These online gambling tournaments have been gaining in popularity over the past month. The two daily tournaments both have close to 150 participants per day each.

The first daily tournament has an entry of $5.50 ($5 for the tournament, 50 cents is the tournament fee). The winner of this tournament yesterday won $225 and the top 3 places paid more than $100! The top 18 places were paid at least $8.

The second daily slot tournament has an entry fee of $11 ($10 for tournament, $1 for tourney fee). Yesterday’s winner took down a cool $415 and the top 5 players all took home over $100! The top 12 players got paid (10th – 12th received $25).

Getting $30 Free Tournament Chip

You will need to download Cool Cat Casino’s software if you want to get the $30 Free Chip.

After you install the casino software and create an account, you will need to go to the casino Cashier and click on the Redeem Coupon tab. You will see a screen similar to the picture on the left.

Enter the Coupon Code TOURNAMENTCHIP and click the Redeem button. You will automatically have $30 in your account. This money can only be used on the slot tournaments (click on the Tournaments button under the Cashier button in the lobby)

Simply click on the tournament that you would like to play in and press the Register button. You will be asked to use money from your account; click OK to accept. If this slot tournament lobby looks familiar to you, it is because many online casino sites use the RTG tournament software.

The important pieces of information that you have to be aware of is your Credits and you Playtime. This tournament is a timed tournament and only lasts a certain amount of time. You may have between 15 minutes and 45 minutes in playtime.

Each time you make a spin, you are using up the amount of Credits that you have. Once you bet the credits, you cannot win them back. Any winnings you get for the spin will go into your Score. You will receive between 15,000 and 45,000 credits; this usually means you will want to bet 1,000 credits per minute.

Here are the basic objectives of playing in one of these two slot tournaments:

1) Don’t run out of Credits too early!
2) Don’t leave Credits unused because you ran out of Playtime!
3) Spin with the Maximum Bet allowable when you can (usually $100).
4) Hit every Bonus Round/Free Spins with the maximum bet!

It will take time to play through your Free Spins (usually about a minute or so). This will give you more spins at the max bet because it will cause you to run behind your schedule. If you have 8 minutes and 10,000 credits left, you will want to bet $100 spins until you get to 4 minutes and 4,000 credits left; that is 60 spins at $100 over a 4 minute span.

I have found that you can usually average about 15 spins per minute. If you bet every one of them at $100 and don’t receive a Bonus Round, you will run out several minutes early. Pace yourself; drop the bet down to $20 or $25 and hope you don’t hit a big payout or bonus round at the lower betting level.

If you are a current member of Online Vegas or Grand Vegas, you will still be allowed to play in the different tournaments that are offered. However, even the current players from the U.S. with an account at English Harbour or Slots Galore will be unable to access the real money section of the casino (which is necessary to get to the tournament section).

The part I don’t like is that Vegas Tech had most of the good casino game tournaments other than the slot machines. I’m going to have a hard time finding replacements for the roulette and video poker tournaments.

The State of Online Casino Tournaments for U.S. Players

Traditionally, there haven’t been too many other casino software platforms that have an extensive selection of casino game tournaments. Several of the software providers have tournaments for online slots, but that’s all. That includes several online casinos that use Real Time Gaming software.

Not all RTG casinos will offer a slot tournament for you to play in. There are only a couple of these RTG casinos that have an audience of players in these slot tournaments (more than 50 people).

The following RTG casinos have popular slot machine tournaments: Club World Casino, Rushmore Casino, Cool Cat Casino and Silver Oak Casino.

Here is what a sample online slot tournament lobby will look like at an RTG casino. The lobby above is from Cool Cat casino. All you would need to do is click on the tournament that you would like to join and press the Register button. After that, just click the Play button after the tournament has officially begun.

Here is what the RTG slot tournament will look like. You will start off with a beginning credit amount. Once you bet the credits, they are gone. The winnings from each spin will be added to your Score. You will only have a certain amount of time to make these spins. Either your credits will run out or your time will run out. Then, the tournament is over for you and your score will be final.

Other Casino Game Tournaments

BetUS still offers several non-slots tournaments that most players will be able to participate in. They offer a daily blackjack tournament with buy-ins between $5 and $20.

You will also find a $10 Video Poker tournament every Tuesday, a $10 3-card Stud Tournament every Wednesday and a $10 Roulette Tournament every Saturday.

