PlayOLG - the online gambling portal created by the Ontario government together with the local lotteries and gaming company – will open its doors to the general public soon. It was in the works for years, with the goal to offer Ontario's casino and poker players a legal way to play their favorite games, and return some of the revenue generated by these activities to the state itself. Still in the works, PlayOLG has opened its gates for a small selection of players for testing. Here are the results compared to an average offshore online casino.
As an operation that's still under development, the PlayOLG portal has a somewhat limited functionality and game range at this time. Its game list consists of 32 casino games, out of which 23 are slot machines and 9 are table games. The games are developed by IGT (International Game Technology), an American company offering land-based and online games of chance to their players.
The list of slot machines includes titles like Crazy Wizard, Treasures of Troy, Wolf Run, Garden Party or even Plants vs. Zombies. The list of table games available at the PlayOLG portal is limited to just nine titles at the moment - Blackjack, Texas Hold ' em, Three Card Poker, Baccarat, Sic Bo, War, and three Roulette games. These are the basics, with more titles to become available once the portal gets launched for the general public.
As I said before the PlayOLG operation is still under heavy development, so it does have a limited functionality. For example, those in search for a way to play on the go will have to find another mobile casino for Canadian players. The list of deposit and withdrawal methods is also very short - deposits can be made using credit cards and Interac Online (a local online bank transfer service) only, while withdrawing the winnings is only possible through bank transfer.
Players will need to create an account at PlayOLG in order to play the games in fun mode or real money. Once the account is created, they will gain access to all the services offered by the portal. Besides casino games, PlayOLG will offer its players the possibility to purchase OLG's own lottery products online (6/49 gold Lotto Max). OLG plans to introduce many other features later on, including a sports betting interface, casual games and even has real money online poker room.
Local players in Ontario - like in some other regions in Canada - have only offshore online gambling portals to play at, with no. entirely legal local offers to choose. With PlayOLG, Ontario plans to offer such a possibility to its residents, keeping their tax dollars inside its borders and using them to develop the state itself.
