This new slot game is 100 lines of win. The game is available at Virgin Games and other UK casinos but not to players from the United States. Though I’m firmly of the opinion that companies designs slots for the American market need to go take a look at this game because the graphics are fantastic. More like a movie than a slots game. And I’m a jaded slots reviewer so I’m not easy to impress.
This is a five reel, 100 line slot game so watch your money when you play. You’ll want to play all the lines so even at a penny or pence a line, the change adds up quickly. Also because of the extreme graphics on this one, Virgin Games offers either a low resolution or high resolution flash version. I recommend playing somewhere where you can play the high resolution game because the visuals are absolutely stunning.
The game does have the J, K, Q, A symbols and simple red icons on a black background but there is so much going on visually that the eye almost needs the break. Any winning icons are animated and run little movie clips but also keep an eye on the sidebars where the images change as the game progresses. Also, the game is liberally studded with Wild symbols (helpfully labeled Wild). If you hit two on the same reel, the symbols expand to make the entire reel wild.
But what you want is to hit three Bonus symbols on the reels. These are fighting machine symbols helpfully labeled Bonus. Hit three and you’ll launch the Fighting Machine Bonus game. In this game, you try to shot the infernal alien machines with your cannons. There is an option to either play the game yourself, which is quite satisfying as you blast away at the aliens, or to let the computer play for you. Either way, you can win back a fair amount of your losings in the game.
Yes, I did say losings. It took me an hour of play to trigger the bonus game and during that time, I was down about $150. So, you’ll need to start with a decent bankroll to play this one. However, one bonus game round left me $28 above my starting point. I just need more bonus games and I’ll be a millionaire.
Apparently All Slots is offering new promotions but before I can write about them, I’m having to deal with the annoyance of not being able to log in to my account. Actually, the way this is going, I may just set up a new account since I don’t have any money in the current account. Since I’m unable to login, I’m trying a password reset. First, I had to find my user name which is an automatically generated list of letters and numbers. According to the site, they’ve sent me an email with instructions on how to reset my account. According to my email, I haven’t received anything. So I tried the help page which gives me a “Page not found” error. So, not very helpful.
Okay, I’ve gone over to the website to check out the promotion, which I guess you can play if your account still works. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow to see if I can get in. But the newest promo is actually for video poker and table games rather than slots. Since video poker has better odds than slots, this could be a promotion worth checking out. The prize pool is $5,000 and the play period is underway and runs through July 27th. The competition is based on earning points. For every 50 credits you deposit and play on eligible video poker or table game, you earn a point. You earn a point for every 50 credits you wager and for every 50 credits you win or lose.
You can easily check out the score board to see where you rank in the standings. A quick check will reveal this is a competition for serious players since our current lead is at nearly 2500 points.
English Harbour is always a great site for those who play slot tournaments and they are a site that is always trying something new when it comes to giving players ways to win. Right now the Slottery is continuing its popular run with Cool Bananas being the slot game of choice through July 24th. On July 25th the game for the Slottery will switch over to X Marks the Spot and that game will run through August 1st. The buy in for this tournament is only $5 with the prize pool consisting of the pot, so the more who enter the larger the pot will be. The site also offers daily Play for the Pot tournaments that run each day with a low $3 buy in. So every day there is a new tournament and a new game to play.
Ah, but for the truly impatient, English Harbour offers Quick Slots tournaments. These have only a 50 cent buy in and run Sunday, Monday and Friday during forty five minute periods. These give players a chance to take a quick break in their day and play a variety of slots games, so you’re sure to find something you enjoy.
At lunch time (12noon-12:45pm) you can Cash Grab for a little lunch time cash. Fifteen minutes later at 1pm Crazy Cherry becomes the slot tournament game. At 2pm it’s time to play Double Gold and at 3pm the game switches to Triple Gold (keep the 2 and 3 in mind here). Then at 4pm everyone is welcome to play Monte Magic and at 5pm Triple Flamin’ 7s (which loses the time connection). At 6pm, the game is Wheel of Chance and at 7pm Triple Rainbow 7s (so the time connection is back but only for an hour) because at 8pm the game is Liberty 7s. The evening ends at 9pm with Triple Triple Gold (so 3×3=9).
I’ve been blogging about the roll out of the new online casino in British Columbia – PlayNow. While I’m a fan of online gambling and think that it should be legal but regulated to ensure fair play, I’m not a fan of the government that should be doing the regulating actually running their own casino. This takes away objectivity. The fox cannot guard the hen house.
