32Red Casino won the Oggs award in 2006 and it’s back in 2008. Last year it was a toss up between Virgin and 32Red with the former pipping it by the narrowest of margins, mainly because of the Bet Direct acquisition at 32Red that had a big impact on normal service. Now 32Red have offloaded Bet Direct, it’s service as normal and that basically means the best support, best games and as a player, a feeling that you’re more than just a number. 32Red – Best UK Casino 2008.

Bet365 wins this award for the second year on the trot. Although a few other casinos offer a great service to the European market, Bet365 has gone the extra mile in terms of providing full langauge options across the software and most notably their support. Bet365 are a big sports betting firm and have the resources to manage a big casino, but being big often means service suffers. Bet365 have the balance just right and you rarely, if ever, see complaints on the forums about them. They do things quietly compared to some, they don’t service the USA, but they do everything well.

The “Best US Casino 2008″ award goes to iNetbet. Those of you who visited last year will have spotted them in this spot in 2007 aswell. This year the US market has been a turbulent place to be, with more and more casinos pulling out, so on the one hand you could argue that the competition is less. On the other, it takes a lot more work to try and get US players paid out, and iNetBet excel in this area – the only casino to process cashouts twice a day to US players! They’ve been around since the late 90’s and have always been one of the most highly respected RTG casinos out there. Another thing that set them apart when considering this award is that they don’t impose low daily/weekly cashout limits on players like pretty much all the other US facing casinos.

The award for ‘Best New Casino’ goes to Rushmore Casino in 2008. To be honest with you, Rushmore launched in 2007, but as far as Oggs goes, we never add a new casino until it has at least a year under it’s belt, sometimes more, to prove itself to players. Rushmore uses RTG software, and that’s another reason we take care as RTG are not known for their strict licencing policy! But every now and again a good one makes it through and Rushmore is one of those. It has built an excellent reputation on player forums during the 18 months since launch and serves the difficult USA market particularly well. We’d like to see the maximum cashout rules relaxed a little, but everyone facing the US does that now, iNetBet aside. Either way – Rushmore won this award easily.

Last year, Cryptologic were close to winning this award for the new Hulk game, but were ultimately pipped by Hitman from Microgaming. This year, the roles are reversed with Microgaming’s Tombraider II game being pipped by the excellent King Kong slot. Why? Well two reasons: firstly it’s different to any other slot out there, with expanding wild symbols and a unique random extra wild feature. But the killer punch is provided by the free spins bonus round. Not only does King Kong award up to 150 free spins in the bonus round, it retriggers the same amount if the scatters re-appear! While playing this, on more than one occasion I’ve had over 500 free spins in one hit and some wins of over 300x! I love it…so it’s “Best Slot 2008″ in my book. Slot Type: 5 Reel, 30 Paylines. Free Spins: 15 – 150.

Last year, this award seemed to put the kiss of death on the recipient. We awarded it to Casino Action. Six months later, the owners sold the group and the new owners spent all the money resulting in the group’s demise! This year, we think Jackpot Factory are probably in safe enough hands! They have been around for several years and with one major marketing blip around 3 years ago, they have done a fantastic job. The casinos all run on Microgaming software and have loads of games, but 2008 saw the launch of a series of slots tournaments offering over $500,000 in prizes! These really grabbed players imaginations and dwarfed all other tournies. That’s just one example of how Jackpot Factory go the extra mile to keep players playing and happy. Cashouts are processed at a decent speed, support is very good and VIP’s get their own casino! Best Casino Group 2008.