online casinos and slots

Royal Vegas casino [royalvegas] is a Microgaming casino that accepts players from all over the world including many States within the USA. It has been around for years and has a sterling reputation as part of the popular Fortune Lounge group of online casinos.

Microgaming software is (arguably!) the most popular casino software, certainly it is with me anyway. As a slots player and video poker enthusiast I find the choice almost overwhelming. That’s not to say all the slots are great, but some are among my all-ime favourites, most notably Thunderstruck, Isis and the newer Cashapilla. They all have the free spins bonus, as do probably around 100 other slots in the Royalvegas casino software. The Flash version has around 150 games - less than half Read the rest of this slot article »

Time for another casino review I think. This time, a casino that I play at regularly and one that takes all players from the USA with the exception of Kentucky who seem to have taken a rather aggressive stance towards banning online casinos and gambling sites. But what can you do.

Club USA Casino has been around for a while now and is one of only 3 Realtime-Gaming software-based casinos that I personally trust, the others being Bodog and iNetBet. There are two outstanding factors at Club USA in my opinion: the speed of cashouts and the volume of promotions and bonuses. That said, the latter do come with wagering restrictions but that’s not so unusual.

Cashouts are processed every day, and while US players do have to be more careful about Read the rest of this slot article »

A mate of mine was playing at the Microgaming casino Roxy Palace (No USA players, although many US residents can play the same games at Lucky Nugget or Fortune Room) on Tombraider. He’d been on a good run already getting up to $9,000 from a $650 deposit, when he decided to bet big. So he set the spin to the max bet $37.50, and let it ride. Almost immediately he got the “holy grail” - 5 Wilds on line 10. What’s more, in the same session he got 5 scatters for $6,000 - and here’s the screenshot to prove it.

Personally, I’m not a great fan of the Tombraider slot - it’s OK, but I prefer Thunderstruck myself. But you can’t argue with this one. The slot rewards 10 free spins (wins are trebled) when 3 or more scatters appear in view, and here is a pick ‘em style bonus game built in too.

Thought I’d share a little story with you - couldn’t quite believe my eyes but the proof is in the screenshot below. So there I am, sitting at my PC when up pops a message to tell me I have $45 in “comp” points sitting in my account at Jackpot City - an online casino that, if I’m honest, I  haven’t played at much in the two years since I opened it. See, I have these accounts sitting around as my job is to review online casinos so I open one up, deposit, withdraw, test the various functions, games, yada, yada, yada. Then I tend to wander off and do the next.

Not to say I’m not a bit partial to some slots play it must be said, but that’s my “bag”. So yeah, anyway, there I am, still waiting for the casino win that will change my life after 4 years…and let’s face it, it’s a 1-in-a-million shot. Until now, my biggest success was at Intercasino, where I had $50-odd dollars sitting there and decided to play one of their low-denomination jackpot slots (Triple Olives). Boring as hell, but not when the 3 olives dropped in for just short of $17k! That was my “moment” and I’ll never forget it. But now I’ve eclipsed it.

Back to today - that $45 - so I think “what the hell”, let’s do 4 spins at $10 on the “Loaded” slot at Jackpot City. It’s a cool low-medium variance slot where the free spins bonus happens reasonably regularly .Sure enough, up it pops on spin 1 and a nice $600 win to boot! Good start. Play on! I moved over to my all-time favourite slot, “Thunderstruck”, start spinning at $11.25 - hey, easy come, easy go right? And whaddya know Read the rest of this slot article »

Thought I’d add a word on this as it’s often overlooked. If you didn’t already know, all of the reputable online casinos operate a “player protection” policy. What this means is that you can request or set limits on how much you deposit, either by the week or month, and in some instances to deeper levels.

For example, if you play a casino using Microgaming software, you can email support and ask them to limit your deposits by day, week or month. They will ask you the limit and a security question and set it manually. You will not usually be able to change it “up” for a minimum of 7 days.

At Wagerworks (Flash) casinos - IGT owned - every casino has Read the rest of this slot article »

The “Online Casinos USA” website has just released a list of 100 or so of the more reputable online casinos categorised into US State listings. I know this because I bloody well spent 3 tedious days putting the spreadsheet together for the website! So I can tell you first-hand that the database contains information such as the software used, a link to each casino and a record of each US State and whether players are accepted or not.

The full list contains most Microgaming casinos, a handful of the safe RTG casinos (it’s a well known fact that many RTG casinos are less than reliable operators) along with Wagerworks and a smattering of Playtech offerings, although the latter two do not currently allow US players at all. The database is divided into pages with State groupings on each page and only includes casinos with decent reputations that are safe to play. It’s a work of art ;-)

Goto The Casinos By State pages…

June 2008 sees the launch of a brand new Microgaming casino called “Red Flush” offering both download and Flash options, the latter of course making it a suitable Apple Mac casino playable from within any web browser. An additional benefit is that the casino accepts USA players from all but 11 States.

The Microgaming “Viper” platform forms the base for the casino which includes over 350 games. For those not familiar with online casinos using MG software that means you’ll find lots of variations of Blackjack, table Poker games, Roulette and various card games popular in land-based casinos. For slots players there is a huge choice of games…there are more in the download version than in the Flash casino it should be noted, but all the main slots appear in both. 5 Reel bonus slots are the order of the day with many “free spins” slots like Thunderstruck, Hitman, Tombraider 1 and 2 plus Read the rest of this slot article »

Microgaming’s popular but very high variance “Isis” slot has now been transformed into a Flash slot and added to the Flash casino offerings at Intertops, Lucky Nugget, River Belle, All Jackpots and, for UK and European players, the excellent 32Red.

It’s a little slower than the version in the download casino available at the places stated above, but it’s exactly the same game in all other respects. For those players who aren’t familiar with it, be aware that being high variance it is prone to very long bad streaks, but every now and again you can hit mega-big! Once I hit the 5 scatters for 600x Read the rest of this slot article »

Ok…just noticed a Microgaming slot nearly sneak past my radar the other day…Cashapilla. Naff name and another slot with a bit of a cartoon feel to it - can’t say I’m normally a fan of that type of graphic, but it’s slightly better than most to look at. Also, it boasts 100 paylines Now that normally shouts “low variance” at me, and I’m a high-variance type of guy. Give me a risk anyday. 

But I took a look and this slot is not only quite interesting for the points mentioned, but actually quite playable too. In fact at the moment (OK, it won’t last!) Cashapilla is up there as one of my first ports of call. Look…it’ll never be Thunderstruck, but it’s making a nice distraction. It’s a “free spins” slot Read the rest of this slot article »

OK I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible as there is a lot to cover. For those who get bored of reading quickly, scan down for a resumeé of those online casinos who offer the best solution for US residents or view a list of online casinos listed by US State.

But first a bit of background. In October 2006, the US passed the UIGEA, an Act designed not to ban online gambling, but to make it difficult for US residents to deposit and withdraw. It has had limited success in achieving it’s goals…the banks are not big fans because of the fact they are now responsible for checking every transaction. In a nutshell, the law turned out to do exactly the opposite of what its protractors claimed- to “protect family values“. Clearly designed to capture the votes from the moral crusaders for a presidential campaign that floundered, it’s unfortunately backfired. I’ll explain:

What the law did manage to do was to remove many of the best online casinos Read the rest of this slot article »