I’m a casual guy, as you can no doubt tell from the website. But behind my seeming devil-may-care insouciance beats the cold precise heart of an ex-military accountant made out of Swiss watches and binary logic gates. Or something like that.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you in on my casino review thought process. After all, your needs and judgments of an online casino could be very different from mine. I think mine are better, but then probably so do you.

• The Look — is not important. But then again it kinda is. I’m personally the kind of guy who doesn’t care how a car looks if it does a great job getting me to where I’m going. On the other hand, anybody who takes the time to make something look good will PROBABLY have taken the time to make a casino that does a good job of getting you where you’re going.

• The software — duh, right? The software is pretty much 90% of what you’re getting when you sign up to an online casino. Good software is user-friendly when you need to do something. Good software has lots of games and doesn’t get buggy right in the middle of a hot streak. Good software is NOT the rule for online casinos, and in fact there’s only a handful of decent software developers out there — even fewer if you’re playing from the US.

• The Service — is the difference between knowing that you’re well taken care of…and spending every moment praying that you never have problems. Easy, fast, convenient support options are an absolute must for me, because I was born under a bad sign. If a problem can happen, it will happen to me. So I tend to get to know customer support and the FAQs very well indeed.

• The Perks — shouldn’t be the main reason for your decision, but frequently they’re enough to push one candidate over the top. I wouldn’t choose a casino simply because it offered a $10,000 Welcome Bonus…but I definitely would recommend it over an otherwise similar casino that only offered a $100 Welcome Bonus!

• The Limiting Factors — is a vague description of a bunch of minor details that can take a casino right out of the running. For example, if you’re in the USA, you’re going to want to see casinos for US players. Or identifying which casinos accept American Express and which do not (obviously very helpful if you can only use AMEX for payments). That kind of thing.