Online play away from Gateway Casinos

Ontario runs a regulated online casino market, and a private site has two conditions to meet before it can take bets. One is registration with the AGCO, the province's regulator. The other is an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario, known as iGO.

iGO publishes a directory of the sites that have been approved. That directory is where a private site's approval can be looked up. OLG.ca stands apart from the private sites, as the government's own online casino.

iGaming Ontario's directory of approved sites

Two conditions apply to anyone playing on a regulated Ontario site. The first is age: 19 or older. The second is place, and it turns on where the player is, not where they live. The player must be physically in Ontario at the moment the bet is made.

A site that takes bets from people in Ontario without AGCO registration is an illegal operator in the province. Checking a name takes one step. iGaming Ontario publishes a directory of approved sites, and a name can be looked up there before any money changes hands.

BetGuard, at betguard.ca, is run by iGaming Ontario. It blocks every regulated Ontario gambling site at once, OLG.ca included. A person picks the length: 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, or a span of their own choosing.

The block stops at the screen. It does not reach casinos people walk into, such as the one on Bonin Road. For those, OLG's My PlayBreak programme sets a casino break of 3 or 6 months or 1 to 5 years, covering every casino in Ontario. Once started, that break cannot be ended early.

Nickel Route carries paid links on its home page only, each one tagged Ad. They sit in three places: the menu button, a strip under the opening screen and a box near the bottom. All three lead to one private online casino business. That business pays the guide a commission and may be swapped for another.

It has nothing to do with the casino on Bonin Road, and it is not Gateway Casinos or OLG. Anyone can look up a site's name in the iGO directory.