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Casino
Beacon
> Online
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> Online
Casino Reviews
> Lucky
Emperor Casino Review Lucky
Emperor Casino
Review Welcome
Bonus: Software:
Microgaming Our
Rating: Introduction Lucky
Emperor Casino is a very popular
Online
Casino
and part of the Casino Rewards
group of internet
casinos. New
players at Lucky Emperor Casino
are welcomed with a small no
deposit bonus with an optional
deposit match bonus also on offer
(see below for bonus
details). Free
Money Welcome
Bonuses Lucky
Emperor Casino are giving all
new players £10 free with no
deposit required. If you go on to
make a deposit of £100 or
more then you will also receive a
Deposit
Match
Bonus
of £100. We
did find it kind of funny that
the deposit-match promotion page
at Lucky Emperor's website
proudly shouted "Finally a
casino can honestly say YOU'VE
GOT NOTHING TO LOSE!". Well,
that's not quite true. You could
lose £100! According
to the terms at Lucky Emperor,
you must register a credit card
on your account before you can
receive the no deposit bonus. You
don't actually have to deposit
anything from the card but you do
need to register one. This is
perhaps a strange requirement
these days. It used to be a quite
common requirement before a
casino would give you a no
deposit bonus but we're talking a
good few years ago, back in the
day when the only way to deposit
at an online casino was via
Credit
or Debit
Card.
By having you register a card at
the casino, it proved to the
casino that you at least had the
ability to make a deposit.
However, these days many people
don't own a credit card but still
play frequently at online casinos
using alternative deposit
methods, such as Moneybookers. For
those not aware of alternative
banking methods, take a look at
our No
Credit Card
Casinos
section. If
you have joined any other casino
in the Casino Rewards group then,
according to Lucky Emperor's
terms and conditions, you cannot
receive a free money welcome
bonus here. The other casinos in
the group are Blackjack Ballroom,
Casino Classic, Captains Cook
Casino, Golden Tiger, UK Casino
Club, Zodiac
Casino,
Golden
Reef,
Challenge Casino, Virtual City
Casino, Music Hall Casino,
Nostalgia Casino, Yukon Gold,
Strike It Lucky, Casino Kingdom,
Aztec Riches and Phoenician
Casino. There
are some playthrough requirements
(30x) before you can cashout your
winnings if you've taken
advantage of a welcome bonus -
and some games (ie. roulette) do
not count much towards these
requirements, so we recommend you
check out the casino's promotions
terms and conditions at their
website. Casino
Games Lucky
Emperor use Microgaming software
to power their Casino
Games.
This means that the quality is
about as good as it comes. There
are over 300 realistic games to
choose from and the collection
contains just about every game
you would expect to find at an
online casino - and plenty more
besides. Lucky
Emperor Casino features blackjack
games, roulette, video poker,
stud poker, scratch card, craps,
baccarat, power power,
Progressive
Jackpots
and loads more. Every month,
three or four new games are
released by Microgaming and you
will find that these new games
are automatically available for
you to play each
month. The
casino games software is free to
download and we found it took no
more than a few minutes. One nice
touch is that you are able to
register your new account details
(name, address, etc.) while
you are waiting for the download
to complete. One
slightly worrying thing worth
mentioning is that our
anti-virus/firewall software
(Trend Micro) warned us of
"suspicious activity" during the
installation. The warning
quickly disappeared and it was
probably nothing to worry about
but we can't be sure. And we
don't usually get that warning
when installing Microgaming
casinos. Problems
Galore Things
started to go wrong for us soon
after registering as a new
player. We registered a credit
card as required and waiting for
our free £10 no deposit
bonus to appear. Very soon after
we registered, we received an
e-mail stating "Log in to your
account and you will be able to
claim your £€$10 Free right
away" - which we did, only to
find that there was no money in
there. Even
worse, the same e-mail from Lucky
Emperor asked us to click a link
to verify our registered e-mail
address - we did this and were
taken to a page with a blank box
and nothing else. Not exactly
reassuring. Somewhat
confused, we e-mailed Lucky
Emperor's support team and to be
fair to them, they replied pretty
quickly. They told us that it can
take up to two hours to credit
the bonus which is fair enough.
What wasn't good was that they
completely ignored our question
regarding the e-mail verification
error. Shortly
afterwards, we received another
e-mail from Lucky Emperor (or
rather, Casino Rewards) telling
us that "You have just received
your Bonus". The
way the bonus works here isn't as
straightforward as you might
first expect. Rather than just
crediting your account with the
£10 no deposit bonus, Lucky
Emperor gave us 1500 'VIP Points'
which it would appear are this
casino's version of loyalty
points. 1000 of these points can
be exchanged for £10 (or $10
or 10 euros) which leaves you
with 500 spare. Unfortunately,
we were still a long way away
from actually getting our hands
on the free cash. We followed
carefully the instructions in
Lucky Emperor's e-mail to
'redeem' 1000 points for £10
playing money. When we logged
back into our player account we
could see our 1500 points and
that we could exchange 1000 of
them for £10. We tried to do
so, only to be told on the next
screen that "You can cashin 0 VIP
Points for Casino Chips".
Confused? So were we. So,
we e-mailed Lucky Emperor again,
asking them why we were being
told on one screen that we had
1500 points to redeem only to be
told we had none available when
we tried to redeem them. And just
for good measure, we pointed out
that they hadn't answered our
question about the e-mail
verification problem. Again
to their credit, Lucky
Emperor/Casino Rewards e-mailed
back promptly. Unfortunately, the
advice they gave us was merely a
reiteration of what we'd already
been told - log in, click redeem,
blah blah - which we'd already
told them did not
work. Regarding
the e-mail verification issue,
they told us that "this web page
is currently not working at the
moment" but that we could still
get our bonus anyway. If e-mail
verification is not required to
get our hands on the bonus then
we're a bit curious why they need
it in the first place. Anyway,
we e-mailed the casino
AGAIN and told them exactly
what the problem was. We decided
to explain things very simply.
