Slots Galore Casino

Slots Galore presents a friendly welcome, with crisp graphics and a warm color scheme based on shades of terracotta, brick red and brown. The home page features a Flash rotation of the site's many enticing features such as bonuses, promotions and tournaments to let players know what they'll get for their money.

Slots Galore runs on Vegas Technology, offering more than 120 games in slots, video poker, blackjack, European roulette and craps. These sites are rendered in beautiful full-color graphics, which are pleasing to the eye, but may be a burden for players with older, slower or smaller computers to load. There were times when the games we visited took a while to load, despite running a year-old iMac with 8 GB capacity.

Twice a warning popped up about getting the latest version of Macromedia Flash, but it never stayed open long enough to be read completely. Instead the site moved on quickly to the games lobby.

In addition to the load times mentioned previously, there were also times when the site was inaccessible, or a window crashed altogether. Reconnection was not immediate, although it's something that software provider, Vegas Technology, promises in its promotional material. If the standard for online games is fast, continuous, reliable play, then Slots Galore and Vegas Technology need to look to the performance of this site.

A keen feature of Slots Galore is its separate Flash-based Help Files. This online manual appears in a separate pop-up window and can be quite helpful to total newcomers, even though some of the sections on "How to Play" and "Game Buttons" are clearly generic. Obviously any serious questions about game operations or play should be referred to Slots Galore's 24/7 customer service.

As far as games go, Slots Galore lives up to its name, with 3-reel, 5-reel, and 7-reel slots, plus bonus slots and progressive slots. Everything but the progressive slots can be played for fun; the progressive slots only play for real money.

Table games are plentiful as well, with three kinds of blackjack, craps, keno, Caribbean stud, European Roulette, Let Them Ride, Red Dog and Tri-Card Poker available for fun play. As with other sites, progressive games only accept real money players.

Video poker includes all the familiar games such as Joker Poker, Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better, along with Tens or Better, Aces and Faces, Deuces and Joker and Double Joker. Some of these can be played for multiple hands, and one version of Deuces Wild can be played for as many as 100 hands at a time.

Slots Galore has an especially rich offering of tournaments and most buy-ins are at a level accessible to a large number of players. The biggest buy-in for a January tournament was $10. In most cases, the prize is the pot, but some tournaments boast as much as $100,000 in winnings.

On the day we visited, there were daily, weekly and monthly tournaments in slots, blackjack and video poker. The monthly tournament in slots was named "Cool Winnings" and featured Winter Wonderland, a particularly challenging slots game offering chances at a $100,000 prize for a $10 buy-in. Successive weekly tournaments involved Lucky Lady, Parrot Party, Solomon's Mines and SuperMarket for $5 buy-ins each. Daily tournaments involved a rotation of slots games for a minimal $2 buy-in each.

Slots Galore features two standing promotions: a 100 percent first-deposit bonus to a maximum of $1,000, and a 25 percent reload bonus on subsequent deposits. In addition the online casino participates in The VIP Plan, a loyalty rewards program in which players earn points that can be redeemed for cash or prizes. Points are allotted according to a scale depending on the games played. For full details see out articles on Slots Galore's Bonuses and The VIP Plan.