The Palaces Online Casino Review

Initially launched nearly ten years ago, The Palaces recently relaunched with a newly designed site featuring a Casino, Live Casino, and Bingo area. Although its services focus primarily on UK players, it allows for international customers around the globe in any areas where it’s legally allowed.

Fee-free deposits and withdrawals plus on-going reload bonuses are two of the benefits The Palaces provides. You won’t find the big jackpot progressive games in the casino, but an otherwise sufficiently sized slot, table, and video poker area. Bingo provides for 25p tickets and pots in the £2,000 and £5,000 range.

Deposit Methods

Ratings Breakdown

Overall

We’re pleased that the overall rating factored out so high as The Palaces is an overall good site. Its combination of bingo and casino gives players more choices and, not only is it a nicely designed site, but it does have some of the most current games that are available today.

Game Variety

The quantity might not be up to speed with some of its competitors, but the variety is certainly there. Games include some casino standards like Treasures of Troy and Cleopatra, but brand new games like Ghostbusters Triple Slime are also in the mix. The table games are also smaller in number but cover the bases with Blackjack and Roulette supplemented with Baccarat, Poker, and Red Dog.

Banking

When you provide full disclosure, you’re ok in our book, and The Palaces has a link to its financial menu right at the top of the homepage. You can sort by country to find your particular choices, and each is indicated as being allowable (or not) for both deposits and withdrawals. Every financial transaction is free. No fees are added in either direction, and cash outs are promoted as being approved daily. The only thing that’s missing is a Bitcoin option, and a few more e-wallets and prepaid alternatives would also be helpful.

Bonuses

The scales are level regarding bonuses. On one side, there are welcome and reload offers that come with a 35 times rollover, but it’s only on the awarded amount and doesn’t include the deposit, so that’s a plus. On the other side, there aren’t any non-deposit match offers. Some fun promotions, contests or giveaways are important to some players.

Customer Service

Three methods of contact are quite handy, and players should have easy access to a service agent when they need assistance. We’ve also read about some better than average service provided to some, so there’s no need to deduct a star in this category as all of the bases are covered.

User Interface

We’d give a five-star rating in this category because the site loads quickly, the game presentation is top notch, and the entire experience is straightforward and user-friendly. Not having a live casino and many of the games available for mobile play detracts from the overall experience, though, and doesn’t give players much of choice in formats, so we deducted a half star for the inconvenience.

Restricted Countries

Here is a list of all the countries that cannot play at The Palaces Casino.

Overview of the Palaces Casino

Physical and Virtual Worlds Combine

The Palaces is just one of the holdings of Palatial Leisure Limited, led by Founder, Managing Director, and Bingo operations expert, Patrick Duffy. He’s been with the company since 1996 and has four bingo parlors, the London Palace, Great Yarmouth, Salford, and in Felixstowe. Palatial Leisure is more bingo-oriented and has five sister sites to thepalaces.com including Bingo Britain, Bingo Caribbean, Catholic Bingo, New Century Bingo, and The Palaces Live. It’s licensed by the UK Gambling Commission, so there are stringent guidelines that are imposed and fair gaming requirements that need to be adhered to and are monitored.

Eligibility to Register and Play for Real Money

Eligibility is in your individual hands as The Palaces simply states that players must be legally authorized to gamble online. However, their registration and payment options include 244 different countries.

A Regal Theme?

With a name like The Palaces Casino and business operations based out of England, you can imagine that there’s an underlying royal tone. The site has a Royal Reload Bonus, but that’s pretty much where the theme comes to a screeching halt. It’s surprising that it wouldn’t carry such an upscale and easily identifiable subject throughout every page. We’re not saying that the remodel isn’t a good one as thepalaces.com would be considered to be a quality and above-average looking product but, why not capitalize on the name and enhance player perception?

Bingo, Yes.. but Casino Takes Center Stage

With five other online bingo products, it makes sense that the Palaces “Casino” would have a different focus and it does. There’s a casino with slots, video poker, and table games as well as live dealer tables. Bingo is the third primary area you’ll find in the top menu, but bingo focuses on three different sessions – Golden Scoop, Silver Scoop, and Bronze Scoop. You can’t even get too in depth checking out the bingo hall as it’s privately closed off for registered members only.

Those Little Thoughts That Count

Today’s online gamblers look for quality and convenience and, with so many websites out there, it’s helpful to provide some little extras to benefit the users.

First off, we like the presentation of the relevant information that needs to be easily accessed by players and anyone considering registering. There’s a sound financial menu of options that break down by geography and notes deposit and withdrawal availability.

The other thing we like that’s especially useful for slot players is the ability to break down the game catalog in a few different ways. You can search by individual title, by the software provider, or you can alphabetize the collection. If you don’t want to scroll through endless graphics, changing the format from images to a listing, cuts down on load time and does make it faster to peruse the choices.

