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Casino Beacon
> Online Casinos
> Online Casino Reviews
> Roxy
Palace Casino Review Roxy Palace Casino
Review Welcome Bonus: Our Rating: Introduction Roxy
Palace are an established and
well-known online casino. Their
casino games are powered using
software licensed from
Microgaming and the casino is
fully licensed in the
EU. Roxy Palace Casino are now some ten years old, having launched back
in 2002. Getting Started Things
started off really well when we
started our review process at
Roxy Palace. We can be a critical
bunch here at Casino Beacon and
we tend to start a new
online casino review
by immediately looking for
something wrong to criticise but
we were really pleased with how
easy things were. The 'Getting
Started' section at Roxy Palace
is nothing short of brilliant and
pretty much holds you by the hand
through every step of installing
their casino games software. If
you're a newcomer to online casinos
then we strongly recommend you read their very helpful and idiot-proof instructions. Things
continued to impress with the
download and installation
process. The games software
download took just two or three
minutes and this is particularly
impressive when you consider that
we were currently using Sky's
incredibly slow broadband! Within
a few minutes of visiting Roxy
Palace's website and clicking
'download', we were registered as
a new player and ready to start
playing. It's
worth mentioning that there's not
actually any requirement to
download the casino games
software if you don't want to.
You can instead choose to play
Roxy Casino's no
download required
casino
which is played via your browser.
The difference between the
download and no download versions
is small - you get a few more
games with the download version -
but they're pretty much the same
product. Not downloading can be
great if you're not sitting at
your usual PC or if it's running
short on memory but most players
tend to download the software.
Doing so does tend to give a
slightly more realistic 'feel' to
the casino experience. Another
benefit of the no download casino
is that it works perfectly for
Mac computer owners. This is
actually true for just about all
Microgaming casinos - the
non-download version is an ideal
Mac-compatible
casino
whereas the download version is
PC only. You
can select to play in UK pounds,
euros or dollars - whichever is
most appropriate for you. UK
players will obviously be playing
in UK pounds (£). Casino
Games As
mentioned earlier in the review,
the casino
games
at Roxy Palace are powered using
software licensed from
Microgaming. This may mean
nothing to you but once you've
played at one Microgaming online
casino, you've pretty much seen
them all. With the exception of
different branding and a few
unique games, all casinos using
Microgaming software are rather
identical in terms of the games
you'll be playing. We
found a few inconsistencies on
Roxy Palace Casino's website when
trying to determine how many
different games are available.
One reference was "play your
choice of over 400 games" whereas
another (on the same page!) read
"play your choice of over 300
casino games". Yet another
proudly boasts that "the Roxy
Palace games collection has over
450 top online casino
games". We
found these different numbers
mentioned on various pages
throughout the casino's
website. The
games available at Roxy Palace
are excellent in terms of quality
and payout rates. You'll be able
to play roulette, slots, video
poker, blackjack, stud poker,
craps, baccarat and all the other
classics. Slot lovers in
particular will love the hundreds
of different slot games and
variations. One
type of game worth checking out
is the progressive
jackpot
series of games. These games are
mostly slot games but there are
also blackjack and poker-based
progressive jackpot games. These
games require a small side bet
which is added to the jackpot
total. We mentioned earlier that
Microgaming online casinos all
use the same casino games and
this is massively important when
playing progressive jackpot games
as these games are all connected
at participating online casinos.
There some one hundred casinos
using this software so we have
thousands of players, all at
different online casinos, all
contributing towards the same
jackpots and these amounts can
run into the millions of pounds.
Yes, that's MILLIONS of
pounds. We
briefly touched on the casino's
payout rates earlier. Online
casinos are famously more
generous than their land-based
counterparts and Roxy Palace is
no exception. All results of
every slot spin, roulette spin,
blackjack hand, etc. is
determined by a 'Random Number
Generator' and these results are
independently audited EVERY
month. Most
decent online casinos will list
their monthly payout rates and
things are no different at Roxy
Palace. The casino's website
claims a 96% payout rate and this
percentage as pretty standard for
a Microgaming casino. A little
digging revealed that the most
recent payout rate (for January
2012) is 95.7%. Some games offered
even higher returns - the table
games paid out 96.9% and the
poker games 95.7%. Try
Before You Buy Most
decent land-based casinos will
have a 'practice table' where new
players can try out games such as
blackjack and roulette without
risking any real money. The same
is true for nearly every online
casino, including Roxy Palace.
