Becoming Accredited

Becoming an “Accredited Casino” at Casinomeister is not as easy as it may look. It takes a certain amount of commitment that not every casino is able to muster.

Before making any inquires, please try to understand what Casinomeister is and what it is not. Casinomeister is not a marketing site. It is a site dedicated to the Casinomeister mission and philosophy of how players ought to be treated – and what is expected of a member casino.

Only Casinomeister Accredited Casinos are allowed to actively promote their casinos at Casinomeister.

What about our Standards?

To become an accredited casino is a challenge for many operators. Becoming an “Accredited Casino” at Casinomeister is not as simple as it may look. Besides going through a testing period or Baptism by Fire, they need to either meet or exceed our standards – which are the most stringent on the Internet.

Casinomeister Accredited Casinos are required to meet the our standards

Prior to 2000, we took a number of things into account when listing casinos here – we called them “reputable casinos” mainly because they had reputable reputations. But after running Casinomeister for two years, I felt that I needed to state in writing what the standards really ought to be. So it was in October 2000 (our newsletter from then: How We Choose Casinos at Casinomeister) that we made a list of certain things casinos needed to do or have in place in order to advertise themselves to our members. It was a rudimentary list – but it was really the first – no one else was doing this. Since then, it has evolved just like the industry has. There are many more things that we consider than the good ol’ days of 2000. Mainly in player protection and operational procedures.

Why do we do this?

Well, there are several reasons: one – to protect the player from dodgy operations. Our philosophy at Casinomeister is that the player should be considered in every aspect of online gambling. Without the player, there would be no industry – this is something I remind industry folk on a regular basis. And we have these standards to drive home that fact.

Another reason of course is to give credence to casinos that go above and beyond their competitors. There are quite a number of operations that are run by fantastic people who have the same philosophy towards players as I do.

And of course, it’s to separate the crappy from the good. Many players lack the skills or patience to do the vetting themselves, so they leave it up to Casinomeister to present them with places to play. We have many members who will not sign up at a casino unless it is a Casinomeister Accredited Casino.

We have many affiliates that will not advertise casinos unless they are listed here.

And we have many casinos that take pride in being a member of our Accredited Casinos. Those casinos could get our Accreditation Seal: a seal of assurance for the player that the seal holder has been properly vetted, and meets our Standards.

Standards for Accredited Casinos

Player and Responsible Gaming Focused

  1. Must forbid underage play.
  2. Must have a clean history of fairness towards their customers.
  3. Must be able to take care of any player issue swiftly and professionally.
  4. Must display information about responsible gambling, with links to relevant organizations.
  5. Must offer and enforce spending limits in addition to both temporary and permanent self exclusion options.
  6. Must process KYC (Know Your Customer) documents: confirm validity while ensuring personal privacy is upheld.


Marketing Standards

  1. Must not use false, misleading or deceptive advertising.
  2. Must not spam, and must take appropriate actions against any affiliates or any third parties who spam or produce deceptive and/or deliberately false or misleading advertising.
  3. Will not text or call players on their phones without explicit permission. And this form of aggressive advertising must cease immediately upon request.
  4. Will not aggressively entice players to reverse cash withdrawals with bonuses or other incentives.


