The online casino industry is incredibly competitive. Several companies have managed to do what it takes to make it to the top of the heap, and then the rest of the operators are looking for their own small edge to make their businesses profitable. Sometimes all it takes is a special promotion or targeting a particular demographic by tailoring your offering to those specific players. And sometimes it’s just as easy to mirror a company’s branding and even make your name almost the same as the original (think McDowell’s in the movie classic Coming to America – Google it).
This is where we want to start our review of the new casino BoVegas.com. These guys are clearly trying to ride the coattails of the brand recognition of Bodog and Bovada, but does their offering compare? Have a read to find out.
As mentioned, BoVegas is a new entrant on the casino scene. Founded in 2016, the owners of the casino are not listed on their website. This is always a great frustration for me because it already makes me feel like the casino has something to hide. I am not one to let this go, so I did some further investigating and have determined that finding the actual owners of this casino is proving to be harder than hitting a Royal Flush at one of their Video Poker games. So, for the time being, I am not entirely sure who the owners are, but I also don’t care all that much.
BoVegas has a license from the country of Curacao, which is the equivalent of getting your Driver’s License out of a Cracker Jack box. It looks nice, and they can advertise that they have one, but really you as a player don’t get anything out of that aside from perhaps one place to start looking if you are having trouble getting paid by the site.
Restricted Countries
One nice part about being licensed in Curacao: there aren’t really any restrictions on where you can offer your casinos. BoVegas takes full advantage of this by offering their games for real money to essentially every country in the world. Here are the few exceptions to that rule:
- Belarus
- Costa Rica
- Israel
- Ukraine
If you don’t live in one of those four countries, then you are in luck! Feel free to jump on and get your deposit to BoVegas as you are in the clear.
Casino Design
These days, so many casino websites can get cluttered with horrible graphics, or loads of pop-up windows trying to promote a new offer, etc. I am happy to report that is not the case at BoVegas. I like the High Roller Vegas theme of the casino, featuring lots of red and black, and giving a very nice, clean look to all their pages. Admittedly this does make it look a lot like the Bovada theme, but I will say that there are lots of casinos with this style of website, so I will give BoVegas a pass this time.
The appealing thing about a website that is clean in its design is that it becomes much easier to focus on the promotions and games rather than wanting to move away from the site as quickly as possible.
Mobile Interface
As mentioned before, BoVegas is available for play on mobile devices, I tested their games on both Android and iOS operating systems and browsers, and found both to be very pleasing. The games all played with excellent speed as opposed to some casinos that have a lot of annoying lag. Also, there wasn’t anything lost in the way of graphics when playing the games on a mobile device; RTG continue to make improvements to their casino to make it mobile friendly, and in 2017 I believe this is where all casino software suppliers should be spending the majority of their focus.
Lack of Big Jackpots
RTG casinos have the opportunity to either run progressive games on their own system or tie their jackpots into the entire network of licensees. It appears that BoVegas has chosen to go on their own, and that leaves players with a less than stellar lineup of Jackpot slots titles. The largest jackpot I saw when I wrote this review was just short of $30,000. While this is nothing to sneeze at, I have seen jackpots in the hundreds of thousands on other RTG operator websites. It’s hard to say why BoVegas chose to go this route, but for now, we consider it a disappointment.
No Live Dealer Casino
RTG recently acquired a live dealer casino supplier, and it was assumed that all their licensees would benefit from this acquisition. At the time of this review being written, BoVegas does not offer live dealer games, and this again hits me with some disappointment. I love live dealer games – the dynamic is entirely different, and they aren’t nearly as cold as the video-only versions of the games. I am hopeful that this is coming along in short order for BoVegas and that we will see Live Dealer games there soon.
Game Selection
BoVegas takes advantage of the full suite of RTG games, meaning you get to choose from a very nice selection of slots, table games, and video poker variants. I noticed that not all the different slots titles and table games were available at BoVegas, and that left me wondering if the decision to hold back on other games was to use them as a marketing tool by releasing them periodically or just a restriction placed on the casino by RTG themselves.
Regardless of the missing titles, the quality of the games can still be seen, and there are loads of great games for you to choose from.
Top Rated Slot Machines
- Aztec’s Treasure
- Bonkers
- Caesar’s Empire
- Cleopatra’s Gold
- Coyote Cash
- Diamond Mine Deluxe
- Hidden Riches
- High Rollers
- Paydirt!
- Pharaoh’s Gold
- Popinata
- Purrfect Pets
- Sweet 16
- Texan Tycoon
- The Elf Wars
- Triton’s Treasure
- Year of Fortune
Table Games
I have to tell you, I love playing Blackjack. No matter what time of day or night, I can always find a little bit of joy when splitting 8s against a dealer 6 or when getting that game-changing double down win. I have played every casino software there is, and I like what RTG has to offer in the way of Blackjack variants, as well as their other table games. Here are all the games you will find at BoVegas:
- Baccarat
- Caribbean Draw
- BlackjacCaribbean Hold’Em
- European Blackjack
- Face Up 21
- Let’em Ride
- Match Play 21
- Pai Gow Poker
- Perfect Pairs
- Pontoon
- Red Dog
- Suit’em Up
- BoVegas rewards its players with a series of bonuses that start the second you sign up for your account. They like to put their bonuses into three categories, each of which we have summarized below:
Welcome Bonus
Currently, BoVegas is offering players up to $5,500 in welcome bonus cash on your first two deposits. This is split in the following way: 250% bonus up to $2,500 on your first deposit, and 300% bonus on your second deposit up to a maximum of $3,000.
While that might sound like an excellent bonus, the devil is in the details. These bonuses are Slots bonuses only, which means if you are table games player like I am, they are of virtually no use to you. This is pretty aggravating because these are the only two Welcome Bonuses available on the site.
Let’s assume you are a slots player and you want to take advantage of this offer. You should know that the wagering requirements for these Welcome Bonuses are 30x Bonus plus deposit. This means if you deposit $1,000 and receive $2,500 in bonus, you will have to make $105,000 in wagers to have met the requirement to cashout. The beautiful part of this bonus is that there is no max cashout, assuming you get that far.
Daily Rewards
BoVegas offers its loyal players a reason to log in every day with a series of daily promotions. The only catch with these promotions is that they only display the current daily bonus, not a full list of what bonuses are available each day. This forces you to come back to the site each day to see what your daily offer includes, which can be a huge turn-off to many players. I don’t really mind – if I am going to try to beat a casino with its own bonus, the least I can do is have to research it on a daily basis.