Review of RoyalVegasPoker.com

I have been playing at Royal Vegas for a few weeks now. Thought I would share some of my observations about them.

1. Bonus money - Very good. They give you 10 dollars without even depositing anything. They also have a 40 percent deposit Bonus. I deposited 100 dollars, so I had 50 dollars of free money before even playing a hand.

2. Tournaments - they have a lot of really nice free roll tournaments every day. The stipulation is that you have to play at least 50 hands raked at 25 cents each to qualify. Each free roll generally has a prize pool of 1000 dollars and around 800 people in it.

The small buyin tournaments are also very good. They run a lot of 1 and 2 dollar limit and no limit HE tourneys, and I have found it very easy to get in the money and twice - win these tourneys.

3. The software is pretty bad. The colors are horrible and it is hard to tell what is going on. The plus to this software is that there is a mini mode in which you can easily fit 4 games on a 19 inch monitor with no overlapping.

4. Players - there are a lot of very loose players here, mixed with a few sharks. There are 2.00 max buyin no limit ring games that are full of suckers that can't wait to lose their free 10.00 to you.

5. Cashouts - This is the area where Royal Vegas SUCKS. I deposited 100.00 the first day I played there. I immediately won a 1.00 buyin RA limit tourney. I cashed out my buyin immediately. then the next day cashed out another 150.00, leaving only the Bonus money in the account.

The cashout for 100.00 took 10 days to hit my firepay account. I had not received the 150.00 cashout after 12 days so I called them. They said I would have to submit some security verification documents in order to cashout the money above my buyin. I was not notified of this until I called.

Royal Vegas sent me a fax number and told me to send them a copy of my drivers license and a utility bill to prove my identity. I did that yesterday and received the following email today:

You better watch out. The Prima network as a whole is a pain in the ass when it comes to getting your money. I've all but sworn off the Prima network.

Well, I did get my deposit cashed out already, but it is making me nervous how hard it is to get my winnings. The free money and bonuses will be worth it if I actually get paid. I will let everyone know if/when I get the other money out of these people.

*Last edited by FyrFytr998 on Thu, 23 Sep 2004, 8:19pm; edited 2 times in total*

Here. Read this correspondence between Royal and one of the guys from the online poker tour. He got royally shafted. (Pun intended)

New Delhi 69 wrote: I simply have to share this. Today I wrote this e-mail to Royal Vegas Poker :

In tournament Onlinepokertour.com on sep. 19th there were 51 players
entered, each paying 10$+1$ to enter, but it seems that payout is only based on 50 players i.e. 500$. ?? I won and have received 150$ for 1st where it should be 153$. It's not the 3$, but the principle, as several players noticed this during play. Rgds Jan Krat/NewDelhi69

Answer:

Hi Jan,

Thank you for your query.

Please be advised that the Online Poker Tour tournament had a guaranteed prize pool of $500. This means that no matter how few or how many people have registered for the tournament, the prize pool will remain at $500.

Therefore your prize of $150 is correct. Congratulations on placing 1st!

Should you require any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to
contact us as we will be happy to assist you.

Kind Regards

David
Poker Support Center

Now I'm REALLY amazed and a bit angry, so I wrote THIS:

Thanks for your promt reply.

That is the first time, I have heard THAT definition of guaranteed . Every
other site I have played, "guaranteed prize pool 500$" means at LEAST 500$, and that the prize pool will increase, if more than 50 players, paying 10$ + entry fee, participate!

So you are basically saying, that if 1000 players entered the tournament,
the prize pool would still be 500$ ??!!
Players would then pay 10.000$+1000$ fee to be able to win a part of the
500$ guaranteed.

That is neither common, nor fair. Just MY opinion of course!

Rgds

Jan Krat aka NewDelhi69

Answer:

Hi Jan,

Thank you for your reply.

You are correct in your assumption about guaranteed prize pools.

However, unless otherwise specified in the tournament lobby, the prize pool will remain at the specified total.

Should you require any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us as we will be happy to assist you.

Kind Regards

David
Poker Support Center

Needless to say, what I think of RVP now, (would probably be censored anyway ), and that my winnings are leaving the site faster than you can say OPT.

Yeah that is truly ridiculous as hell. I never had a problem cashing out there really except for when I didnt initially deposit and was playing off referral money but that situation with the 500 guaranteed is complete bullshit. I don't think I'll ever play there again anyway because of all of the lucrative bonuses and things else where but man just reading that pisses me off.

