Amaya Gaming Industries

Amaya Gaming, also known as Amaya Gaming Group, is a Montreal-based gambling business with products in the online and land-based markets. Amaya is a conglomerate of sorts, the world's largest publicly-traded gambling company. It's publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and has raced to the front of the gambling industry thanks to a $4.9 billion purchase of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker in 2014. Amaya Gaming maintains headquarters in Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Amaya Gaming produces products and services for online and land-based casino, poker, sportsbook, as well as lottery and slot machine software. It also offers back-end services for all of the above. Amaya provides software to some of the world's largest online gambling providers and casinos. But the company also has deals to produce games for other industry-leading designers like Cryptologic and Aristocrat. They've struck licensing deals with major brands, like DC Comics, Activision, Paramount, and Capcom.

Number of Games

25 50 All

Captain Nemo

Cash Grab

Forrest Gump

Jade Idol

Rags to Riches

Rickety Cricket

Spin 'N Win

Superman: Last Son of Krypton

Vampires VS Werewolves

Treasure Island

Jenga

Amaya Gaming Management

Mr. David Baazov is the helmsman of Amaya Gaming, acting as Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO. He's acted as both President and Chief Executive of the company since 2006, and is considered responsible for running the company's day-to-day affairs while also working out a plan to implement his plan to maximize the company's market share. Mr. Baazov was one of the founders of the company in the mid-2000's, and led Amaya onto a public listing on the TSX in 2013, and through the steps that led to the acquisition of PokerStars and StarsDraft. Basically, without Baazov, Amaya never moves into the consumer technology business, which means Amaya never becomes the world's largest publicly-traded online gambling business.

Mr. Baazov's many awards include Ernst & Young's 2013 Québec EY Entrepreneur of the Year, TSX Venture Tech Executive of the Year for 2012, and the TSX Tech Executive of the Year in both 2013 and 2014. He earned his stripes in the online gambling business by working as a marketing executive and Vice President of Sales for Vortek Systems Inc., a popular supplier and distributor of computer hardware and peripheral accessories.

Mr. Daniel Sebag joined Amaya in July 2007. He was brought in by CEO David Baazov personally to handle the difficult financial side of expanding a small company into a global leader. Mr. Sebag has since acquired other important roles with the company, serving as a director and as the Treasurer of the whole operation.

Mr. Sebag is a Certified Accountant, specializing in cost management, tax accounting, and financial reporting systems management. He's the head of Amaya Gaming Group's financial reporting and all treasurer functions. Mr. Sebag joined the team directly from the world of academia, having served as a faculty lecturer at McGill University between 1999 and 2007. In that position, he ran countless executive seminars in accounting and international finance as director of McGill's International Executive Institute. During his time as a professor, Mr. Sebag also served as an independent financial, accounting, and IT consultant to several multinational companies, such as Ericsson, AT&T, and Air Liquide.

Mr. Marlon Goldstein is the most recent addition to the company's executive staff, having joined the Amaya team in January of 2014. Before serving in his current position, he was acting principal shareholder in the corporate and securities practice at the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, where he also practiced as a lawyer for more than a decade. Mr. Goldstein's private practice was focused on major corporate and private securities matters, with an emphasis in mergers and acquisitions and large financial transactions. No wonder Amaya brought him in just months before purchasing PokerStars for nearly $5 billion.

Mr. Goldstein learned the online gambling business while serving as co-chair of his law firm's Gaming Practice, which was a special subset of lawyers trained to represent casino owners, operators, and developers. He worked closely with gaming manufacturers and designers from all over the world, which is where he met the heads of Amaya Gaming. His extensive experience working with Native American tribal governments as well as state and federal authorities have served him well in his capacity as general counsel for Amaya, as the company expands its reach into new and emerging markets.

Mr. Harlan Goodson serves as a director and as the chair of Amaya's Audit Committee. Mr. Goodson comes to Amaya with a background in government regulation and control, having served most famously as Director of California's Division of Gambling Control from 1999 to 2003. During that time, Mr. Goodson oversaw the implementation of California's new Tribal-State Class III gaming rules, which led to an explosion in legal card- and game rooms.

Mr. Goodson would eventually found his own private practice, The Law Office of Harlan W. Goodson, in Sacramento, California. During that time, he also worked with the law firm of Holland and Knight, LLP, leading that firms moves into the gaming law, regulation, and governmental affairs markets. Mr. Goodson is listed in the Who's Who in American Law, and he was the inaugural recipient of the International Masters of Gaming Law Regulator of the Year award in 2001.

Mr. Goodson's background in gaming started during his time as a California State Senator. He cut his political teeth as a full-time legislative consultant for Senator Bill Lockyer between 1994 and 1999. It was while serving in that role that Mr. Goodson drafted early legislation in gaming law. He also serves as an adjunct law professor (focused on the legislative process and statutory interpretation) at John F. Kennedy University School of Law. He often speaks before panels on the subjects of gaming law, particularly tribal gaming law and deregulation.