In the casino area, there’s a tally of today’s winners with amounts typically over £100 that is nice to review and see what kind of money is being won. We also like the designations on the games that let you know which ones you can play on your mobile device.

The Casino

IGT, NetEnt, Parlay Games, and ComTrade Casino provide the software behind the games on this site and players can pull up menus based on their preferred company.

With IGT being used, some of the games may look familiar to anyone who spends time in a physical casino, as there is a crossover with the slot games.

Game Variety

The range of the slot and table games is about average, but the video poker games offer some of the latest versions that you’ll find in a casino like the very popular Ultimate Times Triple, Five, and Ten Play.

Audio and Video Quality

IGT is one of the premier providers of slot games, and all of the software used on this site is the latest technology that provides superior video quality. The games are fast loading even on mobile devices.

Mobile Casino

There is a mobile version of thepalaces.com, but it doesn’t represent a large selection of the full site’s casino. All three of the bingo rooms appear, but only about half of the slot games and a few table and video poker games can be pulled up on smartphones or tablets, and the live casino is not available at all for playing on the go.

Video Slots – 200 (105 on Mobile)

The Palaces doesn’t have designated jackpot games, but it does have some of the most current and technically savvy alternatives out there today. For example, IGT has a new game called Siberian Storm Dual Play that has an exclusive Multiway Xtra format. The pay lines aren’t based on a grid format. In fact, the playing area is staggered with three-line, four-line, and five-line reels and winning combinations include symbols that can be anywhere on the board. With 150 coins bet, there are 2,880 ways to win this game.

Not only are the games advanced but they’re presented on a screen with a background that matches the theme of the game. You can tell that a lot of thought and preparation went into the overall experience. It would be hard to imagine better presentation than what’s provided in the Palaces’ slot banks.

Other selections include:

• Ghostbusters Triple Slime
• Royal Spins
• Family Guy
• DaVinci Diamonds
• Cleopatra Plus
• Sherlock Holmes – the Hunt for Blackwood
• Transformers – Battle for Cybertron
• 100,000 Pyramid
• Treasures of Troy
• Fairy Tale Legends – Hansel & Gretel
• Motorhead

Classic Slots – 28 (11 on Mobile)

The classic slots are slightly more traditional but certainly, in no way resemble the original one-armed bandits. Even the themes are more advanced and include:

• Wheel of Fortune on Tour
• The Groovy Sixties
• The Super Eighties
• King of Slots Touch
• Wolf Rising
• Trolling for Treasure

Video Poker – 17 (two on Mobile)

This site has a great video poker section featuring some of the newer offerings, but it’s a shame that more of them aren’t available for mobile play.

These are the two games that you can play on smartphones or tablets:

• New Joker Pro Touch
• Five Play Draw Multihand
• Deuces Wild Double Up
• Joker Pro
• Match Times Pay – Jacks or Better
• Ultimate X Triple Play (or Five or Ten Play)

Table Games – 26 (Four on Mobile)

Don’t get too excited to read about many table game options as this area encompasses 26 Blackjack, Roulette, and other games.

• Roulette Touch
• Roulette
• French Roulette
• Double Bonus Spin
• Three Wheel
• Roulette Advanced
• Roulette Mini
• Triple Bonus Spin
• European Roulette
• American Roulette
• Blackjack Classic
• Blackjack Classic Touch
• Blackjack Professional Series
• Double Exposure Blackjack Professional
• Blackjack
• Single Deck Blackjack Professional
• Blackjack Touch
• Pontoon Professional Series
• Blackjack
• Mini Blackjack
• Casino Hold ’em
• Texas Hold ’em Professional Series
• Red Dog Progressive
• Baccarat Professional Series
• Oasis Poker Professional Series
• Caribbean Stud Professional Series

Live Casino – 5

NetEnt and ComTrade Gaming provide the five-selection live dealer experience. The quantity is small, but the variety is decent.

• Live Blackjack
• Common Draw
• VIP
• The Palaces Live Roulette
• The Palaces Live Blackjack

Bingo

If you’re familiar with Palatial Leisure’s land-based bingo clubs, you would expect that its websites would be bingo crazy with all kinds of promotions and different themed rooms, but the company took a different approach with The Palaces, as it already has other dedicated bingo sites.

The focus is on the casino, so the bingo area is streamlined with three main sessions:

• Golden Scoop – £5,000 – .25 ticket
• Silver Scoop – £2,000 – .25 ticket
• Bronze Scoop – £2,000 – .25 ticket

You can play on the full site or mobile and pre-order games on either as well.

The scoop jackpot is awarded if bingo is in 43 numbers or less and the bingo lobby lists the schedule of upcoming games.

