All online casinos offer a free online casino option in some form

Whilst it is true that many of the good things in life are still free, they do sometimes seem to be decreasing in number so it is a welcome relief to be able to discuss the opportunity to play online casino games for free. All the online casinos on our recommended list offer what is usually called a free online casino option, and in our opinion here at onlinecasino.ie this is one of the most important developments we have yet seen in the online casino sector. As the name suggests the free online casino option provides us with the opportunity to play a variety of casino games without needing to risk any money. Clearly people will take advantage of this option in different ways. Some will regularly play a variety of casino games for free simply to while away the time, but we believe most will use it for the purpose for which it was designed, and that is to help us learn and enjoy new casino games. Everybody has to start somewhere and we’re sure that there are many people out there who made expensive mistakes while learning how to play the casino games at a real casino. Even some of the slot machines sited in the real casinos can be daunting, particularly those which offer a variety of options which again can cost you money if you make the wrong decision. Unfortunately the real casinos cannot afford to let us play their casino games for free because of their high overheads, but the online casinos can afford it and we are delighted that they have also collectively decided that it is a good idea. It is of course also in their interest that we try new casino games, because we are more likely to come back and try again if we feel happy with playing a variety of games as opposed to sticking with just a few games because we know how to play them. Even some of the traditional casino games we can now play at an online casino are unfamiliar to most of us here in Ireland, because casino games such as craps, baccarat and backgammon were generally never available in our real casinos.

The free online casino option is also not only useful as an aid to learning new casino games, many potential new casino games players will find it useful in deciding which online casino they prefer to register with. Because the online casinos use different casino software suppliers the range of casino games they offer is of course different, but even the traditional casino games such as roulette may look different because of the different graphics, so the option to play a few games free of charge can help us decide which online casino suits us best. While we are talking of the differences between the online casinos in terms of the casino games and the computer graphics associated with those games, we should also point out that there are differences in how individual online casinos offer the free online casino option. Most online casinos do not offer this option on all their casino games, and it may also depend on whether you are playing the casino games in instant or download format. Some online casinos such as William Hill allow people to play some of their casino games in their instant casino format without even needing to register, but there are far more casino games available to play for free in their download format, but you have to register and set up an account even though you do not need to log in. The Betfred casino has very similar arrangements to William Hill regarding their instant and download formats and what you need to do to access the free play option on a wider range of games. Access to the free play option at Betfred casino is also slightly different because you need to click on the game you want to play before the free play option comes up on the screen.

The other major online casino operators on our recommended list, namely Paddy Power, Bwin and 888 do however all require us to log in to access the free casino games available in their download format. Their argument is that this makes it much easier for the players to switch from playing for free to playing with real money. Once again the free play option will only appear on the screen at these online casinos when you have clicked on the game you want to play.

Nowadays any article about the world of online casinos has got to include reference to the smaller specialist online casinos which have recently become available to us. These specialist online casinos have quickly become established on our recommended list because of their innovative approach, so it is no surprise to see that some of them have taken a different approach to the free online casino option. For example CasinoCasino and CasinoLand are not only both committed to providing as big a range of casino games as they can by using software from a number of different suppliers, they also offer almost all these games with the free play option as the default setting. Their idea is that they want to make playing casino games more fun, so by deciding to make the free play option the default setting on their casino games they encourage us to play for fun and we have to decide when and if we want to play for real money. Another important feature of these two new online casinos is that they do not offer a download format so all their casino games are therefore available in instant casino format, which also makes them accessible through a variety of mobile internet devices such as mobile phones and tablets. Whilst we clearly welcome the idea of making the playing of casino games as much fun as possible, and can only praise any new ideas which make that happen, we also have that nagging doubt that playing casino games for free will never beat playing for real money, if only in terms of excitement of gambling.