CafeCasino.lv Review

Café Casino is a newer US-facing online casino, launched in April of 2016. Cafe Casino accepts Bitcoin for deposits and withdrawals. That seems to be the site’s gimmick; that, and the simple fact that they accept real money bets from US customers.

Bonus Details

500% Super Play Welcome Bonus

New depositors can take their pick from two different options
for the casino’s Super Play Welcome Bonus. This is the first
option – a match bonus worth up to $5,000 at a match rate of
500%. This bonus requires a playthrough of 35x.

100% No-Max Welcome Bonus

This is the second welcome bonus option – a match bonus worth
up to $1,000 at a match rate of 100%. This bonus requires a
playthrough of 25x.

$10 Free Chip

All new depositors earn $10 in free play in the form of a $10
Free Chip. Any winnings you accrue while playing with the $10 in
free play is subject to a 60x playthrough requirement, and a max
withdrawal amount of $125. If you win more than that, you
forfeit any amount above $125.

$100 Referrals

For every customer you refer that makes a deposit of at least
$25, you’ll earn $100 in free betting cash. Your winnings are
subject to a 60x playthrough requirement, and winnings are
capped at $1,000. Any winnings you earn beyond $1,000 while
playing with referral money is forfeited.

Perks

Perks is the name of Café Casino’s rewards program. All
players start out with certain rewards by virtue of joining the
Perks program. Entry-level members enjoy 10% Daily Cashback
offers, weekly bonus offers, a chance to win a weekly $4,000
prize pool drawing, and the standard spate of bonuses and
promotions offered above. As you accumulate more rewards points,
those numbers start going up. For instance, at the next level
(in exchange for 50,000 points) you have access to $150 referral
fees, more entries in the prize pool, and even better bonus
offers.

Banking Options

Café Casino only accepts deposits and pays withdrawals using American currency.

Below covers the basics of all deposit methods available at Café Casino:

Deposit

Withdrawal

Pros & Cons of Café Casino

Let’s start with the pros – three things about Café Casino
that we like:

Large and Varied Game Library

A total of 207 games are available at Café Casino, about half
that number also available at their mobile-capable website. We
were most excited to see the long list of available blackjack
variants. Most US-facing casino sites are so heavy with slot
machines, they’re basically useless to those of us that like
table games and other contests besides just machine-style
gaming.

Good Variety of Bonuses and Promotions

This requires a caveat – for a site that’s just launched in
the past few weeks, Café Casino has a decent bonus lineup, and
several of those bonuses have decent playthrough requirements
and other terms and conditions.

Fast Payout Times

We have to make another caveat – they have really fast posted
payout times. That means that we can’t verify whether or not the
times they post are accurate. We haven’t had a chance to make a
withdrawal ourselves, and we can’t find any reviews or notes
from actual customers who have. Still, getting a payment within
ten business days is good timing for US customers, most of whom
are used to times much longer than that.

Now for the cons – three things about the site that we don’t
like:

Limited Deposit and Withdrawal Options

You can deposit using a credit card or Bitcoin, and that’s
it. Your withdrawal options aren’t much more varied, with the
addition of a paper check delivered via courier. We get that
it’s tough to offer a varied lineup of payment options to US
customers, considering the restrictions of the UIGEA bill.
Still, it needs to be said. You don’t have a lot of ways to send
money to and from your Café Casino account.

Open to US Customers Only

This isn’t a big deal if you live in the US. But millions of
casino fans around the world won’t be able to access Café
Casino, and for them, that’s a bummer. There’s something else to
consider when you’re dealing with a US-facing gambling site –
why would a site want to do business in such a difficult market?
It’s easy to imagine nefarious reasons for doing so, but the
truth is probably very simple. The US market is relatively
untapped, thanks to the very UIGEA restrictions that made us a
little suspicious of Café Casino to begin with.

Licensure by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is not one of the most
respected names in online gaming licensure. Our suspicions about
the Kahnawake Gaming Commission have a lot to do with Kahnawake
itself – an invented territory that’s just large enough to
accommodate facilities for the licensing of gaming operations.
Kahnawake licenses a huge list of online gambling interests, not
all of which are above-board businesses. When you see headlines
like the Quebec Supreme Court protecting Kahnawake from
prosecution by federal authorities, you get nervous. It’s not
that Kahnawake’s licenses are known to be fraudulent. It’s just
that they’re not anywhere near as reputable as names like
Alderney, Gibraltar, or the UK.

