25 Dec

Legitimate Pokies in Australia: Review

Unfortunately, the world of online gambling isn’t as clean cut as we would like it to be. The cases of scam sites are rare, but they do exist, and when you add in the fact that many people still have an innate mistrust of online gambling, then this is a big blight on the entire industry.

Scandals in online gambling have occurred across the board, from poker to online casinos and sports betting. In 2007, for instance, there was a scandal with Absolute Poker, who were one of the biggest poker sites at the time. This scandal involved a player who raised a lot of suspicion by winning countless hands and tournaments, looking invincible in the process. As it turned out, the player was a member of staff at Absolute Poker and was able to see the hole cards of all of the other players. A similar scandal occurred at Ultimate Bet, who were owned by the same company. These companies made amends; they apologized and they even gave many of the players involved refunds, but it was thought that they never covered all of the losses and that the impact of these scandals were more far-reaching than these two websites admitted to.

The Cereus Poker Network, which is what Absolute Bet and Ultimate Bet ran on, were both taken down during Black Friday, but until that moment they were still seen as reputable companies, despite what they had done.

Sports books have had similar controversy, even those at the very top. BetFred, for instance, are highly respected and are one of the biggest bookmakers in the UK. They were involved in a scandal whereby a game offered a “50/50 gamble” feature on one of its casino games, only for players to discover that this was a lie, and that the feature was actually heavily weighted in favor of the house. Again, BetFred realized their mistake and they blamed their software provider, before getting a new one. But for many this apology wasn’t enough, and it only served to prove that even the biggest names are not infallible, which is why there is still a dark cloud over BetFred, and why even to this day there are many customers who complain that the BetFred software is not as honest as it should be.

The same applies to online casinos, but here there is a difference. Many of the sites that have been listed as scams, go out of operation very quickly. The gambling community is close, which means that those sites rarely last for more than a few months. One of the few cases where they have lasted much longer is Lock Poker.

Lock Poker began as a legitimate site and became very popular. It attracted players from the United States, opening their doors to them after Pokerstars and Full Tilt refused access. It was one of the most successful sites for many years, but then it stopped honouring withdrawals, and slipped onto many black lists.

Luckily, the vast majority of sites are reputable, and the scam sites are very rare. A good way to check if a site is legit is to make sure it is established and has been going for many years, and although Lock Poker fit that bill, it wasn’t as tightly regulated as many other sites are.

That brings us to our choices, or rather our choice, for a legitimate online casino. There are many out there that can be trusted, but one of our favorites is Platinum Play, which is owned by Digmiedia. This company own manny sites, all of which are licensed, audited and accredited, and all have been going for many years. When it comes to online gambling, you’ll struggle to find a safer, more trustworthy site, and Platinum Play is also open to players from Australia.

As well as being closely tracked by the Maltese Gaming Authority and eCOGRA, Platinum Play applies heightened security to all deposits and withdrawals, and allows players to choose between E-Wallets, bank transfers, pre-paid cards and even PayPal. It uses Microgaming for its software, which means that there is an abundance of pokies, table games and more available, with many new ones added all of the time. There is even a mobile app available, and the main site can be played on Windows and Mac, and even by Linux users through their web browsers.