Meet the Team
Last updated: May 2026
SlotMap is run by three people. All three have direct iGaming-industry backgrounds. Every review on the site is signed by one of these names, and every name on this page is accountable for the work that appears under it. We deliberately keep the team small because our editorial standards depend on every review being conducted hands-on by someone who actually understands what they are testing.
Giovanni Picaro — Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Sofia, Bulgaria. 5+ years VIP customer support inside the iGaming industry. Italian-market specialist.
Giovanni founded SlotMap in early 2019. He spent more than five years inside the iGaming industry as a VIP customer support specialist, working with high-value Italian-speaking players for a major EU-licensed operator group based in Sofia. The role gave him direct visibility into how online casinos actually operate from the inside: how bonus systems are built, how KYC reviews are conducted, how withdrawal pipelines work, how complaints are handled, and what player-protection tools look like behind the scenes.
His areas of editorial focus are the Italian ADM-licensed market, customer-support quality assessment, KYC and verification processes, payment processing, and the inside view of how operators handle high-value players. He writes most of our reviews of ADM-licensed operators, our long-form features on KYC and AML practices, and our coverage of bonus systems from a technical-implementation perspective.
His experience makes SlotMap reviews materially different from the typical affiliate-publication review. When Giovanni writes that an operator’s KYC process is unusually invasive or unreasonably slow, the assessment is grounded in years of seeing what good and bad look like from inside the industry.
Contact: giovanni [at] slotmap [punto] space or info [at] slotmap [punto] space.
Marcus T. — Senior Reviewer (UK & Malta)
United Kingdom. 10+ years in iGaming. Focus: UKGC and MGA-licensed operators.
Marcus joined the team in 2021. He has spent more than a decade in and around the iGaming industry, in roles spanning operations, compliance consulting, and independent player advocacy. His specialism is the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) and Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) licensing frameworks — the two most player-protective major licenses in the international online casino market.
His areas of editorial focus are UKGC and MGA-licensed operators, UK gambling regulation including ASA CAP code application to gambling advertising, license-condition compliance, and the comparative analysis of operator behavior across license tiers. He writes most of our UK-market reviews, our explainers on what specific license conditions actually require of operators, and our coverage of UKGC and MGA enforcement actions where they affect operators we have reviewed.
Marcus is also our internal authority on operator complaint procedures, IBAS (Independent Betting Adjudication Service) referrals, and the ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) frameworks that UK and Maltese operators are required to participate in. When a reader contacts us with a dispute, Marcus is usually the team member assessing whether the operator has met its license obligations.
Elena V. — Compliance & Responsible Gambling Lead
Malta. iGaming compliance background. Voice on player protection.
Elena joined the team in 2022. She has a background in iGaming compliance work, with formal training in problem-gambling awareness and the regulatory frameworks under which player-protection obligations are imposed on operators. Based in Malta — the European hub for online gambling licensing — she brings direct knowledge of how the MGA, the UKGC, the Italian ADM, and other regulators define and enforce responsible-gambling requirements.
Her areas of editorial focus are responsible gambling tools and their actual effectiveness, self-exclusion programs (GamStop, ROFUS, OASIS, Italy’s RUA), problem-gambling research and resources, regulatory enforcement on player-protection grounds, and the compliance dimension of operator reviews. She writes our Responsible Gambling resource pages, our explainers on self-exclusion, our coverage of operator-level RG tool implementations, and our compliance-focused reviews.
Elena’s work is the structural counterweight to the rest of the site. Where Giovanni’s perspective is “how the operator actually runs” and Marcus’s is “what the license requires”, Elena’s is “what the player needs in order to play safely, and which operators provide it.” Her contributions are why the responsible-gambling content on this site is substantive rather than ornamental.
How we work together
Reviews are produced by one named writer with input from at least one other team member at the editing stage. Every review is fact-checked by a team member other than the writer, with particular attention to license-tier claims, bonus-term quotations, and any complaint-history references. The full editorial process is described on How We Work.
We meet weekly by video call to coordinate ongoing reviews, discuss reader complaints that may lead to verdict changes, and review any new regulatory developments that affect operators we cover. The team is small enough that this fits in 60 minutes; we have no interest in expanding to the point where it would not.
Why we keep the team small
Casino review sites scale poorly without compromising. Hands-on testing of every reviewed operator across the full sign-up, deposit, play, support, withdrawal, and KYC cycle is labor-intensive. Detailed reading of bonus terms is labor-intensive. Tracking license-condition changes and enforcement actions is labor-intensive. We have considered expanding several times, and we have decided against it. At three people, every reviewed operator is genuinely tested by someone we trust.
We would rather publish reviews more slowly and trust them than publish more reviews and trust them less.
Want to write for us?
We accept guest contributions on a case-by-case basis, with strong preference for writers who can cover areas we currently underrepresent: Spanish DGOJ-licensed market, French ANJ market, Nordic markets (Sweden, Denmark, Finland), German federal-state licensing, US state-by-state regulation. The standard is industry experience demonstrated through writing samples, not credentials on paper.
Send a brief introduction and a writing sample (a published or unpublished piece on a casino-industry topic you genuinely understand) to info [at] slotmap [punto] space with the subject line Guest contributor inquiry. We do not pay for guest contributions as a matter of routine; we credit clearly and link generously, and we may pay for selected long-form features when budget allows.
Contact
For team-related inquiries, see our Contact Us page for the right address. For partnership inquiries, see Operator Partnerships.
Related pages: About Us · Our Mission · How We Work · Editorial Standards · Responsible Gambling