April 8, 2025 by

What Makes a Good Online Casino Great?

This is the kind of question we here at Slots Play Casinos ask ourselves all the time.  You see, we have reviewed and recommended 30+ online casinos.  What criteria did we look for when we decided that these online casinos were great and not just good?

Amazingly, We Surprised Even Ourselves

When we asked this question of staff members, we found that communication was the number one criterion most people mentioned as an indicator of a great online casino.

Players at a land-based casino who want to speak to someone with authority go to the front desk.  There they can look the agent in the eye and hopefully get a satisfactory response.  Being able to talk to someone face-to-face is a really big deal to most people.

That’s why so many people do not like large companies; getting put on hold is a waking nightmare.

How Do Great Online Casinos Facilitate Great Communication?

First, we need to understand customer relations.  Online sites of all sorts use AI bots these days and online casinos are no exception.  But if you want more direct communication with a real person, you should send them an email.

We feel that this is a tried and true way to find out before you make a deposit if that casino will serve your online casino gaming needs.  Do they respond quickly?  Does their response indicate a programmed response or a real response?

Great Online Casino Communication is Also about the Games Themselves

A great online casino will let you play a game in demo mode.  Great online casinos allow unlimited free play and make that offer well-known.

There are two reasons to offer free play.  The first is simply that a lot of gamers love to play online casino games and have a financial limit to how much real money they can bet with.  The second reason is to give gamers the chance to get to know a game at no risk.

Another way great online casinos communicate is by simply publishing excellent and informative articles.  A great casino will review its new games.  A great casino will help you learn how to play a game of skill such as video poker and blackjack.

A Great Online Casino Offers Excellent Deposit Bonuses

A deposit bonus is not always a great deposit bonus.  The bonus rate is also important.  A 50% bonus is not nearly as good as a 100% bonus.  And a 150% bonus is better still.

Since land-based casinos cannot offer deposit bonuses, all online casinos have a major advantage in being able to offer such bonuses.  Then the really great online casinos stand out by the breadth of their deposit bonuses.

Online Casinos Tell Gamers That the Return to Player Rate in Video Poker and Blackjack is about 99.5%

This phenomenal return to player rate can be had by playing every hand correctly.  It may be challenging but it is far from impossible to play every hand correctly.

By telling gamers that this is the expected return to player rate, the casino will perhaps inadvertently give gamers a heads up on how to best play online casino games at relatively little risk.

Great Online Casinos Pay Well in Games of Skill

A major aspect of the 99.5% return to player rate in these two games of skill is that great online casinos hold the line on payouts for a blackjack, a full house, and a flush.  These payouts should always be 3-2, 9, and 6 respectively.  Sadly, a lot of land-based casinos have changed the dynamic in blackjack and video poker by offering only 6-5 for a blackjack and 9-6 for a full house and a flush.

Great Online Casinos Make Playing Slots Financially Realistic

By the way, the return to player rate in slots at online casinos is generally about 97% while at land-based casinos it is less than 90%, often a lot less.  The difference between a slot that has many small winners as opposed to a few bigger winners is called the volatility of the slot.  A great online casino tells gamers up front if a slot has high, medium, or low volatility.

A high volatility slot might be great fun to play but it might be less compatible with one’s bankroll.  By telling gamers what the volatility of a slot is, that casino helps their gamers set out on a happy course of play that is perfectly suited to their individual gaming budget.

Great Online Casinos are Open on a 24/7 Basis

In fact, most online casinos are also open all the time and many land-based casinos are also open around the clock.  The difference is that a great online casino is confident in its attractiveness to gamers and does not encourage long gaming sessions with real money.

Land-based casinos do encourage long gaming sessions by offering free alcohol and free buffet meals.  They know that the cost of the free alcohol is quickly returned to the casino in irrational play.  They also know that after overeating at the buffet, gamers come back to the casino too tired from the effort to digest all that food to make sound bets.

Great Online Casinos are Confident

A great online casino exudes confidence.  Land-based casinos have bells and whistles.  They encourage whooping and hollering at the craps and roulette tables.  This is a big part of their attractiveness.  Online casinos do not have bells and whistles or whooping and hollering.

One way an online casino exudes confidence is by making no secret about the fact that online gamers can play at many online casinos through the Instant Play mode.  Instant Play allows gamers to play on their internet server.

The World of Online Casinos before Instant Play

It used to be that an online casino gamer had to download the casino to their hard drive in order to play.  Now we have a phenomenon in which a truly great casino no longer even offers gamers the chance to download the casino.

This is a great show of confidence; that gamers will try out other casinos and will return to that casino over the course of time.  An online casino does not need the patronage of any single gamer at this exact moment. So, online casinos may have as many as a million gamers signed up while just a few thousand play there regularly.

The confident online casino knows that most of those million signed-up gamers will come back.

Slots Play Casinos is Confident in Our Work

SPC sees our role as a watchdog mainly of the online casinos sector.  We have reviewed and recommended over 30 great online casinos.  We publish many guides and articles that help gamers have more fun gaming at online casinos.

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David is our amateur economist and political philosopher, weather enthusiast, killer Sudoku fan, and best darn game analyst we've found.

In the twenty or so years since graduating college David has completely changed his gaming practices. Where once he played mostly video games with the occasional swing at blackjack at land-based casinos, David switched course and became a regular Sudoku player. David says that he likes the intellectual challenge of solving difficult problems.

Since he began playing Sudoku in earnest, David has ... [Read David Connor full bio]