King Solomons - Online Casino Review

November 17, 2003

Overview

First impression, I like the look and feel of their site. The navigation is clearly laid out with tabs and menu bars. The colors and graphics are nice, easy on the eyes. Information on the site is easily found in the "About" section on the top menu bar. King Solomon's is an on-line casino authorized by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, Canada. Download only for the moment but they are working on a browser version. If you have WebTV or a Mac – tough luck – they only work on PC's. They accept US Dollars only. If you are depositing in a foreign currency your deposit will be converted to US Dollars in accordance with the banks' current exchange rate. They follow Nevada Gaming rules and claim that their payouts reflect this. The site offers a casino, a bingo "hall", and lotto. According to their site they have 5 gaming principles: honesty, security, privacy, fast cashouts, and customer service 24/7. We'll see how well they hold to their principles. The offer LiveHelp, but no pics and you have to give a lot of information to open it. They also have phone numbers for various countries (which I liked – they even have a number for Israel!) and email support. If they don't have a toll-free number for the country you live in you can leave them your phone number and they will call you back. My one complaint about their support is the lack of a link to Live Help from every page. I had to go to the Support page every time I had a question, and that's annoying.

Deposits

They offer a basic selection for depositing:

Neteller
FirePay
Credit Card
Moneybookers.com
Wire transfer
Western Union

The minimum deposit is $20 (the minimum for withdrawal is $30, when I asked about this Thinus told me that it seems to suit most customers just fine). Their credit card processor allows for a maximum of 3 registered cards and deposits up to $5000 per month per card (this can be changed by request to casino management). I have to say I'm a little surprised at the lack of selection for depositing. I expected them to also have Citadel and PrePaid ATM. However, they do have the 'biggest' alternative deposit methods (Neteller and FirePay).

Withdrawals

The minimum withdrawal is $30. They process withdrawals as follows:

Neteller – Take 48 hours for approval. If you deposited via Visa previously they will credit that first (fair enough).
FirePay - Only if you deposited via FirePay previously
Visa – Only if you live in one of the countries that they allow your card to be credited back
Checks (minimum withdrawal is $50)
Wire Transfer (minimum withdrawal is $500, anything less has a $35 charge)

They don't process withdrawals via Moneybookers.com yet, but according to their customer support they will soon. (I'm writing this Nov. 17 2004, so if you're reading this in 2005 and they still don't do cash outs via Moneybookers you know they lied. J ) If you request a withdrawal on a Friday it will not be processed until the following Monday.

Terms and Conditions

It starts as your basic fair. They reserve the right to cancel your account at any time for any reason and will send you your balance via check if they do so. Then it gets a little trickier, they can void any winnings and take any money left in your balance for a huge number of reasons. Some of the reasons make sense, such as if you are found cheating or using cheating software. However there's one that casinos have been using lately that I think is just extreme: "If you participate in a Casino promotion and cash-in before fulfilling the requirements of that particular promotion." I've worked in a casino before (see bio) and I handled the withdrawals. People regularly tried to cash-out before meeting the wagering requirements. You know how I handled it? I reversed their withdrawal request and sent them an email. You don't have to threaten in your terms and conditions. And one left me wondering what happened so that they would have to create this condition "If you have not played at the Casino on an individual basis for personal entertainment only (that is, you have played in a professional sense or in concert with other player(s) as part of a club, group, etc.)"

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR ACCOUNT HANGING. If you don't log in within 180 days they will take all of the money from your account.

Oh, and I definitely wouldn't want to piss them off. Check out this term: "If you are found to be cheating or attempting to defraud the Game, or if you make untrue and/or malicious comments with regard to the Company's operation, the Company reserves the right to publicize your actions together with your identity and e-mail address, as well as to circulate this information to other casinos, banks, credit card companies, and appropriate agencies." In other words if you say anything nasty about us we will go after with the wrath of the furies and you will receive spam like you have never seen the likes of before. I wanna stay on their good side. Nice casino. Good casino.

Bonuses

One incredibly important thing to note about bonuses, you have to input the code for a bonus BEFORE PURCHASING. Probably one of the dumbest rules I've ever seen. (Yes, I missed it.) Of course I just went back to the Live Help in the browser, requested it, and they gave it, but it's still a stupid procedure.

They offer the basic selection of bonuses:

Matching 100% bonus on first deposits up to $100.
First deposit via Neteller and receive a 120% bonus (capped at $120).
Bonus for deposits via wire transfer – here I think they are being a little cheap – 5% bonus on every bonus between $500 and $4999 and 7.5% bonus on deposits between $5000 and $10,000. If you plan on depositing more than that they will give you a special bonus upon request.
Slots special first deposit bonus – Deposit $50 and receive $75 for playing slots only.
Best Player Award – This one is genius. Whoever wagers the most during the month receives $500. You know how much it probably cost the guy who won this??!!!
Best New Player Award – Like the one above, only it's for the top 3 new players for the month and they get $500, $300, and $200 for 1 st, 2 nd, and 3 rd place.

