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What do you wish every player knew?

Content_Team

From CM's Content Dept
Joined
Sep 9, 2026
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There's a huge amount of knowledge in this forum, stuff that took people years and a few burns to learn. And as many of you have mentioned, the casino reps are a big help too.

Unfortunately, a lot of it stays in here, when it could be helping players who haven't found this place yet (unbelievable that not every player in the world is here already!) and are still learning the hard way.

So we're putting together a few pieces on these topics to try to help other folks, and we'd love your input.

Here are some of the points we'd like to cover:
  • What do you wish every player knew?
  • What's a mistake you made early on that you'd never make now?
  • What's the first sign to you that a casino isn't worth your time?
  • What's a belief about slots or casinos that turned out to be nonsense?
  • What's the sneakiest thing you've seen buried in terms or a bonus?
  • Is there anything you know now that you're surprised isn't common knowledge?
A lot of questions, we know 😂 pick whichever one speaks to you, or answer them all if you're feeling generous 🙏

Important: Nothing personal will get shared, it's the lessons and insights we're after, not anyone's details. And if you'd rather your input wasn't quoted directly, just say so :cmheart:
 
Something sneaky that I've been starting to see in the UK is bonus wagering not being active until entire cash balance is exhausted, so you have to lose £100, (plus whatever might already be in the balance) before you can place a bet that adds to the WR of your £25, and no playing with bonus if you have an active bet elsewhere.
 
Don't trust casino reviews that are written by people that don't actually play there - do your own research and make sure you read the terms and conditions re bonus wagering/withdrawals/ID requirements

Thinking that a slot "owes" you a good bonus because you have dropped £5k into it, does not make it true

Just because some dick wearing a hat makes gambling a full time career, don't give up your day job and try to copy him

Martingale systems do not work - they might for a short while, but you will have a couple of very expensive lessons if you constantly utilise this system

No one ever has, or ever will, formulate a perfect roulette strategy. Ive lost count of the amount of times people have tried to sell me one

Card counting is legal, but you cannot count 6 deck online live dealer shoes with a piss poor deck penetration, regardless of what some people will tell you

Most streamers are sell outs (don't blame them, but doesn't mean I am not right)

If you are playing in a bricks and mortar establishment, it does not make a difference how hard/how many times you press the button - just press it once, the result is the same

Fun fact - citizens in monaco are not allowed to play in the monaco casino

There is a rumour (that I may have started) that @L&L-Jan and @Mark_Lottomart are the same person - you never see them at the same time
 
Don't trust casino reviews that are written by people that don't actually play there - do your own research and make sure you read the terms and conditions re bonus wagering/withdrawals/ID requirements

Thinking that a slot "owes" you a good bonus because you have dropped £5k into it, does not make it true

Just because some dick wearing a hat makes gambling a full time career, don't give up your day job and try to copy him

Martingale systems do not work - they might for a short while, but you will have a couple of very expensive lessons if you constantly utilise this system

No one ever has, or ever will, formulate a perfect roulette strategy. Ive lost count of the amount of times people have tried to sell me one

Card counting is legal, but you cannot count 6 deck online live dealer shoes with a piss poor deck penetration, regardless of what some people will tell you

Most streamers are sell outs (don't blame them, but doesn't mean I am not right)

If you are playing in a bricks and mortar establishment, it does not make a difference how hard/how many times you press the button - just press it once, the result is the same

Fun fact - citizens in monaco are not allowed to play in the monaco casino

There is a rumour (that I may have started) that @L&L-Jan and @Mark_Lottomart are the same person - you never see them at the same time
Can we make this a sticky post?

100% correct
 
Just a quick one for now... Shouldn't really admit this :o

  • What's a belief about slots or casinos that turned out to be nonsense?
Having played AWP's for years and years, when I first made the switch to online, I believed they worked very similar, oh how wrong I was lol

Thoughts such as "Looks like someone's rinsed this" and "Jon, what you playing this for, you won on it last time" used to go through my head.

Used to pull out the power supply on my tower when a big win dropped, see if the slot forgot and gave it me again

*Ok, the last bit's a joke :p
 
everyone should know that u dont gamble to win, u gamble for entertainment and should expect the money deposited to be gone (like paying for a movie ticket or a concert.
if u win thats a nice surprise
 
Just because some dick wearing a hat makes gambling a full time career, don't give up your day job and try to copy him
And even he is not gambling. He's a paid employee.