But in British Columbia, it is becoming apparent that a government agency may not be prepared to do the job done by the professionals who run real online casinos. Within the first couple of hours of opening up, the government run PlayNow crashed. Now news has come out that the site may have been shut down because of a security breach.
Apparently by the time 134 players had registered with their new PlayNow accounts, 12 of them had had their information exposed to other players. This accidental data crossover switch some players accounts to other players accounts while play was going on. The site was shut down and the 12 players who were affected have been contacted so they can begin the tedious task of changing credit card numbers and protecting other data that was exposed.
The revelation of the security breach is already causing concern with Canadian players. Some are upset to discover that the government lied to them. That a fairly innocuous reason for the shut down – player overload was the one given to the public when the reality was a reason that caused much deeper concern – a security breach.
Apparently the number of players wasn’t as heavy as people thought, which means that those claiming the crash showed a serious gambling addiction among Canadians now have to rethink the issue. It’s not gambling addiction that caused the problem but a badly built and government run site. If the site was run by an outside agency, the government could take steps to censor it. But how does the government govern itself when it fails to protect the people it is meant to serve?
With the passage of the UIGEA act causing many credit card companies in the United States backing off from offering to allow transactions with online casinos, many online casino players in the United States have been seeking new ways to make deposits to their online accounts. But there has been concern among players that when the UIGEA went into effect that the ability to use echecks would also vanish. But the good news that although the echeck option for players from the USA has become a rarity at online casinos, it hasn’t disappeared entirely.
If you like to play at Real Time Gaming (RTG) Casinos, you might want to check your deposit options because several of those casinos do allow deposits made using USA echecks. The casinos include Aladdin’s Gold, a great casino to play at and where you can take advantage of their great week long deposit bonus. But if you want to use echeck, keep in mind that the casino’s requirements are that you register, join, make three deposits through other means and remain a member for 2 weeks before they will accept your echecks. Perhaps it is these requirements are what causes some players to believe that they can’t use echecks. The option isn’t unlocked until you’ve established yourself as a player in good standing with the casino.
Of course, you’ll also need to have your checking account information ready to sign up. You need the checking account number, the routing number and your social security number for the account. But within a few minutes, you can use echecks to make your casino deposits.
Looking for a new place to play? Vegas Technology has launched GrandVegas.com. Which everyone is likely to immediately confuse with grandevegascasino.com, an RTG casino. Look for the $555 promotion if you’re looking for the new GrandVegas.com.
So far the casino hasn’t done much to impress me. This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it as an online casino. It’s simply that it’s yet another Vegas Technology casino without anything to distinguish it from other Vegas Technology casinos. If you’re a fan of Vegas Technology and want a new place to play, I don’t see any reason not to check out Grandvegas.com. But if you’ve already got the software for two or three Vegas Technology casinos installed on your computer, you might want to save the space and not install this one.
Because this is a problem with Vegas Technology casinos. They want you to install the software and don’t offer an instant play option. At least I wasn’t able to find one for GrandVegas.com. There was a game preview section where I could see the games in advance but to play them, I had to download the software. Now the download is simple enough and I only had to provide basic information to activate a “play for fun” account, but this is yet another Vegas Technology casino on my computer. Oh, they don’t tell you on the site that there is a “play for fun” option, but if you install the software, you will be able to choose it.
GrandVegas.com is offering a 100% matching bonus up to $555 if you sign up with them. And I will keep an eye on the casino for any exciting promotions that they may come up with in the future.
Before the weekend I wrote a post on why governments should regulate casinos but why they shouldn’t actually be the folks running the casino. The basic reason being summed up in the old saying “it’s like the fox guarding the hen house.”
Well, it seems there is another reason why government agencies shouldn’t run online gambling slots — they just aren’t very good at it. Canadians in British Columbia had been eagerly awaiting the launch of the new government endorsed and run online casino “PlayNow.com.” The site would be open for play only to residents in Canada but would offer fully licensed and regulated online games. Would — may — might get there eventually.
The site hasn’t been declared illegal or outlawed or shut down by a concerned government or public opinion or anything like. Actually, it proved to be entirely too popular for its own good. The intense traffic to the site caused it to crash within a couple of hours of going live.
Of course because the crash was due to high traffic, it’s convinced some people that Canada is filled with gambling addicts rather than just making them wonder if the British Columbia Lottery Corporation was prepared to run a full scale online casino.
But interviews with eager players have also revealed the other problem with the government running the casino itself. One player said: “I have been waiting a long time to play real money casino games on my computer – it is nice to know there is a place where rules are going to be followed and my money is safe.”