I found the promotions average for the first deposits and a little on the weak side for returning players. I can only assume/hope that the returning player promotions are sent out via email and not published on the site.

Promotional Terms and Conditions

Their wagering requirements are a little complicated. There's the obvious we do not count "risk free" wagers, which is fair enough. Then there's the rest and it goes like this – most of the games that are acceptable for the wagering requirement you have to play 15X the deposit + bonus. That is fine, but then there's the other bit. All blackjack and tri-card poker games have a higher wagering requirement. If you play any of their blackjack games or tri-card poker you have to wager 30X your deposit + bonus. ONLY PLAY GAMES ALLOWED IN THE WAGERING REQUIREMENTS WHILE YOU ARE MEETING YOUR WAGERING REQUIREMENTS. Why? If you play something that isn't allowed your game play will be voided and they may close your account and forfeit your bonus.

Don't make that cash-out request before it's time. If you do and they decide it's a fraudulent request they will reverse it and charge you a minimum of 12% purchasing amount processing fee deducted from your casino balance!

The rest of the terms are fairly normal. Don't cheat, we can change these rules, etc… blah blah blah.

Signing Up

The casino took about 5 minutes to download. As soon as it was finished it recognized that I didn't have an account yet and opened a prompt which started me on opening an account. I could choose to play for fun or for real and the account was opened in no time at all. Nothing confusing about their sign-in and the whole thing was fast and easy.

Download casino

I haven't even downloaded it yet and I'm getting excited. They have over 80 games and 18 varieties of Video Poker! This should be fun.

You can download from the site or order the CD. Most people today have broadband, so there's no real reason to order the CD, unless you just like that sort of thing. I click on download, then RUN and off we go. They want me to exit all windows programs before continuing. I guess I'll be back to my article in a few minutes.

Miss me? I've joined and had a look around and one there's thing I don't like about this casino, I can't minimize the window easily. Instead I have to exit completely to leave and log-in again to return. This sucks because all of my Neteller information is on my computer itself and it's inconvenient for me. It also sucks because I forgot to enter my coupon number BEFORE making my purchase (yes, I know – how could I have missed that crucial information on their site!). I had to go back out, into the browser, go to Live Help where Dano helped me and gave me the Neteller 120% bonus for my $50 deposit and return back to log in before I could play. Ah ha! Found the way out. I clicked on Free Bet just to see what would happen and I am sent out of the casino while still being connected and sent to a browser window. I have my menu bar and everything. Happy me! So now at least I can get back and forth with relative ease.

Now for the games, I've got to give them credit for having a great sense of humor. In the progressive slots you can choose from Shopping Spree and Mid Life Crisis. I've always liked to shop, so I think I'll try that one first. I've tried a few of the slots games and have come to the conclusion that they have clever names and that's about it. They're kind of boring. The graphics aren't anything special, the sound is blah, and they just don't have any real WOW factor. You have to click for every spin.

I have been playing for awhile and would like to know how I've done. Back to the lobby I go to search for my game history, only it's not there. There's nothing there to be found remotely close to game history. I realize that casinos often put this feature somewhere very small and hidden so I went to their Live Chat to ask where it was. Eran (who was very nice and polite and helpful) informed me that they don't have this feature implemented yet. How inconvenient. Fortunately, he told I could see my wagering requirements in the Cashier. However, according to him the counter mistakenly counts blackjack at 100% and not 50% as it should be. Well, I've worked in customer service so I'm certainly not going to shoot the messenger, but I wouldn't mind slapping around the lazy ass programmer who couldn't be bothered to figure out the equation of having blackjack count as a 1/2 point. This coupled with their policy of penalizing someone for cashing out before meeting their wagering requirements bothers me. I just don't think that is very cool. They don't give you the proper information, yet they punish you if you make a mistake. Not crazy about this casino right now.

Their poker games have different names but basically the same look and feel. Check out the screen shots for 100-game All American and Jacks or Better. Other than the rules, can you tell much of a difference? I can't.

Finally I reach a slots game I like. Cleopatra's gold. It's a new game for the casino and has more features than the other slots games. Here you can chose "autoplay" which makes the game spin for as long as you let it. (Does that make sense?) Basically it saves your wrist. The sound and graphics for Cleopatra's Gold is also more advanced than the rest of the casino. There was music, not just the regular spinning noise and it was a full designed page. It also gave me my first decent win of the day (see the screen shot) I got 20 free spins which won me about $25.