Card counting is legal, but you cannot count 6 deck online live dealer shoes with a piss poor deck penetration, regardless of what some people will tell you
This reminds me of a message one of our members here posted recently :confused::confused::confused:
online you can avoid betting when the count is low and you can also use software to count and have 100% accuracy.
 
What do you wish every player knew?
RTP is important but not everything. It's the margin that over the long term will be taken from the total that is put through a slot by everyone who plays it. 96% just means 4% is going to the provider/casino and 96% is like a pool of money that is distributed back to the players at random.

Always felt to me like the casinos and providers made a genius move by making these the standard metrics they have to provide because they seem to have completely distracted from the fact there are a lot of useful metrics for the players to know in terms of how a slot will play on average session to session.

Bonus frequency/win odds, base/bonus rtp split, paytable odds etc. would all be more useful to me. Base/bonus rtp split would tell you the rtp anyway.

I don't mean knowing a slot is 94% or 96% isn't important but just that there are a lot of other useful things to know about a slot as well unless you plan to spin it a hell of a lot so the slot RTP is almost your personal RTP.

What's a mistake you made early on that you'd never make now?
Not withdrawing my deposit if i doubled it or more.

I would just leave my winnings on the account but it was always too easy to play on and on and think I've still got enough play another tenner, another fiver then hit zero and think that was a really dumb thing to do.

Once I started withdrawing winnings and only ever leaving the original deposit value or less to play on with it makes it a lot easier to manage and is still a free or winning evening if I hit zero with whatever I left on there.

If you play on decent casinos the withdrawal doesn't take long so you always have the option to redeposit or take a break and think about it.

Also wasting money on random slots. I just play the ones I like now or will give a slot a go because I want to not because I saw someone else's epic win screenshot on here and think I can hit that too, the slot is on some hot/new/recommended list or a review says it's a 10 out of 10 slot etc.

What's a belief about slots or casinos that turned out to be nonsense?
  1. Probably all 'conspiracy' ones. Spent long enough reading old 'rigged' threads on here, initially out of interest and then because they are really entertaining and have a lot of information on how slots work. No I don't think they are rigged.
  2. Slots only bonus after a certain point. I've hit plenty of first spin bonuses or early ones and barely play compared to others.
  3. Casinos are controlling the slots at a personal level. At most they probably profile players in order to make sure they can keep you on their site by offering products that match what you like and know your patterns of play for similar reasons. I'd be really surprised if they would risk their margin and massive fines to screw over a particular player because they won. 'Turn the rtp down on the slot 2Slots is playing, he's on a hot streak' just doesn't seem likely.
  4. If you make a withdrawal you will then lose. See mistakes question. They've played the same if not better since I started doing that and I've even made three or four withdrawals in a session because the slots kept playing well after the first one.
  5. Casinos are out to get you. Like any business they want your money but the decent ones aren't forcing you to do anything or trying to screw you over. Even some of the complaints on here about getting banned from a casino always read to me like 'this dummy complained about how a slot played and probably got flagged as a potential problem gambler but they think the casino is out to get them'. It's more likely they don't want to keep you as a customer as your complaint reads like a potential gambling problem that they don't want to have to deal with and potentially get fined over if they let you carry on playing. Decent casinos will deal with valid complaints like any other business would but moaning about a slot because you played and lost is probably not a good idea.
What's the sneakiest thing you've seen buried in terms or a bonus?
Min stake to take part in this offer is 0.20. Any free spins awarded are worth 0.10.

Is there anything you know now that you're surprised isn't common knowledge?
How slots actually work. I don't think a lot of people realise how much of an effect themes/sounds/gimmicks/teasers and maths models have over a player.

Of course the providers are going to market the slots in the best terms possible. They aren't going to market the slots using words like 'hypnotize' or 'addictive' because that would be dumb over using 'entertaining', 'engaging', 'fun' etc.

Players should learn enough about slots that they have a good idea about how they are designed and then play the ones they do actually find 'entertaining', 'engaging', 'fun' instead of playing ones they don't like but are 'hypnotized' or 'addicted' to and then think something is off. I find the slots I play entertaining and fun even if though they can play like crap too.

There are a lot of crap slots out there so find the ones you like not the ones that everyone else does. Even the ones you like are probably considered crap by other people.

You have no control over the winning part, you can only have some control over the losing aspect.

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Note: you can use what you like but I don't want to be credited or mentioned if you do. Technically once I post this the content belongs to the site anyway :laugh: (yes I read the rules on here because I'm skeptical about everything related to gambling so alway read everything, even on a forum about casinos/slots!)
 