Below, you’ll find more detailed coverage of each of Café
Casino’s five game categories:

Games

Slots

The largest category of games at Café Casino is slots – they
know their audience, don’t they? US players love slots. They’re
by far the most popular way to gamble in US casinos. To that
end, Café has a list of 102 slot games broken up into seven
categories:

• Rival Slots

  All of the slot games produced by Rival are
  hosted in this category. You can play classic Rival titles like
  Milk the Cash Cow, So 80’s, and Arabian tales. All told, this is
  the largest sub-section of slot games at the site, as Rival is
  the primary provider of software to Café Casino.

• i-Slots

  Some of Café Casino’s Rival slots are also available
  in this category, consisting exclusively of Rival’s famous
  multi-reel and multi-payline video slots in the i-Slots series.

• Progressives

  Café Casino hosts every single active Rival
  progressive slot:

• Real Series

  A set of RTG five reel slots from that company’s
  popular Real Series. Includes games like Cleopatra’s Gold,
  Ronin, Football Frenzy, and Goldbeard.

• Five Reel

  All of the site’s five reel slots are gathered in
  one easy to find place.

• Three Reel

  All of the site’s three reel slots are gathered in
  one easy to find place.

• Video Slots

  All of the sites slots with video features are
  gathered in one easy to find place.

• Birds of Fury
• Cash Money Mermaids
• Desert Kingdom
• Dino Island
• DJ Moo Cow
• Dragon Princess
• Dragons
• Food Fight
• El Luchador
• Gladiator Wars
• Hercules The Immortal
• Indiana Jane
• Jack the Ripper
• Invasion
• Aztec’s Treasure
• One Million Reels BC
• Money Magic
• Major Moolah
• Strike Gold

Blackjack Games

An impressive list of six blackjack variants starts your
journey with table games at Café Casino:

• Blackjack

  This is a 6-deck game that accepts wagers between $1 and $500.

• Double Deck Blackjack

  This is a 2-deck game that accepts wagers between $10 and $250.

• European Blackjack

  This is a 6-deck game that accepts wagers between $1 and $500.

• Perfect Pairs

  This is a 6-deck game that accepts wagers between $1 and $500.

• Single Deck Blackjack

  This is a 1-deck game that accepts wagers between $25 and $300.

• Zappit Blackjack

  This is an 8-deck game that accepts wagers between $1 and $500.

Table Games

Café Casino hosts nine games in its Table Games category.
They are:

• Baccarat

  This is a traditional version of baccarat, played with six decks and a 5% commission, paying 9:1 for a tie bet, and the player is forced to hit on totals of five or less. Your wagers are limited to these denominations – 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100. This isn’t a particularly attractive version of the game, with garish colors and old-looking graphics. We were also surprised to find no mini-baccarat game, as you’ll often find at Rival-powered casinos.

• Caribbean Hold’em

  Caribbean Hold’em is casino-style poker. Technically, this is a version of Casino Hold’em in which the ante bet pays even money only if the dealer’s hand doesn’t qualify. Don’t forget the progressive side bet, just $1 at a time for a shot at a huge progressive payday.

• Caribbean Stud Poker

  Think of this game as five-card stud played against the house instead of against other poker players. This is Rival’s version of the original “house-banked game,” the first game designed to attract both poker players and slot fans back to the casino’s table game section.

• Craps

  Rival’s version of the classic dice game. There’s nothing unique about this variant – it looks a bit dated, like all of Rival’s table games.

• European Roulette

  Another Rival table game that follows all the traditional rules. European Roulette has one fewer space on the spinning wheel than its American counterpart, and that makes all the difference in odds. Roulette players who know their way around a house edge calculator only play Euro Roulette. So it’s nice that Café Casino included a version of the game in their main library.

• Let ‘Em Ride

  Another casino poker game, Let ‘Em Ride introduces the concept of community cards to the “poker against the house” game.

• American Roulette

  American Roulette is the game as it is usually played in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. This game has one additional space, compared to European Roulette, so its odds are way worse. You should only play this game if you have a particular fondness for the American version of the game, or if you like playing with longer odds, for some reason.

• Tri Card Poker

  This is Rival’s version of the classic casino poker game called Three Card Poker. This is a fast-paced and simplified version of poker played against the house, and includes a mandatory side wager on a separate game called PairsPlus.

