Coral Casino [Rating 8.0/10]

A familiar name on British high streets for over eighty years, Coral is another traditional bookmaking company that entered the online casino business with a tremendous heritage in the realm of UK betting, where it still maintains its position as one of the Big Three domestic bookmakers controlling well over a thousand licensed betting shops and a huge telephone betting empire. Coral's online betting business was created at the very end of the last century (which sounds so much grander than saying December 1999!) when it teamed up with Eurobet, a younger company that was a pioneer in Internet betting. Subsequently Coral Eurobet were acquired by the UK's Gala Group of entertainment companies, to create Gala Coral, a combined European betting and gaming Goliath that commands a massive international customer base. Coral's long standing reputation for integrity is a reliable indication that its online casino is both scrupulously fair and secure; but what other important boxes can it tick to make it worthy of your time and money?

At Vivcasino.co.uk we're great believers in the maxim 'first impressions count' and on this score Coral's latest revamp of its online casino gets off to a good start with us. The website is modern, fast loading and very nicely designed, setting out Coral Casino's stall with an uncluttered home page and straightforward navigation system. Finding out user information is neatly handled through a separate pop-up help window that is intelligently indexed to make locating answers for the most crucial customer questions incredibly straightforward. Use of graphics throughout the help pages are kept to the minimum so it's a very nippy interface whatever your connection speed, which helps reinforce the impression that Coral has really thought through its website's design and layout to be quick and accessible to the widest range of visitors.

Click here to play at Coral Casino

The 'need for speed' is a theme that's also applicable to the actual gaming available at Coral's online casino. In contrast to many of its 'Big Name Bookie' rivals, Coral is all about Instant Play, non-download gaming. All you need is Macromedia's Flash software installed on your computer - which is pretty much a de facto component of modern Web browsers - and you can enjoy the action here. There's no requirement for a potentially tedious download and installation of several megabytes of bespoke, Windows-only software to play the Coral way. This online casino is thus a very good bet for those covert Craps sessions on the office computer (during your lunchbreak of course), and - joy of joys - for non-Windows users like the growing community of Mac-owning casino fans. With respect to this last point, we have reviewed rival casinos with non-download, Flash-based games that simply don't play nicely with Mac web browsers, but Coral's games do work without any problems. Well done Coral for getting this right!

Click here to play at Coral Casino

The selection of games covers all the casino classics and all really deliver the goods in our opinion. Clearly the visual rendering of the games is not as detailed and rich as the same games available as download software elsewhere on the net, but this is not to suggest that they are in any way poor cousins. Chartwell provide Coral Casino's games, and we think you'll find that they strike an excellent balance between being reasonably quick to download and including enough bells and whistles to make for a rewarding experience. It is also nice to see that the games include user options to allow customers to optimise the games audio and visual elements to the performance of their computer, keeping gameplay smooth on machines that might struggle with full resolution graphics. On the issue of game customisation, we found that some of the audio details are set to 'off' by default so, if like us, you love the ambient rumble of a real casino while you play, make sure you use the options menu to switch on the sound of the crowd! One missing option that we'd like to see at this UK online casino, is to have a British voice for the dealers/ croupiers - it might seem a petty point to make (and, by the way, we're sure the American dealer is a splendid individual!) but it would just be a nice touch to make us feel more at home here.

Click here to play at Coral Casino

Although there are quite a lot of details to fill in on sign up with Coral Casino, the process isn't particularly arduous and it does come with added benefits beyond granting you access to the online casino's delights. By joining Coral Casino you also create an account which will let you enjoy the whole gamut of Gala Coral's gaming empire, all of which can be conveniently accessed via tabs at the top of the casino website screen. This is particularly neat if casino gaming is just one of several betting activities you fancy pursuing online. Hey, we even found ourselves sneaking in a bit of Gala Bingo for a laugh after a more serious session on the casino's Blackjack tables! We did note that it's no longer possible to Play for Fun without being logged in as an account holder, which we used to praise Coral for as a dead simple way for would-be customers to try out its wares before signing up, but the change is not one we're going to get huffy about. As already stated, signing up isn't a terrible chore, and you're not obliged to credit your account with any funds until you're ready to start playing for real money.

Returning to review Coral, we were also delighted to see it's continuing to expand its roster of casino games, and has added Live Casino and Head2Head as new attractions to tempt UK players. The former offers Roulette, Blackjack and Baccarat games with live, human dealers, who you can also interact with via chat channels for online gambling. This is an interesting peek into the future of online gaming and kind of fun, but is it just us or is the Blackjack dealer scanning the dealt cards over the table's built-in barcode reader to register their values a little too reminiscent of being at the checkout of a supermarket? Coral Casino's Head2Head games are a little more our style, and offer a very nice opportunity to play Blackjack (amongst other games such as Backgammon, Gin Rummy and Poker Dice) against other Coral players in cash games or tournaments. We like this option very much!

Click here to play at Coral Casino

Coral naturally has the level of customer support we've come to expect of online casinos at the quality end of the market - including less common facilities such as Fax and Call Back - and it's good to see that its freephone service is now available around the clock; previously it was only available free from 9am to 6pm GMT. Putting Coral to the test, we always found the support team's response to be quick, effective and friendly, which is as it should be.

Quick, no fuss casino fun really is the name of the game with Coral. You may find bigger choice, fatter bonuses, and games with more bells and whistles elsewhere, but when it comes to the fundamentals of what makes for a great online casino, Coral won't disappoint. Its focus is on the crucial attractions of casino gaming, but without sacrificing those little details that make for a pleasingly authentic 'casino experience'. And if that doesn't convince you of Coral Online Casino's charms, the option to sample the entire Gala Coral empire's huge and eclectic smorgasbord of gaming entertainment with just the one user account means you'd be mad not to spend a few moments checking it out for yourself.

Click here to play at Coral Casino