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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 entry »

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 entry »

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…

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 entry »

Important - 31st July 2008: US players please note that IGT today implemented code to prevent players from playing their games in free play mode.  The only game available to US residents in free mode is now Cleopatra I.

IGT’s Cleopatra II slot has just been launched online at Paddy Power and Virgin Casino, both Wagerworks casinos (no surprise there as Wagerworks is part-owned by IGT)! The unfortunate anomaly is that while IGT slots are well known to US players, the laws in the USA are such that Wagerworks do not accept players from the US, so playing all these fun slots isn’t an option.

A free play version of Cleopatra II (along with the original Cleopatra slot, Wolf Run and Gems) has been launched on the Online Casinos Vegas website which specialises in providing free play versions of popular Las Vegas slot games. The game is an exact replica of the Vegas slot - high variance but with a great bonus round.

Play Cleopatra II free.

Dedicated slots tournaments web portal, Slot Tournaments .net has created a free toolbar for monitoring online freeroll slot tournaments from casinos running the Microgaming tournaments plugin. It’s a neat little tool that (currently) works in Internet Explorer.

Installation is simple - just download a zip file, run the executable therein and it add a small toolbar to IE which shows the next tournament due and the time it starts. It also features a “countdown” which tells you when there is 20 minutes to go, then changes colour when there is 10 minutes to go. This is Read the rest of this entry »

Well time change I guess and in the past couple of years playing I’ve seen a load more choice in the slots I get to lose my money on online…so I thought it was time I updated my “favourite slots” list! All things are obviously different to everyone so I’ll stop short of saying these are the best online slots - you may disagree. Although I am always right so there ;)

For background purposes, I live in the UK and grew up with pub fruities - this is way before the smoking ban came in but I can’t blame that on switching to online…I put that down to the fact that online you get circa 95% payback! When I went online I was unfamiliar with the Vegas style slots, but it didn’t take long to realise these are so much more Read the rest of this entry »

MAC users have been woefully under-supported down the years, but the winds of change are blowing. When it comes to online casinos, Apple Macs have always been ignored…and guess what…they still are when it comes to “download casinos”, but thankfully a raft of decent, reputable online casinos now have online offerings using Flash which Apple Mac users can enjoy.

Below are some of the better online casinos for you Apple Mac fans. When you get to the site, hit the “instant play” option to launch the casino and quick-register an account. If you are thinking about taking a casino “bonus” Read the rest of this entry »

Frequent any of the player forums out there and you’ll often see debate over which online casino slots are the best. There are four primary sofwtare providers powering most of the “reputable” online casinos, notably RTG (Realtime Gaming), Microgaming, Playtech and Cryptologic. However, with the latter two not accepting US players, the big battle comes down to RTG and Microgaming. So who has the best slots?

Options & Selection

RTG have two sets of slots: The “Real Series” and their standard 3-reel or 5-reel video slots. As with all providers they add new ones from time to time, but nowhere near as frequently as Microgaming who usually release 2 a month. You could argue that this is overkill and many are simply clones of existing slots, and you’d be right, but every now and again, a gem pops up Read the rest of this entry »