Operational Standards

  1. Must provide Casinomeister with ownership information (individuals unless a publicly traded company). I need to make sure I’m not dealing with anyone dodgy.
  2. Promotion terms and conditions must be clearly displayed, hyperlinked from all promotion pages or pop-up banners, and must contain a date and time stamp.
  3. Must not disqualify any player from a payout if terms & conditions are met, except for situations of fraud (multiple-accounts, bogus ID documents, chargebacks, etc.,).
  4. Must not confiscate winnings for vague & unclear reasons, such as “irregular playing patterns” or “bonus abuse”, without specific T&C violations.
  5. Must not implement terms that can be construed as “unfair” towards the player.
  6. No player shall be involuntarily placed into a situation which breaches the terms and conditions during the course of play.
  7. Must pay out progressive jackpot wins in full or in reasonable chunks, regardless of any terms and conditions limiting payouts. If a player is in a jurisdiction where large sums are problematic, the casino will make every possible attempt to pay the player expediently – with an agreement from the player. *
  8. Must remove any bonus and associated play-through requirements at the request of the player if play has not commenced.
  9. Will not aggressively entice players to reverse cash withdrawals with bonuses or other incentives.
  10. Will not use outsourced support. Player support must be in-house.
  11. Must offer live chat support.
  12. Must disclose all “sister” or related properties when applicable. If players are bound by terms that are enforced across a group of casinos, these casinos must be identified in an obvious place on the casino’s website. For example: if a player is allowed only one sign up bonus for a group of casinos, these casinos need to be listed in the bonus terms and conditions (or an equally noticeable spot). If a player self-excludes from one property, the casino needs to identify all related properties that are affected by the exclusion as well.


Affiliate marketing Standards

  1. Must not cross promote to other properties without giving proper credit to affiliates and/or their advertisers.
  2. Must not implement retroactive terms and conditions to their affiliate programs without opening up a dialogue with the affiliate and discuss other options.


Industry and Player Assurances

  1. RNG and/or software must be audited by a third party.
  2. Must have an active representative (who can walk and chew gum at the same time) listed in Casinomeister’s forum. This representative must be directly involved with customer/player service, or who can make decisions involving player issues. This representative needs to log in at least once a week.
  3. Must be communicative about any player or affiliate issue that is posted in our forum or submitted to us via our Player Arbitration service. We expect our accredited casinos to resolve problems fairly and expediently.
  4. They must be licensed in a jurisdiction that offers gambling licenses for online casinos. This licensing entity must be responsive to player complaints, and they must have an effective infrastructure that oversees and enforces compliance with regulations that protect players from fraudulent or unethical activity.**

* Excluding IGT progressive jackpots – this is noted within their listings.

** Nine casinos listed in the Accredited section are licensed in small jurisdictions that have limited regulations. These casinos have a proven track record, some have been listed for years and their history of fairness and proper management overrides this one clause.

Additional Requirements on Becoming Accredited

If your casino meets the above requirements, then that is a good start. We require that any casino up for consideration must be in business for at least two years* before attempting the “Baptism by Fire”. The BBF is a sixty day mandatory probation period where our members will give your casino a “spin around the block” followed by a critique, perhaps criticism and suggestions. If all is okay after sixty days, then you become Accredited. And Accreditation is always under review; too many bad player experiences, failure to maintain expected standards, etc., these can jeopardize your casino’s standing at Casinomeister.

Casinos without the mandatory two year experience can be accepted with a 120 day BBF period.

Casinos need to be self sustaining independent businesses that do not rely on third parties for finances and/or support. This disqualifies many white-label casinos, so please take note of that. Actually, we are no longer considering white label casinos for accreditation.

Most casinos that are licensed solely in the Caribbean – Antigua & Barbuda, Curaçao,, et al, are disqualified. These licenses are pretty much worthless and new casinos wishing to come on board need to upgrade to a better licensing jurisdiction before consideration – but we deal with this on a case-by-case basis.

Inquires sent to me via Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo or other “free” email accounts will be deleted and blocked. If it’s obvious you haven’t read this page, your email will probably be trashed as well. Do your homework before making a business proposal please.

Still interested? Well subscribe to the newsletter(s), lurk or participate in the forum, watch the webcasts. In essence, get actively (or vicariously) involved.

Normally, I meet with the casino reps in person before I bring them on. This is so we can discuss how one approaches this industry (read the Meister’s Mission statement).

If you would like to meet up, please let me know. Thanks!

* operators who have newly launched casinos may have an opportunity to have their casino listed and reviewed in the Grey Zone

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