Does leaving the house sound painful? Does gambling sound fun?
Well, if you said yes to both, we have the answer for you: ONLINE CASINOS!
Nothing beats being able to ride the waves of fortune from the comfort of your own Cheeto-covered recliner. Wouldn’t it be great if you had some experienced gambling friends to refer you to the best online casinos available for your area?
Well, look no further, because in this article we will play the part of this experienced gambling friend. We have compiled a list of the top online casinos in the US and outside of the US for your convenience.
These rankings are the end results of our extensive research into online casinos. We plan on relaying the information obtained from this research directly to you in an honest and easy-to-understand way in each review. In no way did anyone influence our words in any of these reviews. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s begin!
US-Based Online Casinos
It is unfortunate that this section is even needed for the “land of the free.” The laws of the US prohibit so many online casinos that we felt the need to divide our library of reviews into two sections.
Below is the list of online casinos that we recommend for any online gamblers currently living in the USA. These sites are perfectly legal for American citizens to play on, and they have reached our standards of what makes a good online casino. For everyone else, we will cover your recommended sites in the next section.
Non-US Based Online Casinos
For gamblers outside of the USA, there are many more options as far as choosing an online casino to play on goes. This is great because you have the benefits of being able to shop around the industry to find a site that truly fits your needs. Because of this, online gamblers outside of the US will be able to easily choose sites that have great promotions, a large game selection, and reliable banking options.
Below, you will find the list of online casinos that we propose for gamblers who are not US citizens.
How We Choose the Sites
Now that we have listed our preferred sites for you, you might be wondering exactly how we whittled the list down to these select few. To be honest, this process is not easy, because most casinos like to hide their important information inside of a giant wall of text known as the terms and conditions.
What does the terms and conditions page have to do with anything? Well, this is where most sites reveal things such as what countries are banned, and what the playthrough requirements for their promotions are. Luckily for you, we have read through every single site’s terms and conditions page before recommending them, and we’ve posted any alarming clauses into the “Things to Be Aware Of” section of each review.
There are several factors that we look for when deciding if a site is worthy of our business. These factors include reliability, game selection, banking options, customer service, and promotions. Let’s have a look at each one of these factors individually and explore exactly what standards we use when we analyze them.
Reliability
The first factor we look for is reliability. This should be number one on anyone’s list of standards for a gambling site, because it does not do any good to get lucky if that site will just steal your winnings. If winning money is not an option, the whole ordeal suddenly becomes much less fun. 
The best way to check for reliability is to make sure that they are licensed by a reputable gaming commission. A couple of examples of trustworthy licensing companies are the Malta Gaming Authority and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission.
When it comes to licensing companies we are cautious of, we usually think of places from Curacao and Costa Rica. These two areas truly do not care about the safety of their sites, since they have proven many times that they simply care about getting paid.
Another great way to be sure your site is reliable is to make sure they have been properly audited by a third-party auditing corporation. These audits ensure that the random number generator is truly operating randomly so that no one gets robbed out of any money. One of our favorite audit firms is eCOGRA, and their stamp can be found on many trustworthy online casinos’ webpages.
Game Selection
Another thing we look for when choosing a site to recommend is whether that site has a big selection of games to choose from. This is important because it is rare for players to play just one game all the time. Most players like to explore the casino, which is why most of them offers hundreds, if not thousands, of games to play.
One key feature we look for in a site’s game selection is a Live Dealer or a Live Betting option. These are both EXTREMELY popular in today’s gambling world, so it is tremedously ignorant for an online casino to pretend that they do not exist. They offer a breath of fresh air from the usual online gambling experience, and anything that provides variety is a good thing in our eyes.
Banking Options
Even if you have a reliable site to play on, which has a ton of your favorite games, it will not do you any good if you cannot move money in and out of the casino. This is where banking options come into play, and we always make sure to check that each casino we recommend has plenty of the main banking methods available for use. Some of these main methods include Visa cards, MasterCard, Skrill, Neteller, and Paypal. 
One of the banking options that we actively look for is Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a firm foothold in the online gambling world due to its high level of privacy, security, cost-effectiveness, and transaction speed. Tired of your bank blocking your transactions? Tired of paying fees on credit cards? Then Bitcoin could be the answer!
Customer Service
At some point in every online gambler’s life, they will need to contact customer support for some help. If the customer service team is subpar, this could result in a bad casino experience, or even having your funds confiscated when they did not deserve to be.
To start off with, it is completely standard for each site to list their email and phone number somewhere on their contact page. Sometimes they include a fax number, but this is not really all that important in today’s online gambling world. Any site that does not list their contact information is clearly hiding something and should be avoided like the plague.
One feature of customer service that we consider to be mandatory is the Live Chat feature. This is usually the fastest way to contact the support team, and therefore it is the most convenient. If a casino lacks a Live Chat feature, we normally do not even give them the time of day.
