How We Rate
How a review actually gets written
Take the Captainsbet review on this site. Day one: a reviewer opens a fresh account from a Kenyan IP, clears the welcome screen, uses the promo-code field and notes what landed in the balance. Day two: the apk is downloaded from the mobile site onto a clean Android device and the Play Protect warning (if any) is recorded. Day three: a small M-Pesa paybill 290195 deposit, a single-market bet on an English Premier League fixture, a cash-out at half-time and a withdrawal back to the same M-Pesa line. Each step produces a timestamped screenshot. The seven criteria below are scored from that session, not from Captainsbet's own marketing.
The seven things we score
Payments — how fast M-Pesa and Airtel Money clear, whether paybill 290195 shortcut is honest, whether withdrawals land in the quoted window. Apk and mobile — Android apk download works, Play Protect verdict, how the mobile site falls back if the apk fails. Odds and markets — football pricing versus the usual Kenyan benchmark, breadth of local-league coverage. Bonuses and promo codes — how real the welcome bonus is after the wagering is read in full. Support — phone, chat, WhatsApp response time during Kenyan office hours and after. Responsible-gaming tools — deposit limits, self-exclusion, time-out. Trust signals — BCLB licence visible, published Terms coherent, no history of suspended payouts.
How often a review is re-read
Every live review on this site carries a Last checked date at the bottom. The full fact-check we described above is re-run at least every six months; the shorter checks — bonus still active, apk link alive, paybill still valid — run monthly. Readers who write in to flag a change trigger a mini re-check inside the same working day. The dates on the pages are not decorative — if a date is older than six months, treat that review as a starting point rather than a current snapshot.
How a score is turned into a star rating
Each of the seven criteria scores out of five, weighted so that payments (double weight for a Kenyan audience) and responsible-gaming tools carry the most influence. The weighted average becomes the headline star rating at the top of the Captainsbet review. We do not round aggressively — a 3.7 is a 3.7, not a 4.0 — and we publish the sub-scores alongside the headline rating so a reader who cares more about odds than bonuses can re-weight the review in their own head.