Amaya Gaming Slot Machines

Amaya Gaming currently offers 137 different slot titles as part of their casino game library. Most of these games have been translated into both traditional desktop and mobile formats. We've listed a dozen of the designers' most popular slot games below, along with a short review. We've gone out of our way to choose a variety of titles that show of all the best features of Amaya slots.

Casinomeister is five reel and thirty pay line slot game. It features wild symbols, scatters, a free spins round, random multipliers, and a top prize of 10,000 coins. The theme is unique – the game takes its inspiration from the website of the same name, famous for maintaining lists of approved and blacklisted casino websites.

The symbols and other images come in two flavors – the good guys and the bad guys. The rogue casinos are represented here by pigs, while the good guys take on the image of Casinomeister's Michael Shackelford. If you look closely, you'll see that the rogue casino pigs are dressed in mock-ups of Nazi Gestapo uniforms.

The game's main bonus feature is the Casinomeister Bonus, triggered by landing three or more Vortran symbols anywhere on the reels with a max wager. This round hands out piles of free spins, all of which can be retriggered infinitely. Better yet, all payouts during this round are tripled.

Pompeii is one of Amaya Gaming's releases based on a popular Aristocrat land-based slot. It's really popular in land-based casinos, because of the large number of big wins in the base pay table, the multiple bonus rounds, and the cool interactive effects. The theme, of course, is the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius. After the city is wiped off the map by hot lava, your goal is to hunt for the lost treasures of the city that remain buried.

To that end, the game's symbols all relate to the ancient Roman Empire, with things like armor, helmets, a chariot, a coin, a sword, and the familiar playing card slot symbols. It's hard to forget the volcanic theme of the game, since every big hit or bonus feature is combined with a powerful screen-shaking effect, like an aftershock.

This five reel and 243 Ways game is unique for Amaya Gaming, in part because of the association with Aristocrat. Credits can be set to multiple values, between $0.25 and $125. The top prize is worth 12,500 coins, and is only available for a max bet plus the appearance of five scatter Amulet symbols. Because it's an Aristocrat game, it has a slightly higher payout than American slots players may be used to, though it's unlikely that most slot players will notice a big difference in the short-term.

Wild Panda is another popular land-based Aristocrat game that Amaya has been contracted to produce for the online market. China's giant pandas are native to a small portion of the center of the country, among the thick bamboo trees of a million year-old forest.

Wild Panda is a five reel video slot with 100 pay lines. It's unusual for Amaya to release a game with so many available lines – the trade-off is that you can wager as little as $0.01 per line and still place a max bet. Of course, the game also accepts wagers of up to $1 per line, for a total max bet range of $1 to $100. The game is popular for its frequent rewarding of free spins and multiple wild symbols which lead to more frequent hits.

In this game, the Wild Panda himself is the main character. This slot uses a variety of symbols, including the traditional playing card values from Ace to 10. These symbols are unique, though, in that they each carry a letter in the corner. If you can spell out the word "PANDA" across the reels with the playing card symbols, you enter a lucrative free spins round. Other symbols include a Chinese coin, an umbrella, a temple, and a lotus flower. The free spins round is the game's most valuable bonus, because it also hands out instant credit prizes and multipliers. If you spin five Wild Panda symbols during a free spins round, you win a 2,000 credit prize instantly, as well as additional free spins.

Dad's Day In is a unique Amaya Gaming slot that's dedicated to the difficulty of babysitting as a father. Okay, so it's a little bit sexist, but it shows that Amaya is interested in producing unique content. This is a five reel and thirty pay line slot. Like all of Amaya's popular video slots, Dad's Day In includes wilds and scatter symbols, as well as a Baby bonus game and several decent fixed jackpots.

The game is set in the 1950s, and puts you in the role of a panic-stricken father stuck home alone with a crying baby. The game takes place as you try to feed, change, and clothe the baby – and don't forget to wash the dishes and walk the dog. The game is one of Amaya's best-looking slots, with a cool design that makes it look like you're playing inside an old-fashioned TV set. The symbols are all housewife-themed images, like flower pots, curtains, and lamps, as well as some baby props, like a bottle and a pacifier.

The Baby bonus game is a classic pick'em game where the panicked father has to look for his missing baby – don't worry, the kid just crawled under one of a dozen piles of laundry. Your choice leads to a random instant credit prize.

Forrest Gump is a video slot produced in conjunction with Paramount. Amaya has chosen a truly odd subject for a slot game – usually, we think of action and superhero movies as ideal fits for a slot machine translation. But if you think about it, Forrest Gump makes a lot of sense as a slot. It's a highly-visual movie with lots of special effects and memorable moments. Amaya worked with Cryptologic to produce a progressive slot with a unique theme, and they certainly pulled it off.

This is a typical five reel and twenty-five pay line game designed in imitation of Cryptologic's most popular progressive slots. The slot features voice acting of Tom Hanks, as well as scenes and stills from the actual movie. The game's symbols are all pulled directly from the film – a football, a set of ping-pong paddles, an army helmet, a peace sign, and of course a box of chocolates. The movie's poster icon is the game's wild symbol, substituting for all other symbols and multiplying your win randomly by as much as 4x.