If you are playing in a bricks and mortar establishment, it does not make a difference how hard/how many times you press the button - just press it once, the result is the same
You sure about this? The guys in the bookies who played FOBTs would insist that rubbing the screens while playing helps them warm up :laugh:

Thoughts such as "Looks like someone's rinsed this" and "Jon, what you playing this for, you won on it last time" used to go through my head.
I still can't help thinking like this. After playing JATB and hitting a full screen of harps I avoided it thinking it won't do that again. Did it again 6 months later so I avoided it again.

Then I hit a 900x+ on it and it finally occurred to me that maybe this slot just plays well for me so I should stop avoiding it every time something decent happens!
 
Back when I first started playing in the late 2000s I genuinely thought all online casinos paid out when they said they would (a bit like banks in my head).

Thankfully before I joined cm in 2012 id only really played at places id heard of like ladbrokes, 888 etc.

I wish I knew that not every online casino is fair and pays their players. Even though by chance id never got stung by shady operators
 
Right, top tips from me:

On land-based games, just brush the start button continuously until you get to the absolute minimum force necessary to spin the reels, always means better payouts.

Always be optimistic when you play as slots get happy when you are and vice-versa.

If you desperately need a win, always drop stake and then the feature is guaranteed to drop in too.

If there is live chat, always ask for some 'lucky dust'.

Always play Netent's St*rb*rst if trying to convert a bonus, never fails!

Never play Christmas-themed slots near Christmas as they are 'turned down' ready for the seasonal interest.

If you are getting beaten by a game, contact customer service, moan, then ask for your lifetime RTP on it at their casino, then it'll pay next visit.
 
@andysbetting1187 your whole list is brilliant, thank you!

That first point especially is one we completely agree with. And since it's close to home, we want to be open about our reviews: at Casinomeister, we test every casino we write about, we don't touch other affiliates' data, and casinos get no say in what we publish. We do take our share of backlash from casinos too, btw!

The one thing we can't do is play somewhere for 5 or 10 years (like some of you have, and like we have at the casinos where we play regularly) before we publish a review. So our snapshot won't always match a long-term player's, and every player's experience differs anyway. We do, however, update our reviews as we continue testing the casinos. And this is a big reason we joined the forum too. The player feedback here feeds straight back into the reviews, and we're happy to update them and revisit a casino's score based on you guys' feedback.

So yea, we've never claimed to be the beacon of truth, but our reviews (and all our content, for that matter) are genuine, tested, and informed :cmheart: Which is more than can be said for a lot of the reviews floating around the industry.

@maxd wrote up how our reviews work in more detail if anyone's curious.

Also, we were talking about this very point with @maxd earlier today, who put it well: real hands-on gameplay is a great addition to any review, and where it's light, absolutely, do your own research on that bit. But according to him a huge majority of players take "how's it play?" and think that's all there is. Obviously that's not all there is or Complaints services, for example, wouldn't exist.

Anyway, keep it coming. And if you've got feedback on any specific review, let us know, we'll take a proper look 😉
 
@andysbetting1187 your whole list is brilliant, thank you!

That first point especially is one we completely agree with. And since it's close to home, we want to be open about our reviews: at Casinomeister, we test every casino we write about, we don't touch other affiliates' data, and casinos get no say in what we publish. We do take our share of backlash from casinos too, btw!

The one thing we can't do is play somewhere for 5 or 10 years (like some of you have, and like we have at the casinos where we play regularly) before we publish a review. So our snapshot won't always match a long-term player's, and every player's experience differs anyway. We do, however, update our reviews as we continue testing the casinos. And this is a big reason we joined the forum too. The player feedback here feeds straight back into the reviews, and we're happy to update them and revisit a casino's score based on you guys' feedback.
Appreciate the response to this - my main issue is not necessarily the fact that the site is being tested, it is that on occassion the scores that are provided to some casinos just appear to be quite high based on the T&C's (when you dig into them)

I can't remember which ones I have moaned about (constructivley) in the past, but in my opinion, a casino that has restriced cash out amounts should not be only a couple of points away from an established brand like ABC or Lottomart

It's the same with casinos that score high, but they charge for a person to withdraw their own money.

Sometimes on the reviews as well, these restrictions/payments for withdrawing are not always highlighted.

I know the scoring system has been a slight contentious piece and has been discussed a few times/is being addressed (it may already have, I have not spent as much time on it lately) but I think the scores should be more balanced.