Banking Options

One of the marks of a good casino is providing customers (even not as yet registered) with their alternatives for depositing and withdrawing. The Palaces has a prominent link to this information at the top of the homepage, and the menu is customized per region. Select a country from the drop down box, and you get a list of financial providers available to your home area, and it’s noted if they can be used for withdrawals as well as deposits.

As the site focuses primarily on UK players, we’ll do that too by providing the options available to the United Kingdom.

The following are available for both deposits and withdrawals. A cash out request is honored using the same method.

• Visa
• Visa Electron
• Visa Debit
• Mastercard
• Maestro
• Skrill
• iDeal
• Envoy Bankwire

A few helpful notes:

• Minimum Deposit – £10
• Minimum Withdrawal – £20
• Maximums depend on account and financial services provider
• Both deposits and withdrawals are fee-free
• Withdrawals are internally processed within a few hours but then additional turnaround time may be needed depending on the individual transaction
• Currency accepted: GBP, EUR, CZK, DKK, PLN, SEK

Bonuses and Promotions

We wouldn’t say that this is a particularly promotional-heavy service as there aren’t any tournaments, drawings, or other types of prize opportunities. We didn’t even locate a loyalty program.

What you will find, though, is a solid collection of deposit match bonuses starting with the welcome offer and carried through into reloading opportunities. There are some designated for casino only and others for bingo.

Each welcome bonus is good for new players making their first deposit so you can’t have both. From what we can ascertain, you’d need to decide if you’re going to the casino or if bingo is your priority.

100% (three tier) Casino Welcome Bonus up to £250 plus 50 free spins

Casino players will opt for this one if they’re accepting a match reward as it applies to slot play.

Slot games are the only games that meet the rollover requirement of 35 times, and the award breaks down as follows:

• 1st Deposit – 100% match up to £100 plus 50 free spins on Starburst
• 2nd Deposit – 100% match up to £100
• 3rd Deposit – 100% match up to £50

100% (two part) Bingo Welcome Bonus up to £250 plus 50 free spins

If you’re shooting for the coverall, this is the offer for you. Instead of taking advantage of the casino bonus, you can opt for this one and use it in the bingo room. The bingo wagering requirement is set at two-times instead of 35x as needed through slot play.

• 1st Deposit – 100% match up to £100 plus 50 free spins
• 2nd Deposit – £150 that’s divided up into 30 individual £5 bonuses issued daily. £10 wagering is needed per £5

50% Royal Reload Bonus

If you’re playing on Friday, you can get a 50% deposit match of up to £150. This one also has the 35 times rollover, and a minimum deposit of £20 is needed to activate it. Whereas slots were the only games that offset the welcome requisite, scratch cards provide at 100% for this reload offer, and video poker, table games, and live casino provide for a 10% contribution.

100% Saturday Night Madness

This promotion has the same premise as the Royal Reload Bonus but is only offered on Saturdays and provides at 100% instead of 50.

Saturday Night Fever

Instead of madness, you can have a fever. With a £20 deposit, you get £10 in bingo play with the standard two times wagering requirement.

15% Anytime Bingo Bonus

This bingo-only offer is the counterpart to the Royal Reload Bonus offered to casino players. It’s a 15% deposit match reward that provides up to £150. The wagering is also two times to fulfill the rollover mandate.

Two additional considerations:

• The good news – the 35 times wagering requirement applies to the bonus amount only. Most casinos factor in the deposit amount with the reward and then apply the play through percentage so, The Palaces does have a slightly better program with all other things being equal.
• The not so good news – If you win during your 50 free spins, you then have to wager those winnings 35 times. You can’t simply cash it out and call it a day.

Customer Support

• Live Chat
• Contact Email – [email protected]
• Contact Phone – +44 (0) 78 99 66 0000

Summary

We were taken back (in a good way) when we first went to thepalaces.com. Typical online casinos don’t have a face or a name associated with them. They’re run by a company that you may or may not even know about, and you don’t really consider the human factor into the equation as everything is automated or done by live chat or email.

The founder of The Palaces, Patrick Duffy, is a well-known name and a recognized face in the bingo circuit throughout Britain and he puts his name front and center with The Palaces and with its sister sites as well. There’s an introductory letter from him posted which gives you more of a personalized service and more faith in the product that’s provided.

As far as the website, the redo resulted in a nicely designed, very easy to navigate and play casino and bingo club that features little extras that make a big difference.

It’s always a benefit to have free deposits and withdrawals as well as some welcome and reload bonuses for those players who appreciate the added value. A few little things could be added to enhance the experience, though. Some fun contests or tournaments are appealing and would jazz up the deposit-match only bonuses that are currently provided. More games available on mobile devices would also be helpful as so many more players these days want access to gaming on the go.

Verdict

Free deposits and withdrawals, plenty of financial options from which to select, welcome and reload bonuses with a rollover on the award amount only, and some of the most current games that you can find, all combine to put forth an all around quality service for casino and bingo players.

Frequently Asked Questions