One of our tips earlier in the week was about the ongoing fairness of online casinos. Obviously, this is a very important issue - One that all bettors should concern themselves with. Some of the concerns revolving around this issue should be in regards to how ongoing fairness is obtained.

Rather than simply procuring a single payout report covering the payouts of one particular month, ongoing fairness protocols require gaming sites to be audited on a continual basis. This will amount to a minimum of monthly payout reports by credible, third party auditors and software fairness accreditations.

While governmental gaming regulators take it upon themselves to ensure a fair betting environment, up until now, it has often been up to the online casino operators themselves to make their sites transparent. In other words, rather than simply saying "We are Fair and have payouts of 97%" transparent operations will go one step further and publish their payout reports and software fairness certificates.

If it were not for the non-profit, gaming regulation assurance standard, eCOGRA, much of the progress that has already been made in the area of ongoing online casino fairness would not even be had. eCOGRA, which stands for eCommerce and Internet Gaming Regulation and Assurance, has raised the standard even more with a new regulation protocol called Total Gaming Transaction Review (TGTR).

A system of checks-and-balances, if you will, TGTR involves the use of additional surveillance on the preparation of payout reports and fairness accreditations. TGTR uses the services of  KPMG (a global network of professional independent auditors and finance specialists) to report to eCOGRA's Board of Directors on both the people and processes used to generate fairness reports.

With the inclusion of this new protocol, a highly effective preventive measure against biased or forged payout reports is now in place. Players need only click on the eCOGRA seal on approved casinos, to view detailed ongoing payout reports and fairness certifications.