You won’t find many people advertising for BetUS anymore, however, since they have decided to become more shady in their business practices. These tournaments are fine to play in; but I wouldn’t bet any money in their regular casino anymore.

Blackjack Tournaments

If you would like to play in a blackjack tournament, let me suggest that you play at a casino that uses the 21Gnet casino software, such as 5dimes. This software is only available in a flash version (needs to be played from the web browser).

Unlike the blackjack tournaments that are offered at English Harbour and BetUS, you are actually playing at an online blackjack table with other players. The goal of these tournaments is to advance to the next round by finishing with more chips than your opponents at the table.

There will be a certain number of hands to be played and depending upon the number of players participating a certain number of rounds to advance before you have a chance to win the blackjack tournament. You will need to employ a good blackjack tournament strategy in order to win.

Which Tournaments You Shouldn’t Play

Sometimes you will see an online casino that is offering casino game tournaments. The “tournament” may just be a race to see who can bet the most money on a casino game in a given amount of time. The prizes for these tournaments often don’t equal the risk of betting a high amount of your own money.

Both of the following bonuses are intended to be used on Slots only. This means no blackjack, roulette, video poker or any other table game can be bet on while you are playing with this bonus money.

$30 No Deposit Slots Tournament Bonus

Several online casinos offer freeroll slot tournaments from time to time; but these freerolls are usually not the best way to try to make money. Not only do thousands of people play for free, the prizes are usually bonus money that has to be wagered before you can withdraw the money from your account.

If you actually want to have a chance to win, you should play in the slot tournaments that have an entry fee. These tournaments have actual prize money. The prize money will either be a guaranteed amount or will be based off of the number of players participating. Since they are not free to enter, the number of people competing is far less and you have a better chance to be a winner.

Have you ever wanted to play in a real money slots tournament before?

At Silver Oak, you can get $30 for free to try playing in any of the slot tournaments that are offered. These are real money slot tournaments that you can play in using this no deposit bonus.

In order to receive this bonus, click here to download Silver Oak casino. You must register an account in order to receive the no deposit bonus. After you do, log into the casino and click on the Cashier button.

Once you are at the Cashier, click on the Redeem Coupon tab and enter the Coupon Code: TOURNAMENTCHIP. You will receive $30.00 in your balance which can only be used to play in Silver Oak’s slot tournaments. Simply exit the Cashier and click on the Tournaments button to enter the tournament lobby.

There is a capacity of 1000 tournament entries per tournament. For the Daily and Weekly tournaments, this won’t be a problem. But, you see that the April Freeroll is already to capacity and you won’t be able to enter until next month. Silver Oak just started offering slot tournaments last month and they already have daily tournaments with almost 100 players.

The big draw is the 7500 Month Long tournament. The buy-in is $7.50 plus an additional 75¢ tournament entry fee. First place for this month is currently looking to take home $1,875!

The best news, this isn’t a month long slot tournament in the sense that you have to play slots for the entire month to win. This is a timed event; you only have 45 minutes worth of playtime to make the most of the 45,000.00 credits that you start with.

When you make a spin, the wager is deducted from the credits and any payline hit will increase your score. You will either run out of time or credits which will leave you with your final score for the tournament.

There is no use of the Autoplay button allowed. You must click the Spin button every time during your playtime. If you need to take a break, click the Back button at the bottom right and the Time Remaining will stop until you come back and make your next spin.

Silver Oak 555% Slots Bonus

After that $30 runs out, what are you going to do? Look for the next no deposit bonus and play for free without winning any money again? The slots tournaments are nice, but you are going to have your best chance at winning a big payday when you are playing at the slot machines for real money.

Silver Oak does not offer progressive slots like some other sites, but that should not make a big difference. Progressive slots restrict your betting to $5 per spin or something similar. This casino still offer jackpots on each of their slot games. These jackpots range from a little over $2,000 (what the jackpot gets reset to when it is won) to as high as $50,000.

You can see what each jackpot is currently worth by click on the button highlighted in the upper-right corner in the screenshot above. In order to win one of these jackpots, you must match 5 of the highest ranked icon across a payline.

Want to increase your odds of hitting a big payline? Take a look at the 555% initial deposit slots bonus that you can claim (click on banner below to claim bonus):

Deposit $2,000 and you can receive the maximum bonus of $11,100. This way you will have a truly massive bankroll to try and hit the big one! You can also choose to deposit as little as $50 and you will still get $277.50 extra to play with.