The Win a Million Dollars slots game doesn't even spin. It just moves around and has a weird popping/shuffling type noise to it. Maybe I'm just a purist, but I like a slots game that goes around. Jazz time slots game is ok. It has music in the background, but it's the same basic style as most of their other slots. Diamond Mine slots is old school. I like that you can choose to pull on the lever or click on the button. I also like the look and feel of the game. It's nice and nostalgic. On to High Roller, another tongue and cheek named game. I can now pinpoint what bothers me about their slots. In other online casinos they change the look of the entire window for each game. Here they just change the basic graphics inside the slots machine but the game itself is the same. I guess that's not so bad, but it is a tad boring.

I tried the mini-window slots with High Roller. I thought I would love this feature, but I didn't. It was too distracting from my main game. I could see why it would be nice if the games were slow, but the games in this casino are really quite fast. I don't feel like I need anything to help me pass the time while I am waiting because I'm not waiting that long. With this said I went back to Cleopatra's Gold, chose "Autoplay" and then opened the mini window. This made more sense to me, as I could divide my attention easier and just focus on the payouts of each. Even still, all I did was lose in the mini-game so at the end of the day I felt it was more of a way to waste money than anything else.

One thing I really like about their blackjack is the note they have in the corner with the rules. I don't play blackjack so often, so it's nice to have the quick reminder in the corner. On the other hand I don't understand why they have such high wagering requirements in blackjack. Maybe it’s just because I suck at the game, but it seems like their games are really tight. I think my odds are maybe 50% if I'm lucky. That's bad even for me. Actually, it seems like all of their games are tight. I've been playing now for about 4 hours and have had only 1 decent win. Not exactly my idea of a good time. To their credit I haven't had such major losses either. I'm still playing after 4 hours and have about $96 left (started with $110). So, if you play for the pure enjoyment and to pass the time this casino is pretty good. You may not win huge, but they don't take it all in one full sweep either.

After 10 more minutes and more losses than I can count in a row I'm now down to $76. Not good.

Found another cute feature in one of their slots games. Food fight has a bonus round where you can choose a player to splat. I liked that.

I've played several hours worth of poker, and while I haven't a clue about statistical analysis I can tell you that my gut is telling me there's something off on their double down. Too many times I've had a low card shown only to lose. Also, it seemed like half the time there was no card I could choose where I would win (i.e. they would show a seven but all of my choices were below seven so I would lose no matter what).

I've been playing now for 6 hours straight and my eyes hurt! I have another review to do so I figured I would go into Cleopatra's Gold, hit "autoplay" and watch my credits die (I had $50 left). Instead I got 3 pyramids and won 20 free spins. Inside of these 20 free spins I got another 3 pyramids, so that was 40 spins in total and I won $95. This game has been the only savior in this casino.

In the end I lost the lot, but it took awhile and I didn't make the wagering requirements, which were as follows:

Deposit: $50

Bonus: 120% of $50 or $60

Wagering requirements: between 15X and 30X the deposit + bonus so

15X (50 + 60) = 1650 – if I played only slots and regular poker (not tri-card)

30X (50 + 60) = 3300 – if I played only tri-card poker and blackjack

The last time I was able to check my wagering requirements I had played about 1200 (but I had also played some blackjack, so I have no clue how much I actually had left).

Overall

The games just didn't do it for me. Cleopatra's Gold was the only well designed slots game and Food Fight had a cool bonus round, but that was it. I've been thinking about the best way to describe their games and I think I have it. Say you have a car lot but you only sell one car and one model, a Gremlin for example, and then say you put different stickers on the back window and bumper of each car. The cars are all identical, same color same maker same model, yet you insist they are all different because they have different stickers on the back window and bumper. That is how I feel about their games. I couldn't see my game history and even their wagering requirement information didn't work properly. On the other hand I didn't lose the lot in just one go, having several nice wins that saved me. Also, had I not played it all at one go and cut up my time instead my own errors would have been less and I would have won more in their multi-hand poker (see my stupidity in the screen shot here). Most likely I would have been able to cash out with at least my deposit. They get a C+ (would be a B- if they gave the game history).

Pros	Cons
Nice customer service	Can't see game history
Clear easy to read and understand website	Confusing and complicated wagering requirements
Cleopatra's Gold slots	Had to download each game before playing wasting an average of 2 minutes each time – they should have the auto download that downloads the other games while you play
Bonus round of Food Fight.	Over the top terms and conditions – especially the minimum 12% penalty charge for cashing out early.
I could see the wagering requirements as being something totally possible to meet as long as you aren't a blackjack player (or you're a pro blackjack player).	Boring same looking games
Multi-hand poker. It may not be pretty, but at least they have it.	Wagering requirement information in Cashier was inaccurate – yet they don't post this information anywhere on the site. I had to find out from Customer Support.
Had a great couple of wins that made my game play.	Limited options for depositing and the minimum to deposit is less than the minimum to cash out.

Play now at King Solomons Casino