Declan Ward

How I got here

I started in the industry on the wrong side of the counter. Between 2012 and 2016 I worked in customer operations for two online wagering companies licensed in the Northern Territory, which meant several years of answering the phone to people who had just discovered that a bonus they claimed on Tuesday could not be withdrawn on Saturday. You learn a lot about how terms and conditions actually function when you are the person explaining them to someone who is upset.

I left in 2016 because I wanted to write about the industry rather than defend it, and I have spent the years since testing platforms independently. That means I open real accounts with my own money, deposit through every channel a site offers, play until there is something to withdraw, and time the payout with a stopwatch. It is unglamorous and occasionally expensive. It is also the only way to know whether a casino's claims survive contact with reality.

How I test a casino

• I read the platform, not the marketing. Modern casinos ship their configuration to the browser — payment channels, limits, registration methods. That data is the operator's own truth, and it frequently contradicts the affiliate pages ranking for the brand's name.
• I fund it and cash it out. A casino's character shows up at the withdrawal stage, never at the deposit stage. Any review written without a completed payout is a review of a landing page.
• I quote the operator, not the aggregators. If a figure is not on the brand's own site, it does not go in the article. That is why you will not find an invented welcome bonus anywhere in the ACO96 pages here.
• I read the fine print all the way down. Excluded providers, turnover multipliers, name-matching rules and withdrawal caps are where money is actually won and lost.
• I say what I cannot verify. Where a brand is vague, I write that it is vague. The gap between “unclear” and “dishonest” matters, and so does the gap between “I checked” and “I assume”.