Each time you start the casino
software, you'll be asked if you
want to play for real money or
just for fun/practice. If you
wish to play for fun then you'll
be able to play nearly every one
of Roxy Palace's 400+ casino
games with practice chips. It's
completely free, lots of fun and
a perfect method of trying before
you buy. We
do recommend players to have a
few practice gaming sessions,
even if you're an experienced
online casino player. You'll find
new games that you're not
familiar with (Roxy Palace add
new games every month) and
playing for fun is a good way to
find your feet without risking
real money. Free
Money Welcome
Bonus Nearly
every online casino will offer
new players a free
money welcome
bonus
as an incentive to sign up. Roxy
Palace are no different and they
list their welcome bonus as "up
to £1,250 free". Now, you
may have noticed at the start of
this review that we described the
bonus somewhat differently, as
deposit bonuses up to £626,
spread over your first six
deposits, plus free slot
spins. So
where's the difference? Well, we
actually found the sign-up bonus
at Roxy Palace to be somewhat
tricky to understand at first. We
had to do some reading and
scratching of heads before we
understood exactly what's on
offer for new players. Here's
the bonus as explained at Roxy
Palace's website: You'll
note that your first four real
money deposits will earn you a
free money bonus. The same
applies to your sixth deposit.
It's these five deposit bonuses
(for deposits 1,2,3,4 and 6) that
add up to the £626 total
bonus money we mentioned. It's
when you come to making your
fifth deposit that things become
a little less clear - the above
table describes this bonus as
"120 free spins p/w". So
it appears that your fifth real
money deposit will earn you what
looks like 120 free slot spins
every week. Thing is, there's no
real detail here, no immediate
explanation of what these spins
are worth or which slot game the
spins will be played on. We
investigated further, ploughing
through the bonus terms and
conditions and discovered that
this is an ongoing weekly free
spins bonus called 'Sunday
Special' and is available "for
52 weeks from the second Sunday
after the day when the real
account was registered".
Another important requirement is
that "to qualify for the
Special Sunday offer, a minimum
deposit of €/$/£120 must be
made and played-through, on any
game, every week." A
little more reading of the bonus
terms revealed that the 120 free
spins will be played on Roxy
Palace Casino's slot game called
'The Great Galaxy Grab' and that
they're worth £12
(£0.10 per spin). So, if you
qualify for these free spins
every week of the year then
you'll have received a total of
£624 in free spins after
twelve months. It's
quite apparent that only the most
regular players are likely to see
most of these free spins.
Therefore, we stand by our
original assessment that for the
vast majority of players, the
actual free money welcome bonus
at Roxy Palace is worth £626
and not the £1,250 boasted
at the casino's
website. The
overall bonus available from Roxy
Palace Casino is a little
difficult to get your head around
at first and we're suggesting
this is re-looked at. This is our
job and we still had to really
get our heads into the thing
before we fully understood what's
being offered so a simpler, more
transparent welcome bonus
wouldn't be a bad
thing. Playthrough
Requirements Free
money bonuses from online casinos
can, at first glance, seem to be
a wonderful way of getting your
hands on free money. We've got no
real problem with bonuses as they
appeal to most players and are a
great way to increase your
playing bankroll. After all, the
longer you play - the more you
can win. However, all free money
casino bonuses come with their
own restrictions. These will be
in the form of 'playthrough
requirements' and it's important
to understand how they work if
you're going to take advantage of
free bonus money. As
seen in the table above ("Free
Money Welcome Bonus"), your first
real money deposit (of £20
or more) will be matched 100%
with a free money bonus of up to
£150 free. For example, if
you deposit £150 then you
will receive a free money welcome
bonus of £150, giving you a
total account balance of
£300. Before
you can withdraw your bonus money
(or any winnings made from it),
it must be 'played through' 30
times. So in our example of
depositing £150 to get the
maximum £150 bonus, you're
going to need to place bets
totaling £4,500 (£150 x
30) before you can make a
withdrawal. £4,500
might sound like a scary amount
of gambling if you're betting
quite light but it's not actually
as much as it first sounds. If
you place two bets of £50
then you've already played
£100 of the playthrough
requirements, regardless of
whether your bets were wins or
losses. However, things do get a
bit more restrictive when you
realise that not all of the
casino games will count fully
towards the playthrough
requirements. This
is how Roxy Palace explain the
playthrough
contributions. It's
all pretty standard and there's
nothing understand going on,
After all, this is a reasonable
chunk of free money the casino is
giving away but it does mean that
not every player will want to use
these bonuses as they do cause
restrictions in what you can do.