I think its important for a site like CM to highlight the above, as it is seen as a place to go to if someone has issues where they can be raised and responded to in a professional way, but whilst more people come to the site, they will inevitably look at the review scores and see high scored casinos that (to me) should not be there
 
That first point especially is one we completely agree with. And since it's close to home, we want to be open about our reviews: at Casinomeister, we test every casino we write about, we don't touch other affiliates' data, and casinos get no say in what we publish. We do take our share of backlash from casinos too, btw!

The one thing we can't do is play somewhere for 5 or 10 years (like some of you have, and like we have at the casinos where we play regularly) before we publish a review. So our snapshot won't always match a long-term player's, and every player's experience differs anyway. We do, however, update our reviews as we continue testing the casinos. And this is a big reason we joined the forum too. The player feedback here feeds straight back into the reviews, and we're happy to update them and revisit a casino's score based on you guys' feedback.
I would like to understand more detail about the parts I have made bold above. Testing every casino written about here, let alone continuing to test them, sounds like a massive undertaking. Who does the initial and ongoing testing, and how is this achieved?
 
I wish every player understood that in this industry, they don't have a single ally, because every other player in the ecosystem survives off the player. Payment providers take a cut from every deposit and cashout. Game providers take a cut from every loss. Social media takes a cut from advertising that is almost always illegal and misleading, because it shows people winning surrounded by a group of friends, when in reality most people lose alone. Streamers, bloggers, influencers, review sites, they all make their money off your losses too, so the conflict of interest here is impossible to avoid.

I won't even get into the casinos themselves and their VIP managers. Every piece of the site's design is built to be as addictive as possible. Every message a VIP manager sends you has one goal, get you to deposit, lose everything you have, borrow money, take out a loan, and deposit that too. A small share of players, most of them problem gamblers, is what generates the bulk of a casino's revenue.

Slots are engineered the exact same way. Near misses, losses dressed up as wins, all of it is tuned to keep you from stopping. Even in countries with proper regulation, there's more than enough wrong. And where there's no regulation at all, in these casinos licensed out of Costa Rica, Anjouan, Curaçao, even Malta, it's a full blown wild west. It's important to understand that all of these casinos are ILLEGAL in your country, regardless of what license they hold.

And here's the most important part. If you have ever once lost more than you planned to, and kept depositing hoping to win it back, that's already a red flag for problem gambling, and there's a real risk it gets worse from there.

One more thing. For players who have no issue losing a couple hundred as a form of entertainment, I'd still want them to understand how RTP, volatility, and the long run actually work, and how to squeeze the most value out of promos and offers.

I actually wrote about this in more depth recently, easy to find if anyone's curious
 
I know the scoring system has been a slight contentious piece and has been discussed a few times/is being addressed (it may already have
The rebuild of the Ratings system at Casinomeister is very much an active and "in progress" thing. In fact we have a big meeting with all the relevant departments this Friday where, among other things, we'll be discussing some pretty radical new proposals for rationalising Ratings on casinos that ignore or systemically drop the ball on player complaints.

I mention that specifically because obviously that tends to be my corner of the scene; I know the other departments are actively looking for ways to improve the other areas of the Ratings scores (meaning "make them more meaningful" not "make them better for the casino").

Streamers, bloggers, influencers, review sites, they all make their money off your losses too, so the conflict of interest here is impossible to avoid.
There is a difference between "there is a conflict of interest here" and "you lie in order to make money".

Casinomeister's entire history is based on the desire, and proven ability, to provide the best and fairest information to players -- Reviews, Ratings, Warnings, open discussions, etc -- and make an affiliate living at the same time. Yes, obviously many in the industry would abuse and distort that position in order to make even more money. We don't because a substantial number of people involved in the Casinomeister project know that if we did so, or let it happen, the word would get out and Casinomeister would soon be just another dying affiliate site.

The ago-old idea that in casino you have to lie and cheat in order to make a living is BS. The reason it is BS is that a lot of people -- not everyone, but it doesn't have to be everyone -- will listen to what you have to say if you tell the truth AND are giving them the information they need and want.

Do we make money off of affiliate earnings? Yes, obviously, but that doesn't mean we have to go to the Dark Side in order to do what we do. Casinomeister has survived for almost 30 years by giving players the best truthful info we can, by helping players (for free) via our Complaints service, and by being ready, willing and able to take a stand against industry misbehaviour.

That model works -- remember, 30 years -- until the day you decide that what you stand for is for sale because you'd rather be rich than survive the long game. Our reputation and continued existence tell you all you need to know about what our priorities have been and how we maintain the balance.
 

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