Drake Casino Live Review

Drake Casino is an online gaming house that launched in 2012. The site is US-friendly and features a live lobby provided by Fresh Deck Studios. Among the games on offer are real money live blackjack, live roulette, and live baccarat spread over several tables.

The site offers fiat and cryptocurrency payment methods as well as a link to buy crypto with a credit card for instant deposits. Over half a dozen deposit methods are supported including four of the most popular cryptocurrencies with Bitcoin and bank wire withdrawals.

The live lobby is open 24/7 and the Drake Customer Support Team is available seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

The HTML5 website is encrypted via secure socket layers. It is certified safe for all transactions. Whether you access it from a PC desktop computer, a Mac, a smartphone, or any portable device, it functions flawlessly right in your web browser. All players are invited, but North American residents are especially welcome. There is toll-free phone help available and the phone number is easy to find on the contacts page. Unfortunately, players in the states of Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington cannot play for real money.

If you enjoy spending time playing different casino games like random number generator (RNG) craps and other table games, video poker, instant win games, and especially slots you’ll be happy to know that Drake presents a well-rounded offering for all players. The only things you won’t find here are head-to-head poker and sports betting.

The slot selection is good to middling for the US market with a few more than 600 titles from about half a dozen providers. US players may not be able to access the FlipLuck slots but the rest are available including those from BetSoft, Nucleus, Genii, Arrow’s Edge, Inbet, and others. Players who are stone-cold live lobby players have plenty to choose from with a decent range of betting limits.

Look for promotions in the lobby almost every day of the week as well as tournaments. Most of the bonuses are for slot play but some can be used on RNG table games. You will find a table game tournament, usually blackjack at least once per week. Slot tournaments can be offered with huge prize pools over $25,000.

KYC is required from depositing players before a withdrawal can be processed. The speed of document verification runs the gamut depending on a few variables but the patient player will do just fine. Payouts are processed within 48 hours, 5 days per week but not on weekends.

The loyalty scheme has ten tier levels. Each level-up opens up more bonus opportunities. The Rewards program shares points between sister sites like Gossip Slots so players that frequent more than one of the networked casinos can earn rewards across the board and then redeem them for spins and bonuses in just one venue if they want to, compounding the value.

You’ll find all of the classics here including blackjack, roulette, and baccarat. The lobby is small with just six tables on most nights, we’ve never seen fewer.

English dealers cover live blackjack, American roulette, baccarat, and European roulette while the Spanish teams cover blackjack and American roulette. You won’t find any game shows or dice games, and you won’t find craps with a robotic arm doing the shooting for you while the croupier handles the entertainment. What you will find is straight-up classic casino floor games.

Blackjack

The blackjack tables also offer side bets, but they are optional. Players can stick to the basic game and use basic strategy or the optimal strategy for the game. The help files are not the most robust but the rules will give you what you need to adjust your strategy or use a blackjack calculator to come to the best move.

21+3

Wins pay 9 to 1. The game is dealt from 8 decks and while returns can be much better at 9:1 than the basic game offers at 3:2 for Blackjack, the house edge goes up to 2.74% when including the side bet.

Perfect Pairs

The house edge explodes to a little over 13% for this optional side bet that pays 25:1 when your cards match perfectly – both in rank and in suit. Again the game is dealt from a shoe of 8 decks so the hand is possible.

Adding a little volatility to the game at the expense of perfect strategy play is a personal choice – winning streaks do happen against the odds because that is the nature of randomness, but it might be best to play the straight game on most hands unless you feel a winning streak in your gut and your bones. The “smart money” is on sticking with the straight game and playing your cards right to catch a streak and ride it out.

Roulette

Look for single zero and double zero versions. Play single zero to reduce the house edge to 2.7% American roulette (0/00) is available in English and Spanish.

Baccarat

This is a standard baccarat game with bets on one hand or the other or a tie. It’s also a very robust optional bet game with seven possible side bets. These are Player Pair, Player Bonus, Banker Bonus, Perfect Pairs (Player or Banker), Small, and Big.

