Who’s Klaas?
Klaas Knook is co-founder of The Casino Wizard and the team's most experienced casino reviewer. His relationship with gambling started in 2009, when he began playing slots, poker, and blackjack, first in land-based casinos, later online. What started as a passion gradually evolved into deep industry knowledge.
In 2016, he attended his first SiGMA conference in Malta, where he got his first real taste of the iGaming industry from the inside. That experience proved to be a turning point. A year later, in 2017, he co-founded The Casino Wizard together with Matt Schwachofer with a clear mission: to help players find casinos and bonuses that actually deliver.
Klaas holds a Master of Science in Business Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam (Rotterdam School of Management) and brings an entrepreneur's understanding of how casino businesses operate, having founded multiple companies. That business background informs how he evaluates casinos: not just as a player, but as someone who understands the commercial structures behind the offers.
Klaas at a Glance
| Active since | 2009 |
| Co-founded The Casino Wizard | 2017 |
| Casinos reviewed | 300+ |
| Bonuses tested | 500+ |
| Games played | 800+ |
| Land-based casinos visited | 40+ countries & cities |
| Main markets | Europe, North America, South America |
| Specialist focus | No deposit bonuses, crypto casinos, slots, live games |
What Klaas Does at The Casino Wizard
As co-founder, Klaas is responsible for the standards that define every piece of content on the site. In practice, that means:
- Writing in-depth, real-money-tested casino reviews
- Evaluating and ranking no deposit bonuses and free spins offers
- Assessing casino bonus quality against The Casino Wizard's bonus review guidelines
- Rating casinos using the team's transparent rating methodology
- Writing and improving strategy guides for poker and blackjack
- Tracking RTP changes and game integrity across casino platforms
- Establishing and maintaining relationships with casino operators
Every casino and bonus that appears under his name has been evaluated with real money. His standard is straightforward: if he wouldn't recommend it to a friend, it doesn't appear on The Casino Wizard.
Specialist Focus: No Deposit & Crypto
Klaas' deepest expertise lies in no deposit bonuses and crypto casinos, two areas where terms are most complex and players are most easily misled. He approaches every review from a player-first perspective: what actually matters when you claim a bonus, meet wagering requirements, and try to cash out.
His land-based casino experience spans Las Vegas, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Panama, Australia, South Africa, and several countries across Asia, giving him a genuinely global benchmark for what a quality casino looks and feels like.
Industry Presence
Klaas is a regular at the iGaming industry's leading events. He attends a minimum of three conferences per year and uses them to stay ahead of industry developments, meet operators directly, and understand where the market is heading.
Conferences attended:
- SiGMA Europe, Malta — 2016 to 2025
- SiGMA Africa, Cape Town — 2026
- iGB Live, London & Amsterdam — 2020 to 2025
- SBC Summit — 2025
- Next.io Summit, Malta — 2025
He also stays current through daily reading of iGamingBusiness.com and Gambling Insider, and actively engages with gambling communities on Reddit to keep a direct line to what players actually care about.
Klaas' Best & Worst Casino Experience
Both of Klaas' most memorable gambling moments happened in Las Vegas, the city he returns to most often and knows better than any other casino destination in the world.
Best experience
During one of his stays at The Venetian, Klaas joined a poker table with $2/$5 blinds, drawn in by the casino's $5 max rake on all tables. Over three hours of medium-stakes play, he busted out three opponents and walked away with a $2,230 net profit. It remains the experience he measures all others against.
Worst experience
In 2017, Klaas stepped off the Strip to try a lesser-known casino. At the roulette table, he placed a $25 single-number bet and watched it land, only for the dealer to claim the bet had been placed after the spin. He escalated to the manager, who refused to check the security footage and invoked "house decisions are final." No payout, no recourse. It's a reminder he brings to every casino review: transparency and fair dispute resolution aren't optional.
External Features & Links
- Great.com: Interview Klaas
- Time of Malta: Providing accurate casino reviews
- SiGma World: Gambling is fun, and it should always stay fun
I think we’re at the brink of a new game type making it big into the worldwide gambling scene. We already saw what happened with crash games after Spribe revolutionized the industry, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw something similar soon enough. I also expect new casinos to come up with better bonus types that we haven’t seen before.
Las Vegas, for sure. I try to go there at least once a year. That’s where I’ve had my best and worst gambling experiences, but I wouldn’t change it for anything else. There are far too many great casinos, with limits that adapt to all sorts of budgets, which makes it a great destination for gamblers regardless of the money that they’re willing to spend.
As an added benefit, you get to enjoy one of the craziest and most hectic cities that I’ve ever been to. I recommend it to everyone.
I usually check their games, available payment options and global accessibility. It’s important that the casinos that we recommend on our platform are sites in which we would play ourselves. That’s why we try them out before recommending them, even if they look good at first glance and have plenty of positive reviews.
I pay attention to how casinos operate, and I do this by speaking to their personnel. Since I always reach out to casino workers before we add a site to The Casino Wizard, the way our interactions go gives me a good idea of what to expect from the gambling site. Let’s call it natural intuition, if you will!
It was a mix of my passion for gambling and wanting to challenge myself in one of the most competitive niches in the online marketing scene. As a marketer myself, and having founded over five different companies since 2010, seeing this project grow into a successful venture has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.