It reminds me of when Party Poker shafted me out of 195 in referral money back in march. Update on that actually. After not talking with them in nearly 4 months I emailed them because the terms & conditions they state say they can hold it for 180 days and it has been more than that now. Believe it or not with no retort or anything they put the 195 right into my account today!!!!!!!! I'm quite pleased with that because I thought I would never get it!!!!!

Also I never had to send Royal Vegas any security documents. They must have updated their security practices since I have been there. I did have to do that for hogpoker though and they did eventually get me all my money but I will never play there again.

A follow up - I just received the aforementioned cashout. I was told I would not have to submit "security documentation" again.

Cashout request submitted: Sept 9th
Cashout hits firepay: Sept 24th

A turnaround of 15 days, which is TOTALLY unacceptable in my book.

On the other hand, I did get 50 free bucks. Was it worth it? Of course it was. It was a hassle, but it was still free money. Plus, I made a ton of $$ off of the weak players there.

Having said that, I am withdrawing all of my money from Royal Vegas. There are too many other good Bonus offers out there, including other Prima skins.

Final results.

Cash in: 100
Cash out: 320
+ 220

wow they have sucked a lot lately. i was in the $1500 freeroll, and the table crashed. it just froze. so i quit, it was free anyways.

and now today, college champs. everyone is getting disconnected! everyone's taking like 20 seconds to respond, but the blinds are still doubling after x minutes, but the gameplay is super slow....this is getting very gay!

i don't know how the hell they're gonna manage to host over 40,000 players in their december 100K freeroll

BTW - I saw that Fnord came in 4th/135 in the Expert Series NLHE tourney at Royal Vegas. Did you knock any of the experts out?

Way to go.

I don't think that's the same Fnord from this site. Question

Did you have to play a raked hand requirement to get the Bonus or did they just give it to you? I asked customer support and they said I had to play same number of hands as the Bonus dollar amount at .25/.50 or above to get it.

You have to play a certain number of raked hands before you can cash the Bonus out. They add the Bonus to your account right away though.

This is what I did. I deposited 100 dollars, let the Bonus hit the account, then withdrew my 100.00. I then used their money as my bankroll. I played quite a bit of .25/.50 limit with the 40.00 and 10.00 they gave me and ended up winning. I then cashed everything out except for 30.00. Their support informed me that I had met the raked hand requirement, but I don't know what the requirement actually is.

Short answer, they give you the Bonus right away, but you can't cash it out until you played the raked hands, but you can use the Bonus to do it.

Apparently that has changed now too. I put in $50 and asked support again tonite and they said it wont be "unlocked" until I meet the hand requirement.

And I never got the $10 because I set my account up a long time ago before they started the $10 deal. Such is life.

Sorry, my info was correct as of 2 weeks ago. Guess they changed. You could always just take the money back out I suppose, but that will take about a week.

Wow thank you for sharing all of this. I hope this isnt the same for 7SultansPoker.com since it is Prima Network.

i believe most of the Prima sites require you to play 3x the Bonus to be able to cash it out. they say you must play at minimum 0.25/0.50 tables, but that's not correct. you can play at whatever limits you want, but for it to count as a raked hand they must rake 25 cents or more. so any pot $5 or more will be counted as a raked hand.

thanks for the post about RVP..

I'll stay off of Prima Smile

the Prima network is filled with fish. it's very profitable. personally i haven't had too many problems with them. tournament tables crashed a couple times, but the ring games are always stable for me. the cashout was in my account within a couple hours. the one annoying thing about the cashout is that they hold it for 24 hours before they actually do the cashout...they do this so people can "reverse withdrawal"

I just wanted to say that I cashed out my original deposit and am now playing strictly on Bonus money. I had no problems with the cashout and it was in my neteller account 24hrs after I requested.

I'm just playing $.75+.25 and $2+.50 SNGs for now. Pretty easy games. I'm up a little bit with them, then I get dumb and drop a chunk over at the .05/.10 no foldem tables.

I feel dumb but what are these terms you guys are using like SNG's and MTT or something like that could someone fill me in with the terms you guys use...

SNG = Sit n Go, which is usually a 1 or 2 table tournament. No start time, it starts as soon as enough people sit down to play. Once everyone sits, it goes. You will often see these referred to as STT (single table tournaments).

MTT = Multi table tournament. These are usually tourneys with large fields and pre determined start times.

SNG = sit and go tournament...once the number of people in the tournament are registered the tournament begins. Usually between 2 and 20 players

MTT = multi-table tournament, a scheduled tournament that the usually has 200+ players.

edit: lhoney is quicker then me Smile

Thank you both for your help. Smile

We should add Royal Vegas to our Online Poker Reviews on the http://www.flopturnriver.com/reviews/Online-Poker-Rooms.php page so that people can rank it.

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