Alas, no, you’re money isn’t any safer at a government run casino. House odds are still house odds and they aren’t going to run the site at a loss. In fact, the point of a casino is to make sure your money isn’t your money at the end of the night.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first — unlike other gambling writers I know, I’m not really that excited writing about politics. So, I’m not going to get all huffy or excited if Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is heading up a bill instead of some a Republican from Texas. The point is — this bill is an attempt to repeal the draconian Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) that was signed into a law by, well, a Republican from Texas.
But Barney Frank’s bill HR 2267, Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act, (which is not yet being called the IGRCPEA but is referred to as HR 2267) will get its first hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, July 21. Unfortunately, this hearing may not be moving the bill forward with any speed. This may just be Barney’s attempt to keep attention on the bill because the hearing is only a half day with no mark up scheduled. Which means there would have to be another hearing before it moves to the House of Representatives. Also, the committee hasn’t yet released a list of the witness they’ll be hearing speak on behalf of the bill.
John Pappas from the Poker Players Alliance has issued a statement stating that he hopes Barney Frank’s committee will vote on the bill before their August recess. The Poker Players Alliance has been supporting Frank’s efforts to get the UIGEA repelled. As has iMEGA, the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association. But iMEGA doesn’t seem as positive about the current proceedings as the PPA. They say hearings are nice but what’s needed is votes. Which is true.
At this point the UIGEA has been in effect for over a month and no one has seen an increase in prosecutions related to online gambling. And the result is, there hasn’t been much of a change in the online gambling landscaped in the United States other than players finding other means than credit cards to make deposits.
Hmm, no sooner do I fuss about British Columbia starting its own casino than New Hampshire wants to do the same. The granite state has decided that the way out of debt is to run its own online casino. Unfortunately, New Hampshire forgot to tell itself it was going to do this. The state seems to be playing a legislative game of “ask your mom” no “ask your dad.” The result being that somehow the New Hampshire Lottery decided to launch a new online casino, which would make it one of the first state organizations in the United States to do so. But state legislators have complained that the lottery folks never told them that they were going to start up a casino. So, those complaints (not complaints from people within the state) have pushed back the launch date from July to August. Really? That’s a delay?
Anyway, lottery revenue has been falling off in the state, possibly because people have realized odds in a state lottery are pretty darn awful. So, the lottery folks have decided to launch a casino, though no news on whether the odds there will be just as awful. But either way, Casino New Hampshire will only be available to residents of the state. (No, I don’t think they’re actually calling it that, but they should.)
Oh, there’s no word on what the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) will do about a state running a online casino when the federal government has declared all forms of online gambling illegal. Speculation is that they will ignore the casino. Which means other states may follow suit. Which means states are becoming more an expert on gambling that gamblers are. But the states are smart in the sense that if they create their own gambling monopoly within their area, they don’t have to compete for players by offering good odds. Look, can’t we leave running the casinos up to the casinos and let the states just regulate them to make sure they pay out when they should?
In an odd move to protect people from the dangers of online gambling, British Columbia is opening its own online gambling site, complete with casino style games. And an increase in gambling limits from $120 a week to $9,999. Which begs the question — when governments, any government, says they are regulating or forbidding gambling, are they doing that to protect the people or to protect themselves.
British Columbia’s complaint was that there were about 2,000 illegal gambling sites in operation that aren’t answerable to the government. So they set up their own gambling site. And then drastically increased the betting amount to a level that you can’t expect me to believe the average person can afford. And of course the government benefits directly when people lose. Which seems to be sort of a conflict of interests.
Now, there are a few different views that come into conflict in this process. One is a study that shows that online gamblers are more likely to be problem gamblers. Keep in mind that it doesn’t say that gambling online will make you a problem gambler, bit is more of an indicator that those who already have a gambling problem are like to take advantage of online gambling. But then there is the problem in all this. When a site, like a gambling site, is run by the government, people put more trust in it. After all, the government is created to protect and serve the people, so shouldn’t the site?
But often a government is the poorest regulator of itself. And by running its own gambling site, British Columbia has placed itself in a position to do just that. And from what I am reading, there is no certainty out there that the government has done the necessary work to ensure that there are safe guards n place on its own site to protect gamblers. In fact, they are currently being sued by a problem gambler who claimed that the government’s current self exclusion program did nothing to protect her even though she had signed up for it and identified herself as a problem gambler.
By no means does this mean I am against online gambling. I enjoy playing at online sites and am able to limit my own spending to ensure I spend no more than I should. And I have no problem with a government provided regulations or safeguards for online gambling (and brick-and-mortar) sites. But expecting a government to regulate their own online gambling site is like asking a problem gambler to watch their own bankroll.
