Crazy Vegas's Festive Frenzy slot tournament of December 2014
This article was written in 2014 and we keep it as a record of how the online casinos of that time presented their games and promotions. The operators, offers and figures it mentions may no longer exist or may have changed, and nothing on this page is a current offer. 18+.
In December 2014 Crazy Vegas, a casino of the Vegas Partner Lounge group which is not among the operators we work with today, announced "Festive Frenzy", a slot tournament hosted on Santa's Wild Ride (a Christmas title of Microgaming). Registration had opened on 17 November, and the casino presented the contest as Santa "roaring into town a little bit earlier".
What the tournament was
It was not a "freeroll". It ran from Monday 1 December 2014 (00:00 GMT) to Thursday 1 January 2015 (21:00 GMT), a whole month in which the entrants spun the same slot and climbed a "leaderboard" (the ranking by score), and the entry cost €10, a "rebuy" (a new entry after the first) €20, each of which allowed five continues at €10 apiece.
A player who entered, bought back in once and used the five continues had spent €80 before the clock ran out! A pool of €125,000 split among one hundred prizes, of which the first took €10,000, left an average of about €1,160 to the other ninety-nine, and the release did not publish the table, which decided whether the hundredth place covered the entry.
With a month of play and rebuys without a stated limit, the pool was fed by the entries themselves, as in the poker tournaments from which the formula was borrowed. Whether the casino guaranteed the €125,000 is not said in the text, so that the first prize was the only certain figure of the announcement.
Santa's Wild Ride was a slot of Microgaming in which three or more "scatter" symbols (those that pay wherever they land) triggered 25 "free spins" with every win doubled, plus the choice of one of three wild features, which the release called amazing without describing them. In a tournament the features matter less than the pace, since the score is the sum of the wins over a fixed number of spins or a fixed time.
Harry von Schlussel, presented as casino manager and spokesperson, said that the casino was "ecstatic" to announce the tournament "just in time for the festive season", promising the players a wild time and plenty of chances to win. The quote is of the kind these texts always carried (an adjective, a season, a promise), and it said nothing about the odds of finishing in the top hundred.
The casino and its offers at the time
Crazy Vegas claimed more than 650 games of Microgaming (whose games business has been Games Global since 2021-2022), the eCOGRA certificate and the "128-bit" encryption, and offered new players a "FreePlay" of 3,000 credits for the first sixty minutes or a "3-tier" deposit bonus of €500 over the first three deposits. The tiers were 100 per cent up to €150, 200 per cent up to €100 and 50 per cent up to €250.
A player who wanted the whole €500 had to deposit €150, €50 and €500, that is €700 of his own money, and the "wagering" (the volume of bets required before a withdrawal) was in terms which nobody can read today. The middle tier, capped at €100, gave a hundred euro to anyone who deposited fifty or more, a structure which our page on no deposit casinos explains.
The round-the-clock support by e-mail, toll-free number and live chat, the multilingual staff and the strict protocols of the banking page were claims that we report as the casino made them, since we never tested Crazy Vegas. The casino belonged to Vegas Partner Lounge (VPL), the group of Golden Riviera, Casino-Mate, Maple Casino, 777 Dragon and River Nile.
Seen from 2026
Casino-Mate, Crazy Vegas and Golden Riviera were Microgaming casinos of the Vegas Partner Lounge group, and none of them is among the operators we work with today; Festive Frenzy, the FreePlay hour, the 3-tier bonus and the figures above no longer exist, and Microgaming's games are published by Games Global. The links on this page lead to Platinum Play, a casino of the same family which is still listed on this site.
Slot tournaments have become a fixture of the trade since then, with the same mechanics (a leaderboard, a paid or free entry, rebuys), and the arithmetic that must be done before you enter is the one above: the cost of a full participation against the prize of the last paid place. Where free entries exist today, our free spins page says what they are worth.
The €25,000 freeroll on Gold Factory that followed in January 2015 is told on this site; our news archive keeps the other announcements of those years, where you will find them in the tone of the time. A tournament, like a bonus, is worth its terms.
By the Online-Casinos.ws editorial team · Online since 2002 · Last updated: 9 October 2026