Our procedure, and why no page carries a score

Why there is no mark out of ten

A single number claims a measurement was taken. Taking one honestly would mean depositing real money, clearing a bonus, filing a withdrawal, waiting out the pending period and the verification, and then repeating it often enough for the result to mean anything — at every casino on the site, and again each time a term changes. We have not done that. Publishing a figure implying we had would be the first lie on the page, so no page here carries a score, a star count or a percentage.

What a reader needs before depositing is not a verdict anyway. It is a handful of specific clauses, and those are in writing already. Reading them, recording them and explaining what they cost is the whole of the method.

Read on every offer: the five clauses that decide what it pays

1. The multiple, and what it multiplies. The same number applied to the bonus alone and to deposit plus bonus are two very different piles of turnover, and the distinction hides in one preposition.
2. Game weightings. How much of a stake counts towards the requirement, by game type. This is the line that turns an unremarkable offer into an impossible one.
3. Maximum stake while the bonus is live. It sets a ceiling on how fast the requirement can be cleared, and breaching it is the commonest reason a cleared bonus is canceled.
4. The cashout ceiling. Whether winnings from bonus funds are capped at all, and if so against which figure the cap is reckoned.
5. The expiry window. How long the requirement has to be met, which turns every figure above it into a rate rather than an amount.

Each is recorded as the operator words it. The arithmetic laid on top — turnover, the effect of the weighting table, what the ceiling leaves — is shown on the page as arithmetic.

Recorded alongside: the cashout side

Bonus terms decide whether a balance appears. These decide whether it arrives.

• The pending period, and whether a withdrawal can be reversed back into the balance while it runs.
• Withdrawal ceilings per day, week or month, which is what converts a large win into an installment plan.
• The fee layers — processing charges, currency conversion, network fees on coins, and the per-withdrawal minimum that makes small cashouts pointless.
• What verification asks for and when, including whether a source-of-funds request can appear after a win rather than at signup.
• The dormancy clause, because an account left alone is a balance with a meter running.
• Whether the responsible-play controls exist and can be found — deposit limits, session limits, cooling-off, self-exclusion — without having to write to support for them.

Also noted, because it changes the answer

• Whether the terms are published at all, and whether they can be read without registering. Conditions that appear only after an account exists are a worse deal than conditions that are merely bad.
• Whether there is an offer for players in the United States, priced in dollars, rather than a figure inherited from another market.
• Which payment methods and which coins are listed, on the way in and on the way out separately — they are frequently not the same list.
• Whether a sportsbook shares the account. We note it and then keep the two apart: sports betting and casino play sit under different state rules, and the status of one says nothing about the other.

Questions this method cannot answer

How quickly a given casino actually pays is not knowable from its documents, and we have not withdrawn money to find out. Neither is how its support behaves at two in the morning, or how it treats a disputed account three months in. An operator's own statements about its licensing are not evidence either, and we do not relay them as fact — no operator on this site holds a US state license, which is the entire subject of the legal page. Where a question sits outside what published terms can settle, the page says so and leaves the gap visible rather than filling it.

A shortlist is not a league table

The sites shown in a row on a page are the ones we carry for that page's subject. There is no score behind them to rank by, so the order is not a verdict, and since every operator pays the same way the order is not for sale either. The useful information is in the clauses in the row, not the position of the row.

What makes a page get reworked

Three things: the terms behind it changed, a reader told us something is wrong, or we found it ourselves. The edit date at the top moves then — on the rework, never on a timer. How a correction is handled, and what we refuse to print in the first place, is in the editorial policy. The sites here are for adults of 21 and over.

Getting help, and who is on the other end

The number to start with is the National Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738). You can call it or text it, or use the chat at 1800myreset.org instead if saying it out loud is the hard part. It answers in all fifty states, every day of the year, and it costs nothing. Nobody there is selling an account: the line is independent of us and of every operator named on this site.

What it is not is an emergency number. If someone is in danger at this moment, that is 911, or 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Longer-term, two organizations run on their own money and not on ours: Gamblers Anonymous, which is for the person playing, and Gam-Anon, which is for the people living with it.

Elsewhere on this desk

• About this deskWhat the site publishes, where it stops, and who funds it.
• Editorial policySourcing, what the date means, and how a mistake is put right.
• Responsible gamblingLimits to set first, account controls, and where to get help.
• Legality by stateThe seven licensed states, and what offshore costs when payment stalls.