Outside of the Live Chat feature, we feel very strongly that each site should list inside their terms and conditions page the contact information of the higher authorities that watch over them. This not only includes the licensing companies, but also the auditing firms that watch over the random number generator.
Promotions
Last, but not least, we always check out the list of promotions that a site is offering before we go recommending them to our readers. This is because we feel that frequent gamblers should be rewarded for their play, and that is exactly what promotions aim to do. 
We have yet to find a site that offers no promotions whatsoever, but we have certainly found tons of sites with bad promotional programs. So, what makes a bad promotional program, anyway?
The first thing we like to look at is what the playthrough requirements are for each bonus deal. Anytime these requirements are above 50 times the amount of the deposit, we feel that the casino is asking too much from their players. Whenever a player cannot finish these requirements, their bonus funds and winnings are confiscated, so it is important to find bonus deals that are realistically attainable.
Another sign of a bad promotions program is a lack of volume. Anytime there are only one or two promotions available, it is clear to us that the site does not care about their frequent gamblers. This is a silly stance to take, since the regulars pay the most rake. This amount of lazy incompetence does not impress us very much, so we try to rate these sorts of casinos harshly.
Stay Safe!
Now that we have made you aware of all the great online casinos in your area, we will continue to play the part of the experienced gambling friend by telling you how to protect yourself. Not every online casino is ethical, so you cannot go around blindly trusting any old casino with your money.
If you reside inside of the US, this protection is a little bit hard to come by. Since most online casinos are not regulated by the US government, there is not much recourse for online gamblers to take after they get scammed. 
The best remedy for this is to do a lot of research on Google and in gambling forums before joining any site to make sure that their history is not riddled with red flags. Companies that have been around longer tend to be more trustworthy, but they also tend to have outdated games and software. However, we feel that residents of the USA should be more concerned with if they will see their money again than what the graphics of each game look like.
For online gamblers outside of the US, protecting yourself from scummy casinos is still very important. The difference is that it is a lot easier to do because there are so many sites to choose from. It is common sense that if a customer has tons of options when choosing a product to buy, they will be able to find what they want a greater percentage of the time.
Another reason why these non-US online casinos are safer is that some of them are regulated by the country in which they are based. This means that if anything sinister happens, the online gambler can contact his country’s government and get the matter settled, which is a huge advantage over the US gambler.
Tips to Maximize Your Experience
When it comes to online gambling, the main factor you should be concerned with is how much fun you are having per dollar spent. Almost everyone will lose money in the long run when gambling online, but not everyone will have the same amount of fun.
Below, we have compiled a list of things you can do to maximize your overall online casino experience. Following these guidelines will help you to get the most out of your money when it comes to entertainment value.
- Join More Than One Online Casino
Just like in any market, the online gambling market has tons of competitors. This is good for consumers because it gives them a plethora of options when choosing who to give their business to.
The best way to take advantage of this competitive market is to try out more than one option. This will give you a basis for comparison and will also spread your bankroll out. It is good not to have all your eggs in one basket in case tragedy strikes. It is also ideal to be able to play video poker on one site that has your specific preferred video poker variation, and then play blackjack on a different site that has your preferred blackjack variation.
- Reap the Rewards of at Least One or Two Promotions
Every single online casino has a list of promotions available to their players. These are a great way to get some cash back on your losses. They are also a great way to give yourself a goal to reach so that the gambling you are doing is working towards a final reward.
By taking advantage of more than one of these promotions, you give yourself more of a chance to get some extra cash. It also lets you explore the options faster, which could reveal what the best deal is a lot earlier than if you were testing them out one at a time.
- Set Up a Common and Reliable Payment Method to Use on All Sites
Every site has a plethora of payout options. It can be overwhelming to try to get a different payment method for each site. This is the reason we recommend picking just one banking method that is convenient for your needs.
Before you decide which method to use, you should check out what the most common options are. It is almost guaranteed that whatever site you choose will facilitate transfers using MasterCard, Visa, Neteller, and Skrill. Choosing a universal payment method will be less likely to hinder your exploration of new sites, since you will be able to put funds on nearly any site you come across.
FAQ
Q. How can I know what games each casino offers?
A. We provide the list of games that each casino offers right inside of each review! Feel free to click on any example reviews from the lists above to see what type of games most of these casinos have.
Q. Why is online gambling better than casino gambling?
A. This is all a matter of personal preference, really. Some reasons that people prefer to gamble from home include an unwillingness to drive, a hatred of crowds and noise, or they have too many kids at home to just wander off to a casino.
On the other hand, some people enjoy the socializing and free drinks that casinos offer to gamblers. While both methods have their perks, we certainly recommend giving online casinos a whirl if you have not already.
Q. Is online gambling beatable?
A. It is extremely difficult to beat any form of gambling in the long run, but in the short-run, anything can happen! Gambling is meant to be a fun form of entertainment, not a reason to quit your day job.
Q. Can I gamble online from my cellphone?
A. On most casinos, the answer is yes! Mobile apps are great because they allow you to gamble while on the move or when you are bored outside of the house.