PartyCasino review

Updated August 31 2006

PartyCasino? hmm....PartyCasino....yes, it may sound vaguely familiar to you and it wouldn't be surprising, considering that it is part of the multi billion dollar gaming giant Party Gaming, the group who brought you the famous Party Poker which is potentially the world's biggest online poker room. With the huge success of the Party Poker brand name behind them, the group has recently extended their offering into the casino sector, launching PartyCasino in the earlier half of 2006.

Having played at Party Poker previously, I was very interested to see whether PartyCasino would uphold the same high standards. It seemed obvious to me that they would put as much effort and expertise into PartyCasino as they do in poker, but there was only one way to find out and that was to spend a couple of hours there.

The PartyCasino site a very clean design and is set out in a straight-forward, easy to navigate manner and is quite visually stimulating too! My eye was immediately drawn to the jackpot ticker and the hard to miss "Jackpots" banner boasting Five guaranteed jackpots and six Progressive Jackpots! As is my usual habit, I took a look around for their welcome bonus, but either I'm going blind or there is not one advertised in sight on the PartyCasino front page. So I headed over to the "news" link to see what was happening and that's where I found their promotions page.

Welcome bonus and promotional offerings at PartyCasino

PartyCasino seems to run monthly promotions and this month there are two on offer - the first one is "Dan's Bonanza" which offers guaranteed cash prizes in your account when Casino manager Daniel Miller is giving away more than one million dollars in cash during the month...this is very similar to another casino whose manager also hands out prizes...but it's a good promo, so I'm not complaining if it catches on. All you have to do to be eligible for this promotion is wager at least $5,000 on any of the PartyCasino games throughout the month and login to your account during specified dates but bear in mind that terms and conditions do apply, so you'll need to read through these before accepting this promotion.

In addition to this, PartyCasino is running another promotion wherein you can earn points just for playing your favorite casino games. One 'PartyCasino Point' is accrued for every $25 wagered when playing real money games except for Roulette. Earn a minimum of 100 points a day across a period of days in the month, and you'll win a cash prize, ranging from $30 to $300.

There is also a "Tell a friend" promotion on offer, whereby you will be eligible for a $50 when friends that you refer sign-up an account at PartyCasino and make a real money deposit. You're not the only one who gains here; your friend will also receive a $25 bonus, which is pretty cool.

Still no mention of a PartyCasino welcome bonus though...somebody? I decided to click on the Party Players Club link to see what that was all about and if the bonus was possibly hidden on one of those pages.

PartyCasino Players Club

I must admit, the slogan "You've joined the party, now join the club!" is pretty catchy and really does make you want to read about what's on offer at the PartyCasino Players Club.

As with most casinos, the PartyCasino players club is points based and as a member, you earn PartyPoints that can be exchanged for merchandise, entries into special multi-table tournaments, daily Party Players Club freerolls, and much more. It's quite simple to earn these points, all you have to do is play real money games at either PartyPoker or PartyCasino and you'll add to your balance.

Once you've earned Party Points, they can be redeemed for merchandise at the PartyPoints store where you'll find a number of the latest gadgets, cool clothes, branded PartyPoker merchandise amongst other things.

Membership is organized into different levels, with benefits increasing according to the levels you ascend, entry level is Blue but as you accumulate PartyPoints, you can move up to the Silver and Gold levels. Higher membership levels give you access to special events and also make it easier to earn PartyPoints: Silver players earn one-and-a-half times the PartyPoints earned by Blue players, while Gold players earn twice the amount earned by Blue players. So the more you play at PartyCasino, the more you get.

After reading nearly all the information on the site, I decided to Download PartyCasino by clicking on the Download and Play button.

Download and registration

There is no Flash version of PartyCasino and a download is necessary to play here. After activating the download, I was surprised that it took less than a minute to complete and another minute to install and then I was ready to get started .

I already had an account at PartyPoker, so there was no need to open another account, you simply play on your existing one between casinos, but if you don't have an existing account, you simply follow the registration process to open one. This is very easy to do and involves entering your name, address and payment information, along with your choice of nickname and password. Once you've registered, you can either deposit funds and start playing for real, or you can put the $1,000 play money to good use and experience what’s on offer before spending your own money. After a lot of research I found that New Players without existing accounts are eligible for a 20% bonus up to $100...so it is there after all! I decided to deposit and headed for the PartyCasino banking section.

Banking

As with PartyPoker, PartyCasino uses the same cashier function and offers a variety of choices when it comes to depositing funds, these include Credit Card, iGM-Pay, EC/ELV, Electronic Transfer, Switch/Solo Card, ePassport, Moneybookers, Phone Connect Card, Money Transfer, Neteller, Bank Transfer, FirePay, Citadel, Wire Transfer, Checks with the minimum deposit being $50 which is quite unusual but anyway...

Naturally I elected to use my Neteller account as I just find it to be the quickest and easiest method of deposit and put in $100, thereafter I headed off to the lobby to check out the games on offer.

Games Offering

The games lobby at PartyCasino is not exactly what you're used to or would expect, there is not much to it apart from a few graphic menus and total silence...where are the casino sounds??

Anyway, PartyCasino offers 20 Slot games, 3 Blackjack games, 9 Video Poker games, 3 Table games, 4 Poker games, as well as Keno.

As usual I started off with the Slot games as the jackpots are very impressive, seem to grow very fast and have a good hit rate. They are also uniquely structured with 3 Video Slots linked to a tiered progressive structure with five levels of jackpots, the top levels being the big payout which at the time of writing was at nearly $1 million. The last win was for around $700,000. Unfortunately, these didn't payout for me and I decided to move on.

The general slot games are not too bad either. I started off with the SuperStar Slot, which was quite entertaining and then moved on to Predator Slots. After losing way more than I'd bargained for I checked out a couple of the other games on offer which included Mega Joker Poker, European Roulette, Blackjack High Limit and finally played a few hands of Caribbean poker.

While the games are quite entertaining and a quality product, if you're a casino player more interested in casino games than poker and are used to Microgaming, Playtech or Cryptologic software, you may be a little disappointed with the games variety and graphic quality of PartyCasino's offering in comparison. However, the table limits are generally higher than average for games like blackjack and roulette, the progressives will attract you if you're a slots fan and poker players will like the fact that they can easily flip back and forwards between the poker room and casino games.

Having played my fill, I decided to check out the customer support at the casino, knowing full well that the poker support is excellent.

Customer Support

PartyCasino offers 24/7 customer support via telephone and e-mail, it's good to see that they have included a variety of toll free numbers around the world. I decided to test out both methods and found both to be very friendly, professional and responsive.

The Verdict

PartyCasino is a very mixed bag and is still very new in terms of casinos, so there are still things that can be improved, but they are off to a very good start so far and I'm sure that with all the experience and expertise within the organization PartyCasino will be up there with all the rest very shortly as they add new games and continuously improve their promotional offerings.

The biggest seller for PartyCasino at present is that the company is a publicly traded entity, with every transaction being totally transparent. This means that you know that you will be treated well and will not have to worry about them "running away" with your money. They treat their members well and look after each and every one of them, their banking and support are excellent, and if you like jackpots they are definitely worth a look.

All in all my experience was a very pleasant one and PartyCasino is definitely worth visiting.

Also interesting: PartyCasino player reviews | PartyCasino detail information

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