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Jackpot Joy Com - Playing Bingo Review

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Jackpot JoyVisit: www.jackpotjoy.com

Site rating: 7 / 10

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First Impressions & Ease Of Sign up

Jackpot Joy are a big brand that have been around for a long time. I remember them from way back, but had not ever joined. Despite winning the eGaming Award for the Best Online Bingo Operator in September 2007, I've never really considered them a true online Bingo site due to the fact they didn't offer the traditional UK 90 ball game.

When you look at the games they offer on the homepage, the Bingo options are not listed top. Most of the online Bingo sites I've reviewed here are all about the Bingo. You arrive at somewhere like Mecca or Gala Bingo and that's the focus. Jackpot Joy has always offered more than just Bingo with range of slots and casino games, alongside the number of 75 ball Bingo rooms. They have had a lot of success with what they do, but my suspicion has always been that it wasn't with traditional UK Bingo players, but people who joined the site for the other games on offer an fell into the Bingo.

At the start of this week, they finally put right the years of neglect they've had for us UK traditionalists, and launched a full fledged 90 ball game called Full House Bingo. Finally I could put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and do a write up about their site. It's early days for the 90 ball game there, but already it seems to be the hub of activity with chat and prizes.

On arriving at the site, the choice is a little overwhelming - there's a lot of games to choose from beside the Bingo. The layout feels a bit cluttered, and feels like it could do with a good working over with the web 2.0 design stick. That said, it doesn't take too long to figure out what you need to do to find out important info where to register. The registration form is straight forward and done over a padlocked page. Once you've filled in the form, you're logged straight in and able to deposit money to go on and play the games.

Sign-Up Bonuses

Jackpot Joy offer a simple first deposit match bonus of up to £100. It's worth taking a look around the web first though, as occasionally there's a special offer available for some extra free games, but these tend to be time based and fleeting. There are no further deposit bonuses as standard, unless there's a special promotion mailed to you to take advantage of. It's not the best sign up deal out there, but it certainly far from the worst.

Ease Of Use

Despite the fairly bland and cramped looking homepage, the team at Jackpot Joy have obviously put a lot of thought and design into the gaming window. The layout and graphics are crisp and modern with a fairly fun feel to them. Outside the gaming console, it's easy to find any important info you want to check out in the terms and conditions. There's also a dedicated help section where you can search for the help you need.

The most common questions are straight on the first page of help, but there's a lot more hidden behind the search and other pages of the help. The help opens in a new window or tab, and can be accessed either in the gaming console or from the main site. There are also lots of useful pop-up tips on the gaming console to help familiarise yourself with the software. If you click on the Full House Bingo link from the Jackpot Joy homepage, it takes you straight to the right game in the console. You can navigate your way around the other games available from within the game window should you choose.

Buying tickets is also easy, and you can fund the account from either the main site or the games window. When you're buying your tickets, it's worth keeping an eye on the bonus games as well, as there are a number of buy 1 get one free style offers. The tickets auto sort and auto mark as normal. The mute button is a bit difficult to spot if you don't like the elevator music that plays on arrival, but it's not to big a problem once you spot it. The chat window is nice and big and easy to follow as well.

One small issue I had was with the free bonus games you get when you buy a BOGOF sort of offer. I have to say most people wouldn't think twice about this, but I did. Now, I always play 6 tickets - or a strip, as I would in a Bingo hall. Now, with and offer buy 2 and get 1 free, I'd want to complete the strip so I'd not get any duplicate numbers. With the bonus on offer I'd only need to buy 4 tickets to complete a strip. However, doing this doesn't complete the strip of six. The two bonus free cards come from elsewhere, which means you get duplicates in your strip of 6 which shouldn't happen. It's a small oversight that many wouldn't worry about, but it would be nice to see it fixed.

You can buy tickets in advance, which is always a nice feature for the lazy ones of us out there. The bulk buy for Full House Bingo could do with an update as it still splits it down into groups of 5 rather than groups of 6, probably another oversight from the sites 75 ball heritage. Another small issue is that there's no way of telling how many players are in the game. There's a chat room number, but not an actual players number. Once again this wouldn't bother most people, but it's an extra bit of info that some of us find useful when we decide if we want to play in a room or not.

Overall, despite these small issues, the site's interface is one of the better ones out there. I'm not covering the 75 ball games they have like The Price Is Right, but it would be good to see them use some of the features like the extra themed bonus games from that on the 90 ball game. I like the software a lot, it's crisp and is one of the best looking out there. A few bits need work, but overall, it's really easy to use and enjoyable to play.

Community Spirit

There's a good chat presence from the hosts at the site, and the chat is lively and friendly. It does get quite busy at times with over a 100 players in the Full House Bingo room. There are a number of chat rooms to join as well, so if you're playing one of the other variations of the game, you can chat in the appointed room. Unfortunately, there's nothing other than the chat rooms for the community to enjoy - it would be nice to see things like forums and player profile pages.

Prize Money

It's hard to put a finger exactly on the prize money levels as there's no player number figure given. It also depend very much on the house prize. Many of the more expensive ticket games had prizes in the £15 line, £25 two lines and £120 full house range. There were variations depending on the ticket price, but the games prizes were consistently high. There's also a progressive Jackpot available for calls under a certain number.

Security

Everything is in place as you'd expect. The sign up and the depositing pages are handled over a secure connection - the padlock appears in your browser to confirm this. As an added security your password is not emailed to you when you sign up, only your username. Further to that, if you forget your password you'll need to reset it rather than have it emailed to you. This is good as it means they are keeping your password encrypted and in one of the safest ways to thwart any hackers.

Overall Feel At JackpotJoy.co.uk

The 90 ball bingo is a welcome addition to a quality gaming site. Given the range of games available on Jackpot Joy, a traditional Bingo player might feel more comfortable at a bespoke Bingo site than here. As good as Jackpot Joy is, it doesn't feel like a great Bingo site - it lacks a lot of the culture, Bingo themed events, offers and atmosphere you'd expect at a big Bingo site.

That said, not everyone is necessarily into Bingo in the same way as many reading this site would be. So far Jackpot Joy has succeeded by capturing a non-traditional Bingo market, and for me this is set to continue. This isn't a downside, if you fancy trying out Bingo, but want a lot of choice beside the Bingo, then Jackpot Joy is the ideal venue to indulge yourself.

Personally, I'm a big fan of their offering. Whilst they need to do more to make themselves more like a proper Bingo site, what they offer beside that is strong and entertaining. It looks great, is easy to use and when you look at games like The Price Is Right Bingo it also shows their inventiveness. I'm expecting to see many more innovations like this in the future. As Jackpot Joy don't have a lot of the restraints a typical Bingo site has, it gives them the freedom to experiment and develop new ideas around the game. And for me, that's a great plus. Overall rating - 7 / 10 (Nov 7th 2006)

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Visit: www.jackpotjoy.co.uk

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