English
Drake Casino has been online since 2012, and for a number of years it has been operating without a live dealer section. It is a relatively large online casino offering slots, traditional table games and ever-increasing jackpots. Sadly, though, this variety doesn’t extend to the live casino section of the site. The brand expanded its coverage to Fresh Deck Studios and added some of their popular live dealer tables, though the width of the offer doesn’t match up to the competition.
Still, you can play live roulette on the Drake casino, as well as other classics like baccarat and blackjack. If those are the types of games you prefer, keep reading this Drake casino review.
Fresh Deck Studios are supplying Drake Casino with roulette tables and live-streamed productions of blackjack, as well as live baccarat tables. Drake Casino benefits from a Curacao license and its catalogue is audited on a regular basis by independent auditors TST.
A no deposit Drake Casino bonus may be hard to come by, but other offers are very attractive. Most of them do not target live casino players specifically, but they do not exclude live casino games, either. It’s worth mentioning that if you are joining from Armenia, Hungary, Indonesia, India, Nigeria, Lebanon, Lithuania, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Romania, Germany, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, you will not be able to enjoy any of the bonus deals on offer, sadly.
Type
Welcome Bonus
Offer
300% up to $6,000 welcome bonus or 540 spins
Claim
New customers only. 18+. T&Cs apply.
Crypto Welcome Bonus
350% total bonus on first 3 dsposits
Standard T&Cs apply. 18+ only.
New customers at Drake Casino are invited to claim a rewarding welcoming offer spanning across the first three deposits. The offer comes with a dose of flexibility. The players can choose from cash funds or free spins and the total bonus of $6,000 can be claimed in three instances of $2,000 each. Wagering requirements for deposit bonuses go up to 60 times the sum of the deposit plus the bonus. A deposit of at least $25 is required in order to claim the Drake Casino welcome bonus. The contributions are presented on the Drake Casino promotion rules page, and the casino doesn’t seem to distinguish live dealer tables from RNG tables. For example, any wagers on blackjack games contribute 10% towards the rollover.
Alternatively, you can choose to pick up 540 free spins on Drake Casino as a signup deal. This offer can also be claimed three times. Instead of wagerable bonus money, you instead get free spins for slots. The more you deposit per transaction, the higher the value of your spins. For instance, $25 will net you 150 free spins at $0.50 per spin, while $100 awards 120 spins at $2.52 per spin. Note that Drake Casino free spins are also subject to rollover requirements.
Drake also offers an incentive to deposit via cryptocurrencies. The total welcome bonus with Bitcoin, for example, adds up to a 350% increase.
Out of a number of reload bonuses, the one suitable for live dealer players is the Saturday reload bonus which awards 100% up to $500 when you enter the coupon code NOW100. However, the key factor in redeeming weekly bonuses is the player status in the Drake Club, as not all levels qualify for these offers. The bonus-related experience at Drake is tied to the Drake Club status. This rewards program has 10 levels (new members start at Platinum, then go over to Amber, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, Ruby, Topaz, and finally Red Diamond).
The weekly rebate bonus at Drake Casino doesn’t carry a rollover requirement. It includes a 10% cashback bonus credited every Tuesday by 4 pm EST (the bonus is calculated between Tuesday and Monday every week). To qualify, you must have deposited in the last 90 calendar days. If you have made a deposit in the previous 30 days, you are not eligible for the rebate.
9+
Roulette: $1 to $500, Blackjack: $1 to $1,000,000
Yes
No
Strangely enough, Drake allows free play on its live dealer tables, unlike most live casinos where you are required to register an account, fund it with money and then access the tables with live croupiers. The Fresh Deck Studios product opens in a side window and you get a choice of Roulette and Blackjack, even if you click on the Live Baccarat thumbnail. It seems as if the thumbnails are remnants of a time past – when Drake featured Vivo Gaming software.
Currently, you can enjoy live dealer gaming powered by Fresh Deck Studios at Drake. The Drake casino games with dealers have a great-looking interface and offer various useful features, from betting shortcuts and side bets to bet history and statistic views.
At the moment of writing, the live dealer department of the Drake Casino website seems to be transitioning. The library is rather limited and does not display a breathtaking number of different titles. That being said, fans of live dealer blackjack and live dealer roulette will be glad to hear that their games of choice are available.
Opening the lobby at Drake live casino, you will face a total of 7 blackjack tables at the moment. The status of taken and open seats is clearly indicated and you can also see which tables have native dealers. Fresh Deck claim their solutions are 7-seat unlimited blackjack tables. It appears that the games are played according to Vegas rules and feature optional side bets (Perfect Pairs, 21+3). The gameplay is seamless, although you will probably encounter alternatives that are more impressive nowadays.
If you wish to play roulette at Drake, your only live dealer options are European Roulette and Auto Roulette. The games are rather basic, with standard gameplay and a pleasant atmosphere. You won’t find any surprises sneaking around the corner, catching you off guard. Any association that Fresh Deck may have with American Roulette is not made apparent here.
Although Drake claims to feature live baccarat, the Fresh Deck Studios lobby does not support live baccarat play at the time of writing. Their tables aren’t ready yet, but from what we can gather from the media is that there are plans of launching live dealer baccarat options from this new vendor sometime soon.
