About Us
Casinomeister has been in operation since June 1998, a lifetime in cyber years. One of the first online casino portals, Casinomeister was quick to realize that this industry had failed to establish basic governing principles that fostered security and trust among online gamblers. As a result, reputable casinos were constantly forced to carry the burden of the rogue casinos which failed to maintain a standard of quality required by the online gambler. Casinomeister, recognising the need for these basic standards, stepped into this void, and established itself as a beacon of light guiding the Internet gambler to safe and trustworthy online gaming establishments.
Bryan Bailey, Founder of Casinomeister
Bryan Bailey, the founder and creator of this amazing website, ran this website from it’s bare bone beginnings in 1998 to the summer of 2024 when he retired from the iGaming industry. He ran Casinomeister for twenty six years years providing the content, spirit, and positive direction or this site. He was a pioneer in this industry creating some of the first via newsletters, podcasts, video casts, and a gambling community that is still going strong.
“My involvement with the online gaming industry has been mainly via Casinomeister and by attending conferences and exhibits from around the world, meeting casino operators, managers, software developers, and other portal operators. I have always been a players’ advocate, but I am a casino advocate as well – basically: an advocate of fair play. The established entities in the online casino world understand that Casinomeister makes a difference.”
He has either been a speaker, moderated a discussion panel, or participated as a member of a panel in over fourty iGaming conferences and exhibitions since 2001 – to include the following: GiGse, European iGaming Expo, Casino Affiliate Convention Vancouver, Casino Affiliate Convention Las Vegas, Casino Affiliate Convention Amsterdam, G2E Las Vegas, London Affiliate Conference, Power 50 Affiliates, and Casino Beats just to name a few.
Bryan Bailey also provides consultations for iGaming casino representatives. He has also has been called as an expert witness for iGaming in a high profile lawsuit in the High Court of Justice in London.
He also has been interviewed by The Guardian, MSNBC News, and by U.S. News & World Report concerning the world of online gambling.
On or about the 26th anniversary of the founding of Casinomeister, the site was sold to GiG so that Bryan Bailey could retire after more than a quarter century’s work protecting players from rogue casino operations. Not too shabby for a hobby website created in a two bedroom apartment in San Diego in June 1998.
About the business
Over the past several years, Casinomeister has hosted one of the largest and most active player communities where people are free to discuss a wide variety of topics related to casinos, and then some off-the-wall subjects as well. We also collect data on casinos via our Meister Minions – players who record casino payout times and other important data.
Casinomeister also maintains a list of casinos “accredited” by some of the most stringent standards on the Internet – this includes the vetting of casinos via our Baptism by Fire period. Not every casino passes the test.
Casinomeister hosts the infamous “Rogue Casino” section. In fact, the term “rogue casino” was first coined here in 1999. These are casinos that are either violating good business ethics, or are simply totally undesirable. Stay away from the Rogues.
Additionally, we have a casino complaints center that has been in operation for years. In 2000, the term “Pitch a Bitch” was coined to describe the complaints we would “pitch” to casino operators. In 2016, we became certified arbitrators (internationally) and changed the name from Pitch-a-Bitch to Player ArBitration maintaining the infamous acronym – PAB. At the end of 2019, Casinomeister had processed over 7000 submitted casino complaints. And since 1998 – over €5.6 million has been recovered.
Further information about our free player arbitration service here.
Casinomeister® is a registered trademark in the EU, including the Russian Federation, the USA, and Australia. It’s best not to infringe on this. We will protect our trademark most diligently.
Life Before Casinomeister
Before there was a Casinomeister – before there was a real Internet – Bryan Bailey taught English and Creative Writing at numerous colleges and universities in the San Diego CA area.
Professor of English, Adjunct Faculty
San Diego City College
United States International University
Miramar College
Instructor of English as a Second Language
EF International School of English
American Language Institute, San Diego State University
Teaching Associate of Creative Writing and Literature
San Diego State University
He has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Screen Writing and graduated from San Diego State University in 1996. This is where some of his wild ideas come from.
Life Before the Internet
Bryan Bailey has an extensive military background. He was stationed for eight years at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina as a paratrooper in a line company as an Airborne Combat Engineer (27th Engrs.). Besides being a private – doing fun things that privates get to do, he advanced to demolitions specialist, assistant squad leader, then on to squad leader. He was in a “rough terrain” platoon, jumping into thick jungles and blowing up things. As a squad leader, his company was on rotation basis in Central America during the Contra/Sandinista/El Salvador adventures. He served the entire eight year Ft. Bragg tour in the Rapid Deployment Force – his last year there he was a master parachutist.
