Founded in 1998, Palace of Chance used to be a reputable offshore casino. In the early 2000s, it was acquired by BTK Ltd, a United Kingdom-based company with ties to Virtual Casino Group / Ace Revenue. Back then, it still published its business information, but in 2008, any transparency went out of the window, and the casino went completely rogue.
The scammers who run Palace of Chance Casino still try to leverage the respectable beginnings of this brand by making their homepage look good and up to date. However, once you click around a bit, you’ll notice that the lobby is based on the same outdated RTG / Spinlogic software that’s used by all the other Ace Revenue sites.
Instant Play looks as if it was lifted straight out of the 90s, the casino has only 130 slots, the downloadable client is still the main mode of play even though the text on the site would have you believe otherwise, and it only goes downhill from there.
Since its change of ownership, Palace of Chance Casino has been run by a notorious group of scammers. This group typically avoids engaging in outright theft, although they have been known to refuse paying players until they complained to a third-party dispute resolution site.
The way they cheat people out of their money is by withholding payments based on their unreasonable terms of service, and when that doesn’t work, stalling for time and hoping that the victim gives up.
The Palace of Chance Casino FAQ makes it clear that you can’t any transparency from them:
This statement is also a lie because they are based in Costa Rica, and Costa Rica is a jurisdiction that allows local businesses to operate gambling sites but doesn’t issue any official licenses. Simply put, this international gambling site operates with no oversight from any kind of regulatory body, so its customers have no recourse when something goes wrong.
This allows Palace of Chance to play their games when it comes to payout denial without having to deal with any legal blowback. Outright theft is still inconvenient for them, but they can come really close.
Palace of Chance Terms of Service are designed to provide the casino with plenty of opportunities to void player winnings. Should that fail, there’s a maximum cash-out limit that means that the casino will never have to cover any jackpots:
What’s particularly nasty about these conditions is that players who don’t have a habit of reading all the fine print are likely to be completely unaware of the danger. For example, if you break game restrictions, the casino will void your winnings. If you decide to complain to a community site in such a situation, the staff is likely to side with the casino.
It’s worth emphasizing that maximum payout rules are extremely toxic because beating the casino typically involves taking a number of small losses and then getting lucky and scoring a big payout. With limits, you’re facing the same amount of risk, but your payoff is considerably lower. From a mathematical standpoint, it means that the chance to win is more expensive.
It also sucks a lot of fun out of the gambling experience. After all, even if you’re a cold and calculated gambler, it’s the high volatility and the associated potential for big wins that makes playing games like slots exciting.
The Palace of Chance customer service typically becomes unresponsive when you ask for a payout. They only react when you complain about them on a popular third-party site that settles disputes or has a high-traffic forum.
Even when they absolutely have to pay you, you’ll need to deal with ridiculous processing times:
A full week for a review and then at best one week per $2,500 means that in order to cash out $10,000, you’ll have to wait for an entire month. While this might be somewhat acceptable for budget players (although you’d still need to deal with the deposit-based limit), high-rollers and even players with medium accounts will have to wait for ages to get their money even if the casino does everything right.
As mentioned, Palace of Chance Casino is owned by Ace Revenue Group, a network of scam gambling sites. They all run on outdated RTG / Spinlogic software, have unfair terms of service, and habitually refuse to honor valid withdrawal requests.
It should be noted that this group was founded by a convicted criminal, Navtej Kohli. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison in the 1990s for his role in a mail fraud scheme seeking to defraud property owners in the United States. He launched the first Ace Revenue casinos in 2002 almost as soon as he got out.
Unfortunately, given Costa Rica’s hands-off approach to online gambling, he is unlikely to face justice for what he’s been doing to uninformed gamblers for more than 20 years.
Making a deposit to Palace of Chance puts your money in serious jeopardy, and even getting some of it back will likely require a lot of effort on your part. Plus, you won’t even get to play any good games, because their software is ancient.
In a sense, they are worse than the sites that steal player deposits outright. Thieves typically come and go; they disappear as soon as people realize what they’re doing. Scammers like Navtej Kohli, on the other hand, prey on the casino community for years, playing dumb when faced with any kind of backlash.
The only thing you can do is learn what their casinos look like and then avoid them like the plague. Instead, register for a safe gambling site that is worth your time and money. If you need help finding a reputable site, our online casino reviews are a great place to start.
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