The Grand Dominican has been around a while. I was planning to review this casino quite some time ago, but they had some trouble with their software provider and were temporarily out of service. At the time I shrugged and moved on to other things but they managed a come-back and have been plugging along ever since.
The software supplier Grand Dominican (GD) had trouble with was the now-infamous Handa-Lopez. If you’ve been around the online gambling scene a while you’ll know that, after years of legal troubles, the Handa-Lopez (H-L) offices in San Diego, California were raided in 1999, records and equipment were seized, and the whole chain of US-based H-L casinos were pulled off the web. The indictment by a Federal grand jury in US District Court of San Jose on June 14, 2000 of senior H-L execs David R. Brown and Raymond L. Clark on charges of conspiracy and conducting an illegal gambling business effectively ended H-L’s operation.
And what of Grand Dominican Casino ligaz888 ? Fortunately they were not based in the US and were relatively untouched by the police actions in California. As spokesperson for GD’s current owner, TecnologiaJPR of the Dominican Republic, Barry Wilson says “the software was developed by Handa-Lopez, but the relationship ended there.” In other words, they retained their software license and re-opened the doors, with or without Handa-Lopez.
The upside is that GD offers some decent bonuses. If you deposit at least $50 they’ll give you a $25 bonus. And if you forgo their HTML no-download games for the download package, they’ll give you another $25. Fair enough. The downside is that GD is still using the same basic H-L package. The copyright on the download package is dated 1997, and I’m sorry to say that the old H-L software is looking a little dated. Aside from the fact that there is no Play for Free option –an oversight that I usually find unforgivable– the games are pretty dull compared to more contemporary offerings. The graphics are flat, the multi-media is old and the user interface isn’t particularly friendly.
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But casinos aren’t all glitter and sound right? If a game pays well, who cares what it looks like? Well, in my opinion Grand Dominican is not exactly a fountain of generosity, starting bonuses aside. After being forced to deposit in order to play their games, I started with Blackjack and played about 20 hands at the minimum $5 bet per hand, winning less than 1/3 while carefully playing optimal strategy. I’m well aware that this is a puny sampling, statistically speaking, but I wasn’t having much fun with the game and I wasn’t winning which spells “time to move on” for me.
Next stop: Video Poker. GD’s Jacks or Better Video Poker is a 8/5, $1 game with no Bonus for Max Bet and no Jackpot. Again, playing optimal strategy I was throwing away money fast and getting dangerously close to busting out. Fortunately my bonus chips came through –in less than the advertised 24 hours– so I figured I’d move on and try something else.
GD Slots are $1 minimum, no Bonus for Max Bet and my payback on 30 odd pulls was terrible. Okay, so Roulette? It’s American Roulette, not my favorite, and by this time I didn’t have the heart to throw much more money away. After a few fruitless spins where the house minimum on any given bet is $2 I’d had enough.
In closing I suppose it’s worth saying that I admire the Grand Dominican people for weathering their troubles with Handa-Lopez and plugging on. With over a dozen casinos now in their little family they deserve some kind of award for getting so much mileage out of the old H-L software. Be that as it may, I was happy to cash out at a slight loss and call it a day.
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