Beginners Guide to Your Online Gaming Experience
Online casinos have been set up and designed to be easy for people to play at, but we realize that for first time Canadian players the process of registering, deciding whether to download or play via browser, depositing, and playing can still be a little unclear. Newcomers are often baffled by the abundance of options they have, which leads them to make poor gaming choices. We believe we can help to make the entire gaming experience smoother in every aspect.
Before You Begin – Know What You’re After
Before you start out to enjoy some online gaming, its best to decide what you are really looking for, as different types of players have different goals in mind, and thus are looking for different things. Read more
Step 1 – Choose an online casino
The number of online casino sites is enormous and if you were to check each and every one you would never end up playing.
Weâre a reputable Canadian casino review portal and itâs our job to research and rate each casino so you donât have to go and visit and check each casino out.
Step A: The first step is to go to our casino reviews page and see the various criteria we use to rate each casino. Some criteria will be more important to some visitors than others.
Some people are more concerned by the security of an online casino site and the number of payments methods, whilst other people are more interested in the quality and quantity of games.
Read over this page and figure out what is important for you. Similarly our blacklisted casino page will tell you which casinos to avoid.
If you are keen to play a certain game you can find our elaborated slot casinos page or blackjack casino page and we even have a page dedicated to unusual casino games.
Step B: After this click through to some of our specific review pages such as our Royal Vegas Casino review or Mr Green casino review and see if the casino matches what you are looking for.
All of our recommended casinos have been vetted and will provide a great gaming experience. Some will just be a better match for you than others. Once you like the look of casino click on the visit button â you will then be redirected to the casino of your choice.
- Games 6274
- Payout KYC: 48 hours; E-wallets: Pending time: Within few hours; Same day; Credit/Debit Cards/Wire Transfer: 2-7 business days
- Games 5099
- Payout KYC: Within 24 hours; Pending Time: 72 hours; E-wallets: Instant; Credit Cards/Bank Transfer: 1-3 business days
- Wagering req. 35xB
- Games 6175
- Payout KYC: Within 48 hours; Pending time: Up to 24 hours; E-wallets: Instant; Bank Transfer: 3-10 business days;
- Wagering req. 40xB
- Games 6658
- Payout KYC: Up to 72 hours; Pending time: 0-24 hours; E-wallets: Instant; Bank Transfer: 3-10 business days;
- Wagering req. 40xB
- Games 5793
- Payout KYC: Within 36 hours; E-wallets: Instant; Credit/Debit Cards: 1-5 business days; Bank Transfer: 3-10 business days
- Wagering req. 40
- Games 5984
- Payout KYC: Up to 24 hours; Pending time: Up to 24 hours; E-wallets: Up to 1 hour; Credit/Debit Cards: 1-3 business days; Bank Transfer: 3-7 business days
Step 2 – Choose whether to download or play instantly via your browser
Youâre now on the casino site you like the idea of playing at, your next step is deciding whether to play on the casinoâs download casino or on its flash /instant play casino. Most casinosâ present this choice very clearly by offering two buttons â for example on Royal Vegas thereâs a button âDownload our free premium casino softwareâ which is for the download casino and a button which says âSign up and play onlineâ which is for the flash casino.
Download casino: Itâs very easy to download the casino software and install the download casino on your PC. After pressing the download button, you just run the file and follow the wizard and its prompts. Within a minute or two the client will be placed on your desktop from which you can access the casino. Download casinos usually offer the biggest range of games and the best graphics. See this article on download casinos for more information
Flash casino: If you donât like the idea of downloading any software you can play online via your web browser. For this option, the casino uses the flash software on your PC or Mac to play the games.
Some casinos actually don’t require Flash anymore (such as those that are great on mobile and don’t use any external plugin to run.
There are advantages and disadvantages for playing on the instant play casino. See this article on no download casinos for more info. If you have a Mac then you’ll have to play on the flash casino, see this guide to Mac casinos for more info.
Step 3 – Register a free account
Before you can play for real money you will need to register and open an account. The details required again will differ from casino to casino but will normally include:
- Username
- Password
- Email address
- Date of Birth
- Address
- Contact number
These details are needed for verification purposes. Sometimes casinos present the registration form on one page, whilst in other casinos itâs presented over two pages, either way it now takes less than 2 minutes to register an account.
See this video guide from Royal Vegas on registering an account
Step 4 – Make a deposit
The next step if you want to play and win some actual money is to make a deposit. To do this you click on the âBankingâ or âPaymentâs button from the casino lobby, which will be there whether youâre playing from your browser (flash casino) or from the software on your desktop (download casino)
Once youâre in the banking module, youâll then see a range of payment methods to add money to your casino account. Again, casinos will differ in the range of payment methods they support to Canadian players but our recommended casinos all offer a range of different credit cards (see our VISA casinos), debit cards, e-wallets (see our Skrill casinos here), pre-paid cards (e.g Paysafecard), bank wire and e-bank transfers.
The time it takes before you see your casino account with the funds you deposited will differ depending upon the mode of transfer, deposit by an e-wallet such as Skrill and it can be instantaneous, deposit via bank wire and it will, of course, take a few days.
For a visual guide see this video from Royal Vegas on how to deposit
Step 5 – Choose your game
You downloaded the casino software, registered an account and deposited funds â youâre now ready to play. Navigating to the games is easy, our top casinos all have great user interfaces and anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes surfing the net will be able to locate the games whether from the download or no download platforms.
Games will often be according to type so you can click on a particular game genre e.g. slots, blackjack, roulette, video poker to find all the games the casino offers under that game type. Once you’ve found a game youâd like to play, just click the icon, wait for the game to load and youâre ready to play and win big.
Not sure which game to choose? View our gaming guides:
Finding games and your way around an online casino is easy, see Royal Vegas’s guide to their casino lobby as an example: