Slotland Review

Bonuses

It's clear from their web site that Slotland targets bonus players. Their terms are pretty good. They also make it convenient to play, allowing US players and taking Bitcoin deposits. I was worried I couldn’t take advantage of their "welcome" bonus because I had a very old account there, perhaps dating back to the 90’s. However, they didn’t accept my login, so I assume forgot about me. So, I set up a new account in early November 2022, which this review is based on.

The web site mentions several bonuses. I decided to take advantage of the Welcome bonus. The basic terms were a 100% matching bonus, maximum deposit of $100, I could play any game, and 25x playthrough requirement. Here are how much play counts towards the wagering requirement on various games:

Slots:  100%
Video poker:  20%
Keno:  50%
Roulette (which they don’t offer):  1%

I made a Bitcoin deposit of $100, which cleared in under a minute and my bonus was immediately in my account.

At first, most of the games were greyed out.  It would seem I was only allowed to play the slots, Aces and Eights video poker and keno. I tested the waters with an arbitrary slot game, betting small.  After a little while I went back to the lobby to switch to another game and suddenly every game was available to me.  What I think was going on is the player wagers his own money first, where there are restrictions on what you can play. After clearing 1x playthrough, they open up the other games. This rule I was not aware of and still can’t find it in their terms and conditions. However, at the time, I wasn’t mad as I now had the freedom to examine and play the other games. Perhaps it was a glitch that I was restricted in my first $100 of wagering. 

Next, I had a look at video poker. The following is a list of their games, pay tables, and RTP, which stands for Return to Player (assuming optimal strategy).

Note the 99.07% return on Deuces & Joker Wild.  A nice exception to their other games, which get as low as 96.25%. I suspect they don’t realize this pay table is as good as it is (please don’t tell them).

Their video-poker offers an auto-hold feature, which is absolutely awful. For example, the following screenshot shows the auto-hold feature recommend holding three to a flush.  The expected value of holding the two eights is 0.551630.  Meanwhile, holding the three hearts, as they suggest, is 0.283688. It makes my eyes hurt to look at what their auto-hold recommends.

Despite their terrible auto-hold advice, I immediately proceeded to play Deuces & Joker Wild. They kindly also offer a double or nothing feature for wins greater than 1 for 1. The double up feature is a great way to build up a balance, or bust out trying. This is a great piece of advice that all bonus players should take under advisement. It was my plan to build up my balance to $500 or bust out trying.  To be honest, with a 25x wagering requirement, I should have set my winning goal even higher. However, I wanted to report on making a cash out for this review, so quit doubling when I doubled my way up to about $500. 

As mentioned earlier, video poker wagering counts only 20% towards the wagering requirement.  So, to withdraw I would have had to wager $100 * 25 * 5 = $12,500. That would have taken too long, especially because I don’t know that strategy for Deuces & Joker well and had to run many hands through my video poker hand analyzer while I was playing.  

So, I decided to switch over to slots to do my required play. I made minimum bets of $0.60 and $1.20 on the games Alice in Halloweenland and Airmail.  After betting through $460.20, my balance was down $81.70.  My return on those bets was only 82.2%.  At this rate, I would go bust before completing the play requirement.

After getting killed in slots, I had a look at their keno game, despite wagers only counting 50% towards the wagering requirement.  Here were the pay tables and RTP (Return to Player) I found at the time I played for this review in early November, 2022.

The highest return was on the pick-13 at 94.90%.

In my limited play the slots returned only 82.2%, so it seemed like an easy decision to switch to keno, even if I did have to play twice as much.  By the way, there was, unfortunately, no double-up feature in slots or keno.  At the time I did the math on keno, I still had $2000 in playthrough to do, based on playing slots.  Playing keno, I would have to bet through $4,000.  My expected loss on that play would be $2,000 * 2 * (1-94.9%) = $204.  I still had $330, so I could expect to at least finish at a small profit.

So, I set the auto-play feature on made 100 $1 bets at a time.  After going through this 40 times, I was a little better than expectations at a balance of $140.

By the way, the system makes it very easy to track the required play you need to do. If you click on withdrawal, it tells you how much more play you have to complete, per the bonus rules. After I did my play, I was then immediately able to make a withdrawal – or at least ask for one.

A day after submitting my withdrawal, I was told via the chat feature with customer support my request was moved to another queue to be approved. After waiting in that second queue for a day, an Email was sent asking me to send a photo of myself holding my ID, which I immediately provided. I was told about an hour later my withdrawal was approved and I was put in a third queue for payment. My withdrawal came back to my Bitcoin wallet about a day after that. So, it took a little over three days for my withdrawal to be received on my end, which isn’t bad for a new player.

In conclusion, I would be happy to play at Slotland again. They had nine more welcome bonuses I could do, but the second one would be for only a 50% bonus. They offered other bonuses too, but they seemed to be slots only. Based on my limited experience, their slots are pretty tight, so I think I will stick to bonuses where keno is allowed. Next time, I will shoot for a really high target, like 10x my deposit + bonus, before fussing with the play-through requirement.

Bottom line is I give Slotland high marks for the value of bonuses and customer support. I give them lower marks for game variety, quality, and value. In other words, I think this is a good casino for bonus players, but if you’re looking for the hottest and best games, I think you’ll find them about 15 years behind the times.

Piece takes a detailed at the best way to play these bonuses here.