking the ultimate online plunge. The Free Play promotion offers just this. By selecting to play the Free Play Bonus, your new account comes preloaded with casino credits, and by using these you can sample the cards and explore the nature of the games.
This is obviously a massive advantage as the actual experience and game time will allow you to develop an informed opinion of the casino and help you make the choices you will face later on a lot easier.
One of the trump cards that the Online Casinos have thrown into the mix is the opportunity to cash in on any good luck that you have while helping yourself to the Free Play credits. Besides the ability to sample the wares that the casino has on offer, you also get the satisfaction of seeing your balance grow with every win.
As your account balance ebbs and flows to the rhythms of the games, the big game-timer keeps track of your time spent occupied by the various casino offerings. By default you will get 60 minutes with which to extract the most from the games. After this time is up your balance will be frozen and your game play will be suspended. This may seem a little harsh, but remember: you were just playing with complimentary casino credits.
If you’re wondering what the whole point of this exercise is, this is the bit for you: not only have you been afforded a glimpse inside a Members Only casino, but you have been able to play the games and sample the atmosphere of the establishment. This makes the decision to continue play or not a lot simpler than 60 minutes earlier. Add to that the further option to claim a portion of your hopefully substantial Free Play account balance, and the choice becomes a no brainer.
At the end of the day, with all of the advantages afforded you , the Free Play Promotion is the greatest possible bonus out there.
Are TST certificates reliable?
If you walk into a real-world casino in the US, you can be reasonably sure the games are fair. Each state runs oversight of the casinos operations and, so far as it can, ensures we all have a reasonable chance of winning. Put another way, real-world casinos have a claim to be transparent. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the online gambling world. Most of the virtual casinos are based in countries interested only in taking the licence fees. This produces a real lack of transparency so that, even when there are legitimate complaints made and the regulators “investigate”, theres little to explain what the investigators actually do and how aggressively they enforce control over the casinos in their countries. Its all about killing the goose laying the golden jackpots. If the regulators are an effective police force, the casinos will move their virtual operations elsewhere and the state treasury loses out.
Which brings us to the certificates issued by Technical Systems Testing (TST). This is an organization making its living by compliance testing games and it works closely with the regulators in Canada, the UK, Australia and other countries with developed gambling industries. Most recently, it has been certifying the random number generators used online. All the fair and honest sites based in highly regulated countries like the UK carry certificates such as those issued by TST. So how reliable are the TST certificates?
As TST honestly states on its own site, its not a policing body. It works in the same way as the auditing profession. It looks at what it is given and gives its opinion. Because of the nondisclosure agreements it signs, it can never discuss how or why some certificates are (or are not) issued. You have to take on trust the assertion that TST is an independent body and gives an unbiased opinion. This is rather like the defense raised by the rating agencies in the financial meltdown. They certified the investments issued by the banks as AAA only to see them worth nothing a few months later. When an organization depends on the fee income from a single source, theres an inevitable conflict of interest. If you do not certify, you get no fee income.
But, the real question comes about what happens to the software TST tests and certifies fair. As it rightly says, its not a policing body and its not a regulator. It has no power to check whether the software it verified is the software in play a few weeks later. For any certificate to be worth the pixels used to display it on a screen, there should be monthly testing on site. With Bodog and other casino games operators using TST certificates in their press releases, the burden of proof is now on TST to prove its certificates have real value. As it stands, there would seem to be every chance that TST could end up in the same unhappy position as the auditors who declared Enron accounts a fair representation of its trading position. Without regular, routine and random testing on site, there would seem no guarantee the certificates show fair and honest casino games in play.