Review

The Games

There are single games where you can play against one opponent and multiple player games with up to 4 or 5 opponents. There are also large tournaments with multiple winners that allow you to win more often. There are many games to choose from and include puzzles, card games, action games, strategy games, sports and word games. All games hosted by king.com are based on the player skill as the deciding factor to pick the winner. The site does not include games of chance or casino games where only luck will allow you to win, rather it's your own skill at the game you are playing that will allow you to win the cash staked by other players into the player prize fund. There are no poker games on this site although there are skill card games based on the rules of poker. My favourite games are the word games such as QuizQueen and Keyword.

QuizQueen is a game of 2-5 players that try to answer 10 multiple choice questions as fast as possible. For each question there are 4 possible answers to choose from. The aim is to pick the right answer for each question and do it faster than your opponents to set the best score and win. You have one lifeline that you can use to reduce the alternatives to two instead of four.

Keyword is a word puzzle game where you have to compose the 3 best scoring words you can find in a game board of 25 letter tiles placed as a square of 5 by 5 letter tiles. You have limited time to spell your words and as you submit your words you will progress to the next round and get a new tile lay-up. You only have 5 minutes in total to play through all five rounds. By spelling long words in each of the 5 rounds you may qualify for the bonus round and get a chance to maximize your score.

Skill levels

The best player in a specific tournament will tend to have more chance of winning, but King.com uses a system to match you against opponents of your own skill, which allow you to win even though you are not the best-rated player in the whole site. Each player will therefore have a particular skill level allocated for each game. If you skill level goes up for a particular game you will only play against opponents who have reached a similar level of skill.



Web Site Design and Graphics

The site is well designed and not overcrowded with too much information. It’s quite easy to find your way around. The games use flash player and are simple without the need for elaborate animations. However, they do ‘crash’ or get stuck from time to time. This has happened to me a lot whilst playing QuizQueen and is the fault of their system and not my computer. I know this because you can chat with other players who have the same problem. If funds have been used and a game crashes you will get the funds returned to your account and email notification will be sent to you every time this happens.
 

Membership

You have to register to become a member and you can practice with practice money. This will allow you to compete in Practice tournaments against other Practice players. Once you register you can play for free on any of the games but once you have won five times in succession on any particular game you can no longer play in it unless you become a gold member. Becoming a Gold player means you have to deposit money. You can become a Gold player straight away but I would recommend you first having a practice at the games that interest you the most.



Playing for money

The cost to play a game starts from 35p or you can pay 70p or £1.40. Winnings will vary depending on how many other players are in the game. In small games however, you don’t win much. For example with 2 players at 35p you will only win 52p. In a 35p game with 5 players you will win 85p if you win 46p if you come second. This means that the site rakes in 25% which I think is a rip off. A good poker site will only rake in 10%.



Depositing Cash

You can deposit cash by credit card, paypal, BT click&buy, postal cheque or bank transfer. According to King.com their payment systems are industry strength, built using the latest encryption techniques and safety measures to guarantee transaction security. They guarantees that every transaction you make at King.com will be 100% safe. King.com uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption connections for all passwords and financial information. Anytime you enter sensitive information it will always be sent to the King.com servers using encryption. For encryption of data they use digital certificates issued by a third party, Verisign, which can be verified by clicking the Verisign logo on the account pages.



Bonus and Rewards and Withdrawals

When you become a Gold member and deposit cash you receive a bonus. The bonus will vary depending on how much you deposit. You also get a £5 reward once you have won your first 5 practice games in succession. For example I deposited £20 and received a £10 bonus plus a £5 reward. However, and this an important ‘however’, you will never be able to withdraw the £10 bonus nor the £5 reward no matter how much you win and lose. This is a bit of a con in my opinion. Furthermore, every time you make a withdrawal they have the bloody cheek to charge you £1 and it can take up to 14 days to withdraw your money.