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Coral is another one of those names that comes with a tremendous heritage in the realm of UK betting, being a familiar name on British high streets for nearly eighty years. It still maintains its position as one of the Big Three bookmakers in this country controlling well over a thousand licensed betting shops and a huge telephone betting empire. Its online betting business was created at the very end of the last millennium (that'll be December 1999 if you're wondering) when it plighted its troth with Eurobet, a younger company that was a pioneer in internet betting, and it now commands a huge international customer base for its services. Coral's real-world reputation attests to their online casino being both scrupulously fair and secure, but what other important boxes does it tick to make it worthy of your time and money?
We think first impressions count and on this score Coral's online casino rates highly with us. The website is both fast loading and very nicely designed, giving clear indication of its charms coupled with an elegant, streamlined navigation system. Finding out user information is beautifully handled through a separate pop-up help window that is intelligently indexed to make locating answers to the most crucial customer questions as easy as it should be. Use of graphics throughout the help pages are kept to the minimum so it's a very nippy interface, even on dial-up, which helps reinforce the impression that Coral understands what's important to its customers.
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The 'need for speed' is a theme that also permeates the actual gaming available at this online casino. In contrast to many of its 'big name' rivals, Coral is all about non-download gaming; other than having Macromedia's Flash software running on your computer (which is a pretty ubiquitous component installed in PCs these days) a chunky download of custom game software is not required here. This immediately makes Coral particularly worthy of your attention if you want to play a casino on a machine that can't (or shouldn't) have downloaded gaming software loaded on it. Coral Casino is therefore a very good bet for those sneaky hands of blackjack on the office computer during your lunchbreak, and - joy of joys - for non-Windows users like the Mac community of casino fans. On this last point, we have often encountered rival casinos with non-download Flash based games that simply don’t load into the common Mac web browsers, but Coral's games do work without any problems. Well done Coral for getting this right we say!
The games themselves cover all the casino classics and really deliver the goods in our opinion. The visual rendering is clearly not as rich as the same games played with downloaded software in other casinos, but that is not to say that it is in any way inadequate. The Chartwell games Coral use strike the right balance between having detail that makes for a rewarding experience, and being reasonably quick to load for customers on slower connections. Such customers can also tailor the games visual rendering to a lower setting, which is a thoughtful option to keep gameplay smooth if their machine is struggling with the better graphics. On the issue of game customisation, it's worth noting that some of the audio details are set to 'off' by default so, if like us, you like the ambient rumble of the casino while you play, make sure you call up the options menu to add this in. One option missing that, personally, we'd like to see at this UK online casino, is to have a British dealer voice - OK it might seem petty, and we're sure the American dealer is lovely, but it would just be a nice touch to make us feel more at home here.
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Opening an account to play the forty-plus games at this online casino for real money is a simple, if quite detailed, process. Conveniently though, signing up with Coral also creates an account that you can use across the whole suite of its gaming products, all of which are easily navigated to via tabs at the top of the casino website screen. Another timesaving touch. Coral naturally has the level of customer support we've come to expect of casinos at this top end of the market, however we did note that, for UK customers, the freephone support is only available during the daytime - at all other times it entails a chargeable call to the casino's HQ in Gibraltar. Still, there's always the e-mail if it's after 6pm and you're feeling a bit stingy . . .
Quick, straight-ahead casino fun really is the name of the game here. You may find bigger and better promotions, and lusher looking games with more bells and whistles elsewhere but when it comes to the fundamentals of what makes for great online casino gaming Coral won't disappoint. It's back to the basics of fun gaming, yet without sacrificing the important little details that make for an authentic feeling 'casino experience'. And if that doesn’t convince you of Coral Online Casino's charms, the option to play its games for fun (i.e. free) without any tedious sign-up needed at all, means you have simply no excuse not to pay a visit and find out how good this casino is for yourself.
click here to play at Coral now |
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