Make sure you use the Coupon Code SOAK555 when you make your deposit at Silver Oak’s Cashier. This is a limited time bonus that can only be claimed one time. You must wager the amount of your deposit and bonus money combined at least 30 times before you can request a withdrawal.

The bonus money you receive will go into a Bonus Money account. When you make a spin, the wager will be taken from the Bonus Money account. If you win on the bet, the amount you wagered will be returned to the Bonus account and the winnings will be transferred to your real money account.

If you choose to make a withdrawal from your account, the Bonus Money account will reset to $0.00. There is no maximum withdrawal amount in correlation with this bonus.

In this case, Online Vegas is celebrating St Patrick’s Day by hosting a week-long freeroll slot tournament.

Would you like to participate in this free slot tournament? It’s easy and the tournament is completely free to enter. Simply download and install Online Vegas’ casino software (or click here if you would rather play the no download flash version). Then, you need to register a real account and sign into Online Vegas.

In order to participate in the free slot tournament, you need to log in using the Play for Real Money option. Then you will need to select the Tournaments option in the bottom left portion of the screen.

Then, you need to select the Free Rolls tab at the top of the screen. The St Patrick’s Day Freeroll will be your only option availble. Click on the tournament to select it and press the Register button at the bottom right. You will be asked if you want to enter, click OK.

You will be able to enter the tournament starting tomorrow, March 17 at 10:30AM ET. The tournament lasts until next Friday, March 25 at 10:25PM.

Tournament Information

You can win part of the $25,000 in the prize pool. Get 1st place and win $1000! The top 11 places will all win over $100 and prizes get paid down to $1 for the person who finished is 5000th place! How many people are already signed up? Just under 20,000 people have already signed up for this freeroll slot tournament.

When you start the tournament, you have to be careful that you don’t bust out right away. They only give you $15 in credits with this free play, so they don’t make it easy. If you bust out, you can rebuy into the tournament for $4.99 and receive an additional balance of $150 in credits.

The game played is called Luck of the Irish. It is a 3 reel bonus slots game.

You only get one payline in this game, right through the middle of the 3 reels. The payout chart is shown above the reels. You can bet 1, 2 or 3 credits per spin. The credits shown in Total Credits is based upon what coin value you are betting at. There are coin values of 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, $5 and $10.

If you want a chance to win the bonus round, you must bet 3 credits (or press the Play Max button. This will turn the Pot of Gold icon into a wild symbol. In order to reach the bonus round, you must get the bonus leprechaun on the payline. This bonus symbol is only on the third reel.

They are offering a $25K freeroll that starts tonight, Valentine’s Day, at 10:30PM ET. So after you’ve taken your sweetheart out to dinner, you can have a little fun playing a Valentines themed game like Cupid’s Arrow.

How does the free slot tournament work?

Yes, this tournament is actually free to enter. All you have to do is download Grand Vegas, install the software and register for a real account. Then, go to the Tournaments tab and select the tournament named Valentines Day Week Long $25000.

Once you have selected the tournaments, press the Register button. You will then see the following popup asking you if you would like to register. You do not need to make a deposit in order to register and play in this freeroll slots tournament.

This tournament starts tonight at 10:30PM ET and will end on Friday night, February 18th, at 10:30PM ET.

Everybody will start with a $75 balance to play the slot game Cupid’s Arrow. The objective of the slot tournament is to get the highest total balance when the tournament ends on Friday night.

The winner will receive $1000 in bonus money and players in the top 11 will receive at least $100. There will also be cash prizes of $50, $30, and all the way down to $1 for finishing places.

What happens if I lose all of the balance?

You can rebuy back into the tournament for $5.75 for which you will receive an additional balance of $275. If you want to play slot tournaments for money, you should play in the real money slot tournaments. These tournaments have higher prizes to the winners and few people playing since you have to pay to register for the tournament.

You will see as many as 10 times the players on the freeroll tournaments and the top players at the end usually have between $50,000 and $100,000.

How do you get a total that high? Very carefully at first. In order to get to $1000 in your balance, you must be very patient. Occasionally you have to switch up your bets and hope for a big payout. The bonus round in this game can help you rack up big money quickly. Once you reach a certain betting level, you can hit on monumental payline wins.

Update – 4:20PM ET

Grand Vegas’ sister site Online Vegas is hosting this Valentines Day freeroll slot tournament as well. There are a couple of great one-day promotions that you should check out like the $25 No Deposit bonus. Check out FreeUSslotTournaments.com for more info.