A growing number of online casino
players are choosing not to take
bonuses and simply
deposit/withdraw their own money
whenever they want to. It's all
down to personal
preference. Bonus
Issues We
mentioned above above that not
all online casino players want to
take advantage of free money
bonuses as they come with their
own (playthrough requirement)
restrictions. Most good online
casinos cater for this preference
by asking for players to 'claim'
the bonus by clicking to select
it in the cashier section of the
casino software. This system
works perfectly - players who
want the bonus can access it with
a click of the mouse whereas
players who don't want a bonus
can leave it well
alone. At
Roxy Palace, the deposit bonuses
are credited to your account
immediately upon making a
deposit. This is fine and dandy
if you actually want the bonus
but it's not so cool if you had
no intention of using the
promotion. You'll be stuck with
the bonus in your account and
have to work your way through the
associated playthrough
requirements. We
asked Roxy Palace about the
automatically-issued deposit
bonuses and they told us that
players who don't want the bonus
will need to e-mail them prior to
depositing. It's a bit of a pain
and hardly ideal. A
second issue we came across is
that the welcome bonuses are only
available for players who choose
to download the casino software.
For some unexplained reason, the
sign-up promotions are not
available for players who opt to
play the 'no download required'
version of the casino. This is
not exactly standard practice and
we're at a loss as to why Roxy
Palace don't want to offer their
bonuses to non-download
players. The
third niggle we found in the
bonus terms and conditions is
that "in order to receive the
welcome bonus, a minimum of
€/$/£20 must be deposited
within 7 days of the account
being created." At
first glance, this might not
appear much of an issue as most
players will be signing up as a
new player because they intend to
deposit money and get playing.
However, we don't think Roxy
Palace have fully thought this
through. We mentioned earlier
that you can play for free
(practice) and this could be
where the time restrictions cause
an issue. It is quite feasible
that a new player will want to
play the games in practice mode
for a few weeks before deciding
to risk real money. With Roxy
Palace's seven day limit on
claiming the bonus, these players
who haven't deposited yet are
going to miss out on the
opportunity to take the welcome
bonus. It's a bit of mystery why
this time constraint applies at
Roxy Palace - we've not come
across anything like it before at
an online casino. Customer
Support We've
made a few criticisms (mainly
bonus-related) in this review of
Roxy Palace Casino so it's nice
to get back to the positive. The
customer support at Roxy Palace
is really good and we couldn't
find anything to
fault. The
'help pages' at the casino's
website are some of the best
we've ever come across at an
online casino. Everything is
explained in idiot-proof style
and this makes Roxy Palace ideal
for casino newcomers. As a
result, you're unlikely to need
to contact their customer support
team but if you do need to get a
bit of help or information then
you can reach them via a number
of completely free
ways. Should
the need arise, you can contact
Roxy Palace Casino via e-mail,
via a freephone (0800) telephone
number or you can use their handy
'live chat' facility (see image
below) that will instantly put
you in touch with a real, human
member of their support
team. We
tested Roxy Palace's customer
support and found them to be very
helpful, knowledgeable and
immediately available. We threw a
number of questions at the
support team and they came up
with the right answers every
time. They're available 24/7 and
every day of the year so you'll
have the reassurance of their
assistance regardless of when you
happen to be playing. Depositing/Withdrawing
At Roxy Palace
Casino Most
UK players at Roxy Palace will
deposit funds and withdraw
winnings by using their
Visa/MasterCard credit or debit
card. It's definitely the
simplest way to bank at an online
casino but using a credit/debit
card is by no means the only
banking option
available. As
well as credit and debit cards,
you can bank at Roxy Palace by
using an e-wallet such as
Click2Pay,
Moneybookers,
Neteller
and many others. These e-wallets
work in a similar method to
PayPal
and often come with their own
debit card, making access to your
winnings even easier. Talking
of PayPal, most online casinos do
not accept PayPal as a banking
method but Roxy Palace's banking
pages list PayPal as a viable
method, albeit requiring a few
hoops to be jumped through. We
won't go into much detail as we
didn't test this banking method
at Roxy Palace but you're welcome
to read up on this option at the
casino's website and let us know
how you get on if you give this a
try. We'd
like to mention that Roxy Palace
do not have any limit on the
amount of winnings you can
withdraw within any specific time
period. Some online casinos have
weekly withdrawal limits hidden
away in their terms and
conditions but we're pleased to
report no such shenanigans at
Roxy Palace. Summary There's
much to be impressed by at Roxy
Palace but some silly mistakes
and restrictive terms are holding
it back. The casino's help pages
and customer support are easily
among the best in the entire
industry but a confusing and
restrictive welcome bonus makes
the casino appear less friendly
than is actually the
case. Giving
Roxy Palace a 3-star overall
rating is probably the fairest
result, as things stand. There
are aspects of the casino that
are definitely five-star in
quality and we'd like to see the
casino revamp their bonus and
other drawbacks. We're confident
they can achieve a much higher
rating with a few simple
tweaks. |
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