Best Online Pokies Review

We decided to review online pokies. Here is what we learned.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

• Yes, online pokies are playable.
• Many of them have the exact same games.
• Spinago was the best online pokie that we used.
• During our test, we actually won some money and managed to withdraw it.
• DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT use any deposit bonuses or free spins when joining up.

Let’s be honest. The idea of playing online pokies is a little bit creepy.

Kind of like going to the pokies by yourself on a Friday night.

It’s fun, but you know, there is something not quite right about it.

Like us, as a first-timer stepping into the murky world of online pokies you will probably have the same questions we did:

• Can you actually withdraw money if you win?
• Are they all a scam and going to steal money from my credit card?

The short answer to the first part of the question is yes, you can win and withdraw money and to the second part of the question is no, they will not steal from your credit card.

It’s like anything on the internet, there are scams out there so just stick to the well-reviewed pokies found at Trending Casinos.

The Best Pokies

We decided to try as many of the online pokies as we could.

This included Spinago, King Billy, PlayAmo, BitStarz, KatsuBet and 7 Bit Casino. In each of them, we deposited $50, spent some time playing the different games.

In the cases where we won money, we tried to withdraw it.

Believe it or not, we actually got lucky a few times and have come out in front for the test!

In one casino we won $720 on a pokie feature in 7 Bit Casino and $255 in the Joka Room.

To be clear, we were lucky.

We are not saying you will win money.

It’s easy to see how you can do your dough in an online casino so please gamble responsibly.

Understanding the pokie landscape

The first thing you learn is that for the most part, all online casinos offer the exact same games.

The same pokies, exact same live casino tables (Literally, the same dealer on the same hand in multiple casinos)

This is because there is a limited number of game providers (the people who actually make the games) Think of it like how Aristocrat make all the physical pokie machines in Australia (the pubs and clubs don’t actually make the games) Same goes with online pokies.

This means that the only thing that really sets apart one online pokie from another is their website and their customer service.

We found there was a massive difference between the casinos in these areas.

Some had great 24/7 live chat, others had people for whom English is a second language trying to help you.

Challenging to say the least.

The best we found in our non-scientific test of all the pokies was Spinago.

Simple, it just worked the way it should.

No issues.

Spinago Website

Getting Started

To get started playing the online pokies in Australia is pretty easy.

Just go to spinago.com, they will ask you for your details.

Deposit some cash and you will be playing a large selection of online pokies within minutes.

Everything else can take a little longer.

You will notice that some of the pokies have a geo-restriction, in other words, people from Australia cannot play them.

This also applies to all live casino games like blackjack and roulette.

This is where a VPN comes in.

We used ExpressVPN.

We set it to New Zealand and we were off and running.

We were able to jump in and play live casino games.

The Technology

Playing online casino games is very easy, anyone who can operate a computer or tablet can be playing casino games and online pokies with no worries.

If you have a moderate skill level with computers and the internet you should be fine.

If you are the kind of person who needs your kids to help you with your phone, then you might need some help from them to set up VPN and the sorting out of documentation needed when you try your first withdrawal.

It’s important to note, you don’t need these things to get started.

As a part of our test, we helped an old fella who is in his late 60’s get up and running.

He is one of the people who needs help with his phone. As such, needed help to set up a VPN and with the documents for his first cash withdrawal.

Apart from that, he is up and running and loving it (a little too much)

The Pokies

We tested as many pokies as we could find using Google searches for things like: “best online pokies Australia 2020” trying to replicate what a first-time user might do when they were looking to join a casino.

The first thing we noticed is all of the articles are rubbish.

Mostly affiliate sites trying to convince you to get a free spin or deposit bonus offer (Do not do this, will explain why later in the article)

Online Pokies Reviews

Trying to figure out which casino is good by looking at the reviews is  to say the least!

We found that most of the online review sites were not reliable and did not match the actual experience we had playing the various pokies.

We believe that in the world the competitive online pokies, people leave fake reviews to try and tarnish their competition and of course more fake ones saying “their” casino is great.

Of the reviews we thought were real, they were mostly people complaining.

Things like requesting a refund because they pressed the $10 button instead of the $1 button.

The same kind of people who should need a license to breed.

Common sense applies, unfortunately, this escapes a lot of people.

To put it into context, the same type of people leave reviews for online bookmakers, saying they are scams because they “couldn’t get their money”.

Depositing and Withdrawing

Just use Visa. Trust us. Forget Mastercard, forget bank deposits and all the other methods.

Just use Visa.

You’ve been told.

It’s quick, simple and most importantly it’s easy to withdraw.

Other payment methods all require additional information (Like international transfer codes) and take way longer to get your money.

Of course, we expect that depositing is easy but the big challenge sits with the withdrawal.

We found the withdrawals using Visa to be quite easy after you’ve made your first withdrawal.

The first withdrawal does take some additional information, usually a utility bill with your address on it, a copy of a driver’s license, and a copy of the actual credit card that you used to deposit.

These are all pretty easy you can just take a photo on your phone and upload it.

Note that when you upload a picture of your credit card you need to blank out the middle numbers leaving the first 6 numbers and the last 4 numbers visible.

It might feel strange handing over this information, but casinos need to do this to stop people from laundering money.

They’re not trying to steal your identity and credit card details.

As we said at the top of the article, we actually won a fair bit of cash.

We won just over $700 in one online pokie and $250 in another one.

Both were good tests of the withdrawal as we were a first-time customer who won money and then tried to withdraw it in the same session.

We are happy to say that both worked just fine and we got our cash. Phew!

There is also one big caveat to withdrawing money and that is the deposit bonuses.

Deposit bonuses

Do not, I repeat, do not use or accept any of their online bonuses if you have any intention of ever pulling any money out of the casino.

As soon as you accept a deposit bonus you are then bound to extreme turnover rules meaning anything that you win from the “free money” they give you will have to be turned over 20+ times which just means you’re never going to see it.

All the casinos have an option when depositing to click a checkbox and say “I do not want to receive any bonuses” make sure you click this button when depositing because we even saw cases of casinos just depositing random bonuses in the account in order to lock you into turnover rules.

On the pokies where we did click the “no deposit bonus” option, we were able to pull the money out every time with no issues

Will say it again, if you have any intention of pulling money out of the casino do not accept a deposit bonus or free spins.

Bonus Fun

If you have a friend who is also playing you can use online conferencing software such as Zoom so you can both see each other and see each other’s screens.

It’s like you’re playing together at a real pub.

It takes a little bit of sitting up but is fun and makes the experience seem a little more normal.

This is how we tested pokies with two people at a time, watching what each other was doing (and riding the features together!)

In summary

We found Spinago to be the best to use.

They offer all of the major games, have an excellent, fast website that works well on all devices and their customer service was great.

It just works.

This is not to say the others were a scam or bad, we just had small niggly issues with most of the others and Spinago worked quickly, the first time with no issues.

The pokies where we actually won some bigger money the first time were 7 Bit Casino and King Billy.

Both of these wins happened during our first session and we were able to withdraw the cash back to the credit card we used to deposit with no issues.

What we learned

• Use Spinago, it just works.
• Don’t use deposit bonuses whatever you do.
• Deposit using Visa.
• Set up Express VPN to unlock the live casino table games. Click Here

If you do the above, you should be having fun in no time! Good Luck and please, gamble responsibly. you must 18+ to play.

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