This was our e-mail to Lucky
Emperor: "Put
simply, I've logged into Lucky
Emperor Casino. The green 'Casino
Rewards' box then tells me I have
1500 VIP points to redeem. So I
click 'redeem' and it takes me to
'Your Player Profile Details'
which again tells me that I have
1500 points to redeem. On the
right-hand side of this page, it
tells me I can 'Redeem your VIP
points for £10.00' so I
click to do so there. That takes
me to another page within the
software, titled 'Player Redeem
Options' which tells me 'You can
cashin 0 VIP Points for Casino
Chips!' Not
sure I can put it any plainer
than that, to be honest. The
software tells me the points are
there for redeeming but when I
click to do so, it tells me I
have none." Again,
Lucky Emperor replied promptly.
On the downside, their reply
again just repeated the same
waffle they'd already given us,
telling what to click and where.
However, just when we were about
to give up on the whole thing and
do something else like jump in a
river - we logged into our player
account and this time, when we
clicked to redeem our points it
worked. Sort of. We
say 'sort of' because instead of
being credited with the promised
£10, our 1000 pointed had
actually got us £6.66 in our
account. We
did e-mail the casino and tell
them about the shortfall and they
did credit another £3.33 to
our account, giving us £9.99
(hey, you ripped us off a penny!)
but we didn't really care all
that much by now. We were more in
the mood for a stiff drink now
than playing slots. Terrible
Terms Most
people who sign-up at an online
casino won't bother to check the
terms and conditions. Well, after
reading what we found at Lucky
Emperor, you probably will in
future. Some of the terms and
conditions we found were
staggeringly bad. For such a well
known and long-time established
casino, we couldn't quite believe
what we were reading. Check
this one out: "Players
who win a sum that is 5 times, or
more, greater than their total
purchases across all Casino
Rewards partner casinos will only
be able to withdraw their
winnings at a sum of $4,000 a
week." £4,000
a week? That's terrible and
certainly doesn't encourage you
to deposit decent sums of money
and play for the big time. Hit a
£40,000 winning streak and
it's going to take you nearly a
year to have it all. This doesn't
apply to progressive jackpot wins
but it's still rubbish and makes
the casino appear shadier than
they actually are. If
you do happen to strike it lucky
and win a fortune, not only will
it apparently take you forever to
get your hands on it, you are
also obliged to tell the world
about it with this next
term: "If,
while playing at this Casino, you
win a sum regarded by the Casino
Management as worthy of
publicity, you agree to make
yourself available for any event
of such nature arranged by the
Casino. At all times, the Casino
will do its utmost to protect
your privacy." Come
again? One reason many people
play online is because of the
privacy aspect. It's nice to sit
at home, play in private and not
have someone looking over your
shoulder. It's even nicer when
you win a nice lump of money from
the casino and you don't have to
tell anyone about it. Fine, if
the casino wants to boast about
your good fortune then they can
do so. 'Mr X won 15 squillion
quid", etc. but telling you that
you HAVE to 'make yourself
available' for their publicity
events is downright
rude. Now,
it's quite possible - likely,
even - that Lucky Emperor
would not rely on some or any of
these conditions but the fact
that they exist in the first
place is highly worrying.
Certainly, we would not feel
comfortable making a real money
deposit at any online casino that
had any of these restrictive
terms in place. Banking There
are many different ways to
deposit funds or withdraw your
winnings at Lucky Emperor
Casino. Most
people will use a debit or credit
card but the casino's website
does mention some problems
experienced by players - "This
has been particularly bad at
Providian, Bank of America,
Wachovia, Wells Fargo and Capital
One." Lucky
Emperor's banking page isn't
exactly brilliant at explaining
non-card banking options. Other
than credit card, the banking
page only mentions Click2Pay and
NETeller but we know for a fact
they they also accept
Moneybookers, wire, ClickNBuy and
more. Summary Things
generally look and feel okay at
Lucky Emperor. After all, the
games are the same ones you'll
find at any decent Microgaming
casino so not much can go wrong
with them. It's fair to say
though, that Lucky Emperor
certainly isn't the most
glamorous or modern casino in the
Casino Rewards group. Yeah, it's
all adequate and does the job but
compare Lucky Emperor to
Zodiac
Casino
for example, and you begin to see
the difference. What
it boils down to is that Lucky
Emperor is looking a bit tired
and is definitely due for a
facelift. We suspect that Casino
Rewards are probably aware of
this and we wouldn't be surprised
to see a complete overhaul of the
casino and website in the not too
distant future. The
problem may be down to too many
brands. We know of at least 17
online casinos in this group and
that doesn't include the poker
rooms. That's a lot of casinos
and websites to maintain and keep
up a good level of quality.
Something has to give somewhere
and it looks like some of the
older brands - in this case Lucky
Emperor - are falling short as a
consequence. Having
said all of this and made all of
our criticisms, we still don't
really dislike the casino itself.
The games are great, the bonuses
are reasonable and customer
support is quick, if a little
scatty. In
view of the numerous problems we
experienced, and as a result of
the appalling terms and
conditions, Lucky Emperor can't
be regarded as anything better
than a 2-star casino right
now. With
some revamping of the site,
casino, customer support and
terms then Lucky Emperor would
rate much higher. But then again,
that's true of any casino, isn't
it? |
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