The only official high roller option is the Blackjack VIP table with limits ranging from $50 up to $10,000. The rest of the blackjack alternatives start at humble minimal limits of $10 and going up to $2,000 or $5,000. Although roulette titles are not marked as VIP, they allow rather high limits. The bets start at $0.5 and are capped at $12,500.
Fresh Deck Studios is a new name we keep encountering in the iGaming circles, often mentioned as the up-and-coming live dealer provider. They seem to have appeared from nowhere, offering B2B software, seamless integration and a set of diversified services for operators. They launched in 2019 and for the time being they offer staple games in the live casino sector: live baccarat, live roulette, live poker and live blackjack.
Their portfolio makes note of games such as Baccarat (Punto Banco) and Casino Hold’em with live dealers, but it is unclear why these products aren’t delivered to the Drake Casino platform. The important thing is that blackjack and roulette, which are playable at Drake, are HTML5 compatible and work smoothly on mobile. There are some speculations that Fresh Deck Studios works closely with Lucky Streak and borrows their games and dealers. Even Vivo Gaming is mentioned, regarding American Roulette in particular.
Drake Casino users have an assortment of supported methods for banking, and most of them are suitable for USA players. The cashier reports success with bank cards and crypto, as well as a handful of alternatives. However, the Drake casino also has some glaring issues when it comes to fiat withdrawals.
The good news is that deposits on the Drake casino site have decent terms. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express deposits are instant but limited to deposits between $25 and $1,000.
Once we get to the withdrawals, though, things get a bit dicey. For starters, the only options for withdrawals are Bitcoin and bank wire transfers. The former takes 1-3 days to complete, while the latter can take up to 12 business days. Worse still, the minimum withdrawal on Drake casino is $125 for Bitcoin and $100 for bank transfers, which is a huge problem. Most competing casinos limit withdrawals to $5-20. The maximum is set at $2,500, which is also not very impressive.
The biggest issue, however, is that bank transfer withdrawals have a fixed $40 fee. This makes this withdrawal method borderline unusable. As such, we can only honestly recommend this site if you use Bitcoin as your payment option of choice.
Deposit Methods | Title | Fees | Minimum Deposit | Maximum Deposit | Processing Time | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Visa | Free to 2.5% (Variable) | €10 | €4000 | Instant - 5 Business Days | DEPOSIT | |
Mastercard | Free to 2.5% (Variable) | €10 | €4000 | Instant - 5 Business Days | DEPOSIT | |
Bitcoin | Varies | €10 | €4000 | Instant | DEPOSIT | |
American Express | Varies at Casinos | DEPOSIT |
Withdrawal Methods | Title | Fees | Minimum Withdrawal | Maximum Withdrawal | Processing Time | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
American Express | DEPOSIT | |||||
Bank Wire | DEPOSIT | |||||
Bitcoin | DEPOSIT | |||||
Courier Check | DEPOSIT | |||||
Direct Cash | DEPOSIT | |||||
Quick Cash | DEPOSIT |
Note that the maximum withdrawal limit is prone to changes since amounts can vary based on player status. Big amounts can also be divided and delivered in multiple instances over the course of a few weeks. The withdrawal department works Monday through Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time). Realistically, your payout shall be processed 45h after the request submission. Note that QuickCash and crypto methods are unavailable for the first two withdrawals to patrons who deposited via credit card.
The Drake mobile casino requires no installation. You can play your selected games using any mobile browser on either iOS or Android. Downloading a Drake Casino app is not an option, so all you have to do is visit the main website on your smartphone or tablet and launch the lobby there. The mobile version of the site is well designed. It gives players great control over their actions and operations, facilitating not only easy navigation but also banking and account management. The available live casino games support both landscape and portrait mode, which leaves the players to choose what they like best.
Android (Android Phone & Tablet)
iOS Apple (iPhone & iPad)
Windows (Windows Phone & Tablet)
Native coverage may not be the primary goal of Drake Casino’s operator for the moment, but the software supplier did think about offering at least a few native options for players. For one, there are multiple languages to choose from in the software settings, although they only apply for the written features and commands. There are Baltic and Russian Blackjack tables with non-English dealers.
In terms of customer support, users can ask for help around the clock, using live chat, dedicated phone numbers (+1 800 613-8090 for North America) or email ([email protected] and [email protected]). There isn’t a FAQ page, which may not be essential to the Drake experience, but it would certainly help new arrivals to the platform.
Drake Casino seems to have put its live dealer section aside while tackling the challenges of market coverage and legal conundrums of offering a full, uninterrupted service for USA players. Their current selection of live dealer games powered by Fresh Deck Studios is poor and barely satisfies the needs of an average live casino gambler. A few tables are better than nothing, and they aren’t bad by any means, just standard without much oomph to them. Hopefully, Drake Casino will find a way to add more titles to the library and bring joy to its members hoping to make real money bets on varied live tables.
Frankly, the biggest issue with Drake Casino are the withdrawals. The minimums are huge, and the fees are downright mind-boggling. As such, we can only truly recommend this casino to players who only want the most basic live casino games and wish to wager using Bitcoin. Everyone else can easily find better alternatives in our list of top live casinos.
Check with the Drake Casino official website for complete, current info on restricted areas.
3.0/5
From the perspective of a live casino fan, Drake Casino covers the basics. For the time being, players can enjoy a handful of studio broadcasts in good quality, courtesy of Fresh Deck Studios. Also, severe limitations to withdrawals on Drake mean that only Bitcoin players can truly enjoy it.