Other Ways to Play at Drake Casino

There’s a little bit of everything here from RNG blackjack, poker, roulette, craps, and Teen Patti to a great selection of slots. Video poker and instant win games are popular too.

One of the big attractions here is the slots jackpot suite. There are three main jackpot categories and each is shared with a group of games. Some of the slots are repurposed from Day 1 time and may be recognizable to well-seasoned players. Others are fresh and new. There’s also a catch-all section that includes these games and others under the progressive jackpots tab – navigate there to play for the thrill of catching a jackpot of any size.

Bonuses and Promotions at Drake Casino

The path to enjoying bonuses and other perks is mapped out at Drake as the Player Journey. Look for welcome bonuses on your first three deposits. In reality, it’s more of a second chance and even a third chance if you need one. There are still two large bonuses left to grab if your first deposit and bonus don’t work out for you!

One thing to mention is that you won’t be able to visit the live tables as a spectator unless you have money on the books. You also can’t enter a game if you have uncompleted wagering requirements.

Overall, the Drake software platform is proprietary, meaning bespoke and made by industry veterans with far more than the decade of experience the gaming site’s launch date might suggest. However, as is the case in almost every instance, the live lobby is a modular bolt-on addition to the main lobby (API). This matters more here than on the larger platforms with multiple sister sites, white labels, and stand-alone operations. For instance, players will only get one pop-up if they try to play a game not included in the bonus terms, and as mentioned, you won’t be able to observe gameplay if the wallet isn’t integrated – no money to gamble means no looking at the games.

If you know which games to play and you are ready to take on the Drake, you can enjoy the Player Journey!

Every wager you make as soon as you begin playing will earn you Rewards points, which you can then exchange for sweepstakes entries, free spin bonuses, or money back into your account.

If you like to play slots too, simply use the daily promo code provided when you log in to get daily free spins. They can’t just give away money and chance after chance without some participation so you’ll need to deposit weekly or the free spins will stop coming to you. A deposit gets you another week of free spins.

Look for 7% cashback in the afternoon every day after you have a lost deposit.

After your 3rd deposit, you can expect reload bonuses from 30% to as much as 100% on every deposit. It’s all handled by the system and upgrades are automatic so you won’t ever have to feel funny asking for a bonus if you want one.

Check for weekly offers and subscribe to the weekly newsletter. You can get a free spin bonus or an enhanced reload of some kind at least eight times a month!

Join one or both of the sister sites to unearth even more bonuses and enjoy a unified rewards account. Redeem them at any of the sites. One popular choice is to convert your reward points into cash. Additionally, you can enter sweepstakes and with a chance to win 10 to 50 free spins on slots.

Be sure to check the terms and conditions for game weightings if you play RNG table games and always zero out your balance between bonuses to avoid wagering requirements carrying over. This also applies to tournament winnings which can be applied to your account as a bonus rather than withdrawable cash. If you have any questions about points carrying over or your balance not being clear you might need to get in touch with customer care. The holdover has been in the terms since day one and they simply don’t seem interested in changing it.

The use of cryptocurrencies is not required but many players find it to be the most convenient way to deposit and withdraw money. Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ripple are supported for deposits. The funds should appear in your account ready for play within 30 minutes depending on network congestion.

Visa, Mastercard, and American Express are instant deposit options. For credit card depositors, Crypto methods are not available for their first two withdrawals. This policy is in place to prevent any type of fraud. This means that you will need to be able to accept a bank wire for your first two withdrawals so the identity verification process (KYC) can be completed thoroughly.

There is a link on the website directing players to a broker that will deliver cryptos for instant play – just use your debit card and you are off and playing with cryptos.

The minimum withdrawal levels are a little higher than we would like to see for some casual players based on the lower minimum deposit thresholds. Most US players will be quite happy with the relatively high weekly/monthly cashout limits.