For me, 2004/5 really. I knew about online casinos before that, but always found them using malware to self install their icons, so assumed the whole thing was one big scam. This shows just how the rogues can affect the image of the WHOLE industry when they are the new player's first point of contact.
In 2004, I got an offer from the shopping site "themutual.net", which was based here in the UK, and they offered an incentive of around 25 to deposit and play $50 with 888.com (casino-on-net). This was a virtual no-lose situation, so I deposited the $50 and eventually lost it all in 2005 (didn't play much). Since then, I have found that "themutual.net" only pays out on around 50% of these offers, and this can be increased to 70/80% only by chasing them.
My next, and first REAL effort, was at UK Casino Club, where they had these scoreboard tournaments, wheel of cash, and various bonuses. My first sessions were good, so I eventually joined the others, and the peak event was my PAT Royal in April 2005 for an unbelievable 16,000. This was probably the point where I was properly hooked on the concept, but since I have been a gambler since the age of 7 (seaside arcades) it was an easy transition from Fruit Machines to casino slots, and seeing and trying the "new" games of Video Poker and Blackjack, both of which gave the impression of being based partly on skill.
The rot set in with UIGEA, and before this there were increasing problems with "bonus fraud", an issue I partly understood because one of the fruit machine forums lead me to a bonus whoring website and forum, where the best bonuses were advertised. This forum lead me to the rogue casinos of Crystal Palace and Winward, although Winward paid all but $25 of my near $1000 profit from their SUB
A stupid mistake by Crystal Palace lead me to Casinomeister after I checked out "safebet" and found a banner farm where I was expecting some kind of regulatory verification site. I don't know WHY I checked, just some "gut feeling" kicked in. I found a forum on safebet where the post about Crystal Palace were all highly negative, and further use of Google eventually turned up Casinomeister, where I found most of the offers on that bonus whoring site were from "rogue casinos". At this point, I quickly became an INFORMED player, much less likely to get screwed over.
In 2005/6 I launched "vinylweatherman.net" as a bit of a learning exercise (don't forget the 10K still left over from that RF
). I have all but deserted my usual motorway haunts in favour of my office, and now bedroom, where my latest high spec PC resides (it can even cope with MG software
).
2007 was a year of decline, it seems scandal after scandal of the "not paying players" kind hit, some were found to be player fraud, but others were cases where genuine players got screwed, and it took much effort from outside agencies to get justice, because the casino CS were just rude and arrogant to these players - this affected reputable casinos, not just the rogues where such behaviour is to be expected.
We are being assured by the industry that their responses have been "proportionate", but there is no way of verifying this as we cannot see what has actually been going on due to this regard for secrecy through fear of helping further fraud take place. This secrecy seems to go well beyond what is strictly necessary in order to prevent repeat fraud.
In the second half of 2007, concrete proof of deceptions in casino software emerged, one shock being that some Microgaming 5 reel slots were "rigged" in the sense that the chance of winning was not a function of the reel bands, i.e they were weighted, despite the fact this had been denied by the information that MG allowed to circulate about their software within the player community. I no longer believe that when we think we see "patterns" in these so called "random" games that it is all in our minds because our brains were wired to make sense of our environment. I now believe there is more to find out about these "random" games, and that the big software houses do indeed have something to hide about how what we see on our PC's is generated.
2008 will be the year of in depth investigation of these "patterns", as this provides another avenue for "entertainment" with the software other than playing promotions with ever incrreasing, and in some cases totally ridiculous, WR!
i thought this is great
ach, netteller, click2pay and all these other depositing methods, how wonderfull. that was 2005 now we are going into 2008,am i still glad i saw that goofy tv add? yep, guess i am. im still here and still playing but with less depositing methods and a set amount that can be sent to u.s players.
anyone else have a story?
