Editorial team and method: how this site checks casinos and codes

Who writes here

Two people, with two jobs. Karssen Avelar writes the reviews, bonus pages, country guides and articles, and runs the checks they rest on: the codes on the forms, the terms behind the offers, the licences against the registers. GnomVRN, with three years inside the industry on the affiliate and review sides, checks every page before it is published and every page again when it is updated: each figure against the facts file that names its source, each licence claim against the register on the day, each restricted list against the brand's terms, and each code screenshot against the date on the card. A page carries both names in its byline because it has passed through both hands.

What gets checked by hand

Every promo code on this site has been typed into the registration form of the casino it belongs to, by a scripted browser from a clean profile, with a screenshot of the field saved with the date; the verification page sets out the method and shows the screenshots. Codes are never read off another review site or copied from an affiliate feed, and a code without a screenshot is not printed as verified.

Wagering, the base it applies to, the maximum cashout, the max bet and the games a bonus is locked to come from the casino's bonus terms page and never from its banner. The two disagree often enough to matter, and when they do the terms are quoted and the banner is named as the banner.

Licences are matched against the regulator's own register on the day: the company and its status, the seal and the host it resolves on, the domain the certificate names. The licence guide is the method in full, and the trust mark follows it.

Country lists are read directly from each brand's terms and rechecked against two independent trackers. A casino that takes a deposit and closes the account at verification has published a restricted list the player did not read; where a casino publishes one, the review carries it in full and dates it.

How the score is built

Every scored casino carries one number out of ten, the plain average of four marks weighted equally, and each mark answers a question that can be settled by reading and testing. Trust: who holds the licence, whether the number under it exists in the regulator's register today, whether the brand's own terms match its front page, and what independent trackers warn about; the mark reaches ten only for a licence number found on a public register and is capped at 7.0 where the number cannot be found, and a safety warning on a tracker lowers it. Library: how many studios the lobby actually carries and whether the headline names are there or only in the marketing. Bonus: how the multiplier, its base, the max bet and the cashout cap read once the terms are opened. Support: whether a live chat answers, in which languages, and whether the answer is a person or a script.

Two things the average leaves out. Payout speed, because we do not measure it and print only what the terms promise and what readers report. And commercial terms, because the moment a payment moved a number the number would stop being worth printing; a brand that pays nothing is scored the same way as one that pays well, and one group of brands sits outside the rankings altogether with full pages, as the reviews hub explains. Brands we have not finished scoring carry no number, and their reviews say why.

What we cannot check

We do not audit payout speeds and do not test game fairness: RTP figures come from a tracker with the version caveat printed beside them, and the RNG guide explains who does test fairness and how. We do not run accounts through every cashier; what a review says about a cashier is what the terms require, what support said in writing, and what readers report, and the page says which. And we do not know what a licence will be worth next year: Curaçao rebuilt its framework outright between 2024 and 2025, and numbers that looked permanent are dead paper, which is why every page carries the date it was last checked at its foot.

Money, plainly

This site earns from links to casinos. Sign up through one and we may be paid. That funds the checking, and it is also the obvious reason to distrust us, so here is the part that matters: the score, the restricted-country block and the wagering figures do not move with the commission. The cooperation page lists what a partnership changes and what it never does.

Corrections

A dead code, a wagering figure that does not match the terms, a country list that has moved, a licence number that has stopped resolving: write to smartseokings@gmail.com and name the page. Fixes go in with a fresh date at the foot of that page, and that date is the only date on it.