• Vegas Three Card Rummy

  We were surprised to see both Three Card Poker and Vegas Three Card Rummy on the same library at Café Casino. The games are very similar. The only difference between this game and the one we just described is that in the Vegas edition, your goal is to form a lower point total than the dealer.

Video Poker

The selection of just three video poker games is our biggest
disappointment with Café Casino. While most other US-facing
casinos host a dozen or more video poker variants, Café Casino
is currently only offering the three most common games. That
doesn’t allow for much replay value, and the video poker fans on
our review staff grew pretty bored with their lineup in well
under an hour.

All three of Café Casino’s video poker games accept wagers of
between $0.05 and $25 per hand:

• Deuces Wild

  As the name implies, this is a variant of video poker in which cards with a 2 rank act as wild cards. This version of Deuces Wild (with a 250-coin payout for a natural royal flush) is not all that popular, and we struggled to find house edge information about it. We know that Deuces Wild games tend to range from a house edge of 91% to just about 101% at the upper end. It looks to us like the pay table weights the game far too much in favor of the top end of the board, which means fewer wins, though generally larger payouts when you do manage to put together a top-board hand. Rival’s video poker games are just as ugly as their table games. The software could really use an update – I felt a bit like I was playing a slot machine handheld game from the 1990s.

• Jacks or Better

  Jacks or Better is sort of the godfather of all video poker variants. Rival’s version, as presented here at Café Casino, is as standard issue as they come. Yes, this game has a 9/6 pay table, but it’s not considered a “full-pay” 9/6 game, since the value of the game’s top prize has been reduced big-time. Even so, this game’s pay table indicates an overall house edge of just above 0.7%. That’s not bad, though it’s easy enough to find better Jacks or Better games online, with edges somewhere close to half that, or even better. Gone are the days of +EV Jacks or Better, but surely the designers could do a bit better than 0.7%?

• Joker Poker

  Joker Poker is another legacy variant, a game you’ll find in any casino worth your interest. Once again, when we looked into this variant’s pay table, we weren’t all that impressed. The top end of the pay table is once again limited, compared to other popular versions of Joker Poker available online. The Rival designers wanted to push the house edge a bit in favor of the house (surprise, surprise), and the easiest way to do that is to chop the value of the game’s top prize basically in half. Overall, the house edge of this version of Joker Poker, with this particular decapitated pay table, is 1%. You can find Joker Poker games with odds that don’t favor the casino nearly that much at just about every other US-facing casino gambling site.

Customer Support

Café Casino’s customer support services are currently
available in English only.

You can contact Café Casino’s customer service team 24 hours
a day at:

• 1-888-364-1850

You can also try pointing your browser
to their contact form.

If you’re having issues with the website, point your browser
to Café Casino’s handy Browser Info page. It checks your browser
and some aspects of your computer to test for compatibility with
their services, and can offer help in upgrading your browser to
optimize your player experience.

Café Casino FAQ

Here are some questions I get frequently about the services
provided by this site:

Summary

Café Casino has a lot going for it. We love that they’ve put
together an interesting library of games that includes a number
of variants of classics like blackjack and roulette. And yes,
they have a big collection of slots to satisfy the hordes of
US-based slot fans. Their use of Rival software provides a long
list of games, but it means their library has less replay value
than sites that depend on multiple software providers.

Still, we’re always slow to embrace a new gambling
site. It doesn’t help that Café Casino is lacking in a few other
departments. Their customer service needs an overhaul – how
difficult is it to respond to a customer’s email, or install a
live chat feature for instant answers? People outside the US
won’t care either way – they don’t have access at all, not even
our neighbors to the immediate north.

Our advice for people suspicious of new casinos is to simply
sit back and wait for reviews to roll in. When you hear from
real players, and not just a group of reviewers, you’ll know
whether you can trust the site or not. If, on the other hand,
you don’t mind taking a little risk to try out a new US-facing
gambling site, go ahead and make a small deposit, play a few
games, and test the services for yourself. So long as you limit
your liability, you don’t have to have very high expectations at
all.

Wait and see – there’s no reason to assume that Café
Casino is a rogue operator just because they’re new, but if
you’re nervous about placing real money bets at a site without
much experience, there’s no harm in sitting back and waiting
before you make your deposit.