DC Comics never seems to disappoint. The Justice League video slots are some of the most exciting ones to play. All the heroes we grew up reading about in the comics have made their way to these unique, action-packed slot games. What heroes can you expect to see? Well, there's the extremely popular Batman, Superman and Wonder Women all the way to the less famous heroes like Aquaman, Cyborg and Green Lantern.

When you see the more popular super heroes, expect to see huge payouts as each one of them come with a multiplier that will be applied to any winnings made from that spin. The Daily Planet Newspaper serves as the game's scatter piece and wilds come in all shapes and sizes. All DC Comics fans should try these slots out, as they certainly won't find themselves disappointed.

The theme of Call of the Coliseum is the ancient Roman games. It's a typical Amaya video slot, meaning it has five reels and twenty-five pay lines. The Colosseum was used in ancient Rome to stage wild animal hunts, fights between gladiators, and exciting spectacles like public executions and trials. Historians estimate that 500,000 people died and were buried in and around the building.

The reel symbols include familiar clichés having to do with Rome – wild animals, shields, spears, swords, helmets, coins, and piles of grapes. The symbol to pay close attention to is the Emperor himself. He's the wild symbol, and not only does he replace symbols to form winning combos, he can randomly multiply your win by up to 5x.

Conan the Barbarian is a retro video game themed slot produced by Amaya Gaming under an exclusive license with Capcom. Conan the Barbarian is a five reel and twenty-five pay line video slot designed in close imitation of the massively-popular arcade and console fighting game. The characters in the game are rendered to look almost exactly like the characters from the popular arcade series.

This game includes a number of popular online slot features – wilds, scatters, and free spins – but the real focus is on the Choose Your Street Fighter feature, which really makes this into five different games. Just like in the arcade game, you take your pick from a group of fighters before you start – you can pick from Ryu, Ken, Sagat, Guile, and Chun Li. Your character choice becomes the game's wild symbol for your entire session.

You should always place a max bet on Amaya Gaming's licensed titles. On Conan the Barbarian, you have to activate all twenty-five pay lines if you want access to the most lucrative bonuses. Since the game accepts wagers as low as $0.01 or as high as $20 each, the total range of available max wagers is between $0.25 and $500 each spin.

Amaya Gaming is not the first online or land-based game designer to create a Batman slot. Know that this version of the game is the DC Comics' traditional Batman. That means plenty of Gotham City action spread across five reels and fifty pay lines. Batman is by far the most popular of DC Comics superheroes, and Amaya worked out a special license with DC to produce a series of Batman video slots, of which only one exists so far.

The setting for this game is perfect – a dark and stormy night in Gotham City, as DC's classic version of Batman stalks criminals. All the symbols and characters are rendered in classic DC style, and while the bonuses and other features are all what you'd expect from an Amaya Gaming release, there's nothing particularly impressive about this game. We'd love to see a DC title from Amaya with a progressive top prize. Without it, this licensed game is all style and no substance.

The entirety of Amaya's Taxi video slot takes place through the windshield of a working taxi cab, putting you in the driver's seat. This is a five reel game with twenty-five fixed-value pay lines. Taxi is stuffed with features, like a random multiplier system, a multiplying scatter bonus, and a Free Ride Bonus game.

Okay, so it's a strange theme for a video slot – but it makes a sort of sense if you think about it. Driving a taxi is an incredibly visual job. Plus, the trappings of the cab-driver lifestyle make for perfect accessories for a slot game. The sound and video effects are all related to the sounds of a cab, and they're realistic enough that you shouldn't get sick of them too soon.

The Zombies are just your average suburban family – except that they're undead. The story behind this game is that a family of zombies have settled down after decades of eating human flesh, bought a house in the suburbs, and started a normal life. The game plays out like a 1950s TV sitcom, except that the main characters engage in some very odd behavior from time to time.

The goal of the game is to find items which will help The Zombies fit in to their society better. You earn prizes for locating a mailbox, a newspaper, potted plants and other household goods. The slot's two bonus games, Zombie Dance Party and the Zombie Bonus Game, make cute use of the theme, but are essentially just two glorified pick'em games rewarding free spins and instant credit prizes.

Street Fighter II is a retro video game themed slot produced by Amaya Gaming under an exclusive license with Capcom. Street Fighter II is a five reel and twenty-five pay line video slot designed in close imitation of the massively-popular arcade and console fighting game. The characters in the game are rendered to look almost exactly like the characters from the popular arcade series.

This game includes a number of popular online slot features – wilds, scatters, and free spins – but the real focus is on the Choose Your Street Fighter feature, which really makes this into five different games. Just like in the arcade game, you take your pick from a group of fighters before you start – you can pick from Ryu, Ken, Sagat, Guile, and Chun Li. Your character choice becomes the game's wild symbol for your entire session.

You should always place a max bet on Amaya Gaming's licensed titles. On Street Fighter II, you have to activate all twenty-five pay lines if you want access to the most lucrative bonuses. Since the game accepts wagers as low as $0.01 or as high as $20 each, the total range of available max wagers is between $0.25 and $500 each spin.