Editorial team
Who writes this
Every page carries a named author and a named fact-checker, and they are never the same person.
The team
Alana Hippensteele
Managing Editor since 2024
Alana Hippensteele is the Managing Editor of LSM99 and the person whose name sits behind the site's editorial standards. She has run the newsroom since 2024. The job is unglamorous and mostly administrative in the best sense: she assigns every casino review and market page, sets the brief for each writer, and signs off the final fact-check before anything goes live. Nothing publishes on LSM99 without passing across her desk. She owns the editorial policy, the scoring methodology and the corrections process, which means when a rating is wrong she is the person who has to answer for it.
Marie-Louise Aubert
Head of Casino Research since 2024
Marie-Louise Aubert has led casino research at LSM99 since 2024, and she is the one who actually opens the accounts. Where most review sites summarise an operator from its own marketing, Marie-Louise registers, deposits, plays and requests a withdrawal, then records what really happened rather than what was advertised. The account is real, opened in her own name and funded with the site's own money, never a demo balance and never a media account handed over by an operator. She reads terms line by line so readers do not have to, and she owns the toplists, the market rankings and the country pages that come out of that work.
Aristotelis Kourtelis
Licensing & Player Protection Analyst since 2024
Aristotelis Kourtelis is the Licensing and Player Protection Analyst at LSM99, and the reason a brand does not reach the top of a list on its bonus alone. He joined in 2024 and works at the front of the review process, before any scoring happens. LSM99 rates every casino across six weighted sections, licensing and safety, payouts, bonus fairness, game range, support and mobile, and Aristotelis owns the first of those. If the licensing work fails, the other five sections do not rescue the brand. He reads bonus terms, KYC triggers and self-exclusion rules closely, because those are the clauses that decide whether a win is really a win.
Niels Zijp
Payments & Withdrawals Tester since 2024
Niels Zijp tests the cashier. At LSM99 he is the Payments and Withdrawals Tester, a role he has held since 2024, which means he runs money through an operator and times what happens: how long a deposit takes to credit, how long a verified withdrawal actually takes to land. He owns the payments sections of our reviews and the comparison pages that sit alongside them. When this site quotes a payout window, that figure came off his stopwatch. It is a measured number, not a promise repeated from a help page.
How a review is made
Every ranking on the site runs through the same five steps, and a different named person owns each one. It is why a score here comes from an account we actually opened, not from an operator's own marketing.
- 1
Managing Editor
Assign and scope
Alana Hippensteele assigns the review or market page, sets the brief, and decides which operators are in scope and what a reader needs answered before the work starts.
- 2
Licensing and Player Protection Analyst
Open the register first
Aristotelis Kourtelis takes the licence number printed on the site and opens the regulator register entry for it, checking that the entry is live, that the licensee is the company taking the deposit, and that the register lists this exact domain.
- 3
Licensing and Player Protection Analyst
Read the cashier and the terms
Deposit and withdrawal pages, bonus terms and the FAQ are read on the public site, clause by clause, for the wagering base, the max bet while a bonus is active, the expiry window and the processing time the operator publishes. Where a figure is absent, the absence is recorded.
- 4
Managing Editor
Mark the limits of the research
No account is opened at any casino, so no payout is timed and no lobby is counted from the inside. Every payout figure on this site is quoted as the operator's own published claim, and any page that would imply otherwise is sent back.
- 5
Fact-check and sign-off
Check, publish, revisit
A second named person fact-checks every claim against the source, Alana signs it off, and the page publishes with both names and a date. We recheck licences and offers on a schedule and log any change.
Questions about our team and independence
Who writes the reviews on LSM99?
Every review and market page is written by a named member of the team on this page and checked by a different named person. Licensing, bonus terms and player protection sit with Aristotelis Kourtelis, and editorial standards, methodology and sign-off with Alana Hippensteele. No page is published anonymously.
Are the reviews independent from the casinos?
Yes. Operators do not write, edit, approve, or preview anything we publish, and a commercial relationship never buys a higher score. Scores come from the six weighted sections we rate on, read off the operator's own public pages and the regulator register, and where a paying partner scores badly we say so. Scores run from 6.1 to 7.7 across our twenty reviews and eighteen of them sit under 7.6.
Does LSM99 earn money from the casinos it lists?
Some links are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission when a reader signs up through one. It costs you nothing extra and it does not move a score or a ranking. The full explanation lives on our how we make money page.
How are the scores decided?
Each operator is scored across six weighted sections covering licensing and safety, payouts, bonus fairness, game range, support, and mobile experience. The number comes from the operator's own published pages, its terms and the regulator's register, read clause by clause and quoted as its claim. No account was opened at any of the twenty brands, so nothing on this site is a timed or measured figure, and where an operator publishes nothing the review says so.
Who fact-checks the content, and how do I report a mistake?
The author and the fact-checker on any page are never the same person, and licensing and responsible-gambling claims are checked by Aristotelis Kourtelis. If you spot something wrong, email the editorial team at editorial@lsm99.gg or use the contact page, and we will correct it and note the change.