Everything on this site comes out of the same five checks, run in the same order, on a laptop at a kitchen table. The method is deliberately small. A longer checklist would look more serious and would get run less often, and a check that gets skipped is worse than no check at all.
The order matters
Licence first, because a failure there ends the exercise. Then terms, because they decide whether the offer that brought you to the site means anything. Then the way out, then support, then the safer-play tools. Each check can be done without an account except the last two, and we say clearly on every page which checks were possible and which were not.
1. The licence, read properly
We take the operating company name and the licence number from the site's own footer, then look both up in the register of the regulator that supposedly issued them. What we are matching is the company, not the brand: one company often runs several brands, and a brand can appear on a site long after the company behind it changed. If the register says the entry is dormant, revoked or simply absent, that is the finding, and nothing further gets written up.
In Ireland this is a moving target. The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 created the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, and its licensing regime is being brought in by stages, so a site serving Irish players today may hold a licence from another jurisdiction, several, or none that it is willing to name. We record what we find rather than what we expect to find.
2. The terms behind the offer
Four numbers, and where each one is written: the wagering multiple, which games count towards it and at what percentage, the maximum stake allowed while a bonus is live, and the expiry window. A headline offer with a low multiple and a five-euro max bet is a slower offer than it looks. The most common failure here is not a bad number, it is a number kept on a different page from the offer.
3. The way out
Withdrawal minimums and maximums, the documents verification will ask for, the pending or reversal period, and any fee. We look for all of it before an account exists, because that is when a player needs it. Rules that only appear once you are logged in, or once you have asked to withdraw, count as a fail even when the rules themselves are reasonable.
4. Someone to ask
One real question, always about the operator's own published terms, sent through whatever channel the site offers. A specific answer inside a working day passes. A template, a link back to the page we just quoted, or nothing at all does not. We keep the transcript.
5. The brakes
Deposit limits, loss limits, session reminders, time-out and self-exclusion: how many clicks from the account menu, whether a limit applies immediately or at the next reset, and whether a reduction can be undone the same day. Tools that exist but take eight clicks to reach are recorded as existing and hard to reach, because that is what they are.
What we do not do
- No scores out of ten, no stars, no "top 10" ordering. The finding is which check failed.
- No player reviews we cannot verify. We do not run a review widget and we do not quote anonymous testimonials, on this site or from anywhere else.
- No numbers we did not see ourselves. If a payout time comes from an operator's own claim, the page says so in that sentence, not in a disclaimer at the bottom.
- No pages about operators we could not reach from Ireland at the time of checking.
How often a page is re-checked
Terms change quietly and often. Any page that names an operator carries the date it was last checked, and we re-run the licence and terms checks on those pages at least every six months, or sooner when something visible changes: a new regulator announcement, a change of operating company, or a reader telling us the terms no longer match.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, the page gets fixed and keeps a line at the bottom saying what was changed and when. We do not quietly edit a claim and leave the date alone. If a correction changes the outcome of a check — a fail that should have been a pass, or the reverse — it goes at the top of the page, not the bottom.
To report an error, write to the desk with the page address and what you believe is wrong. A dated correction is added or a reason given, and either way you get an answer.
Who runs the checks
One person, with a second pair of eyes on anything that ends in a fail. See the author page for who that is, and about the desk for how this site pays for itself.