If you’re expecting a cookie-cutter type offering from the MGM crew when they take their casinos online, you’ll be disappointed. But, if you’re hoping that they’re online offering is worthy of carrying the prestigious names of the MGM family of land-based casinos, you’ll be pleased with the progress so far. Enter WagerWorks.com as Exhibit A of that progress.
The WagerWorks.com site is still in the development phase, but the current selection of games that you’ll find here are enjoyable enough to spend a lengthy session each time you feel like playing. Of course, you won’t be wagering any of your hard-earned dough at these MGM casino games, at least not yet anyway. The theory goes that MGM is developing the site to ensure their readiness should online gaming become a legal new source of income in the future.
Politics aside, MGM’s web site developers are playing hardball with the rest of the online competition. If you were to slap the name “XYZonlinecasino” onto the WagerWorks.com web site, you’d still be hard pressed to find comparable games anywhere on the Web. Truth is, the eight games ready for play right now are unique to the WagerWorks.com site. The games are also in a fairly rare format, Macromedia Shockwave, so play within your browser is invariably speedy. The “Shockwave Action Games” as they’re called on the site are provided by Silicon Gaming, which provides more insight on why the games are not found in many other incarnations.
WagerWorks.com also enables you to choose at which MGM family of casinos you’d like to play. For now, the games are the same for each property, but it doesn’t appear that it will stay that way; perhaps games distinctive of each venue will be available in the Singapore Online Casino future. Whether your Vegas favorite is the adventurous Treasure Island, the luxurious Bellagio, the intriguing Mirage, the enchanting Beau Rivage, the exciting New York, New York or the massive MGM Grand, you’ll enjoy a site that makes it easy to make reservations, check on shows, or enter sweepstakes all in one convenient online location.
Instead of winning cash at WagerWorks.com, you win points that can be redeemed for suite upgrades, free buffets, Vegas vacation packages and show tickets. From what I could tell (it’s not listed on the site, at least anywhere where I could find it), you get one point for each game played on the site. A free buffet at the MGM Grand was 1,500 points and a vacation package for MGM Grand was 50,000 points.
But, believe me when I say that piling up points really doesn’t take that long when you’re playing fun games with such ease. The Top Hat 21 game has a magic wand waving over a top hat as your dealer. The five-line slot Banana Rama has a cool bonus round and the game graphics are just the right amount of action to keep your eyes busy, but not overwhelm your game. The Arabian Riches slot, meanwhile, proves a smooth concoction of reel movement and audibles, unlike any I’ve seen to date. The keno game didn’t really grab my fancy too much, but that could be because keno tends to bore me anyway. The play was still first rate though, and if I did like keno, I’d play it for free here in a heartbeat.
My personal favorites to play on the site were most definitely the 10X draw poker and the three-reel, multi-spin slot called 3-Reel Hold Up. The 10X draw poker is just that, you get to play 10 hands at a time. With the “Turbo” feature indicated, each draw takes about a second and a half. Without it, it might take two seconds tops. When you win on this game, you win big. The 3-Reel Hold Up has a great theme and a pretty cool feature, where you can hold one or two of the reels and spin again to get the most payback. I also spent a bit of time with the Phantom Belle poker game, which has another excellent theme and graphics to back it up.
So, while the jury may be out on the future of land-based casinos taking bets over the Internet, this judge is happy to play for fun at WagerWorks.com. I’ll just hone my skills for the real MGM test–the Vegas playground. But I’ll rest assured that my strategy is just a little more refined now from the hours of my life, long since spent, playing online casino games at WagerWorks.com.