Transferring to Germany from the States, he was assigned as a Squad Leader in a mechanized combat engineer unit (9th Engineers), and spent time during this “European Holiday” surveying the East German border, watching the wall come down, and acquainting himself to good Bavarian Beer. But then his unit was deployed to the desert for the First Gulf War. He participated in the Battle of 73 Easting along with the 1-41 task Force. His unit (D Co. 9th Engineers) was awarded twice the Valorous Unit Award Citation. He was also decorated (Bronze Star) after his men (7 guys) took over 253 Iraqi prisoners of war and destroyed millions of $$ of Iraqi military equipment. After his three year stint in Germany, he went on to become a drill sergeant at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.
At this point, he said “The hell with this,” and left the Army after eleven solid years. He has been known to make both casino operators and players do pushups over the phone; a few times by email.
There is a section dedicated to the Casinomeister Prelaunch.
The man with the plan here at Casinomeister. Bryan Bailey has been running Casinomeister since its launch in June of 1998. He has watched the industry grow from its primeval stage to what it is now. The Meister has attended nearly 100 conferences in the past 20 years and has either been a speaker or a panel moderator for at least 60 events. He has always been an advocate of fairness and reason and is known to like German beer, a good Scotch, and astrophotography.
bryan@casinomeister.com
Dave has been involved in the Online Gambling industry for 20 odd years now. With experience working for an operator based in Gibraltar, where he headed up the IT team at Ladbrokes, to running his own iGaming affiliate websites until 2019.
Dave now writes for Casinomeister and sister site Casino Gazette. You may also see him on the forum from time to time, where he goes by the handle Webzcas.
Alex is a 26-year-old writer from Brighton, in the UK, and for the past 8 years, he’s worked with a number of companies, creating content for blogs, news articles, and more. While Alex has written on a wide variety of topics, his speciality is online gambling – an industry he’s both passionate about, and experienced in. Having enjoyed gambling for over 7 years, Alex is a huge fan of video slots, and cites NetEnt, Big Time Gaming, Thunderkick, and Quickspin as his favourite providers. The topics he writes on are varied, but he loves nothing more than a good old slot review (he’s written over 1,000 slot reviews in his career), and he also enjoys writing in-depth gambling guides, along with casino reviews. In his spare time, Alex enjoys playing the guitar, and is a self-proclaimed horror film buff.
Dionysus has been a member of CM for just over 10 years.
He’s been pretty much everything under the sun including a DJ and English teacher but is generally keeping busy attacking assorted online projects.
After majoring in languages and communications in college(s), he spent most of his youth traveling and backpacking around the world but has wound down and prefers to chill with his 5 pets at home these days.
He’s lived on 2 continents, in 3 countries and about 30 cities but is a true Canucklehead at heart.
When he’s not busy behind the scenes whipping up new contests and ideas for members, you can probably find him out back feeding the wildlife or with his nose buried in a book but he promises he’ll get to writing his own one day.
Neil Walker is a UK-based player who plays in both land-based and online casinos and runs the Live Casino Comparer website. He has been playing table games for years and moved into the live casino arena 4 years ago, where he has been establishing himself as an authority for Live Casino. He is often asked to join panels at industry conferences and his knowledge is regularly tapped by iGaming industry publications.
He has developed working relationships with many of the live casino suppliers and has visited many of the studios. He also provides consultancy services to the games providers, performing player centric reviews and making recommendations on the games and playing interfaces.
Neil maintains a strict independence so he can review objectively live casinos, the software and the casinos using them, which he presents on his site.
He is also our moderator (neilw) for the Live Casinos section of our awesome forum.
As an 18 year veteran of the casino industry, Nicholas has been involved in all aspects of gaming, from advantage player/manager with the infamous M.I.T Blackjack teams, to a consultant to the “house” in the capacity of gaming mathematician and data scientist. Nicholas has been a visiting lecturer at DUKE, Clemson, and Michigan State Universities. He’s also a published author in the game-theory arena, with an emphasis on economic applications, and is a contributor to many casino gaming and financial sites and publications, including WizardofOdds.com, Forbes, and Bloomberg.
Infopowa news was a staple of Casinomeister’s news from 2000 until 2019. Brian Cullingworth was the main writer, contributor, and was one of the most knowledgeable persons I have ever known involved in the online casino industry.
We first met in January 2001 at the ICE in London where I observed him going booth to booth interviewing online casino, software, and licensing jurisdiction representatives. Brian was also heavily involved with our forum as “Jetset“, he was involved as an informal consultant to eCOGRA, the OPA, and was a player advocate who assisted countless aggrieved players with his connections to industry folks. He also published “Casino Cautions” via Infopowa news for quite a number of years. These can be found in our news archives.
His passing in February 2019 was a dark day for us. He will be forever missed.