Stake Casino Review

Review of Stake Casino

Stake.com is a wildly popular cryptocurrency betting site operated by a Curacao registered, apparently Australian run, company with a dad-joke quality name, Medium Rare NV. It offers a full-service online betting site that combines casino games with a sportsbook. Over its years of operation it has built something of a name for itself by leveraging a number of sponsorships, such as with the UFC, Everton Football Club, and even Canadian rapper Drake. Of course as we well know here, such sponsorships are meaningless when it comes to assessing the quality of service offered. So I was quite interested to dig deep into Stake Casino in order to see if the site's offering matches the hype.

Software and game
 selection

The Stake site itself is understated and presented cleanly in shades of blue-grey. It is easy to navigate, with the sidebar allowing you to choose between the casino and sportsbook options. Interestingly, the menu includes links to the litany of sponsorships that the company has, which is full of information about whom they pay to make themselves look good. Frankly I find the sponsorship angle to be nothing but pretentious. If they have that much money to spare I'd rather they raised the payout rates of the games or found some other way to give some back to us punters. The mobile layout for the site is also serviceable, with the site easy to navigate on my iPhone.

The software platform from Stake is one that is custom designed in house. This means that the company itself is working to sign content agreements with slot designers and then putting the titles on their site, rather than using a third party aggregator to add large numbers of games into its library. To this end, Stake offers games from the likes of Net Entertainment, Hacksaw Gaming, Nolimit City, Play'n Go, Push Gaming, Evolution Gaming, Relax Gaming, Elk Studios, Thunderkick, NetEnt, Quickspin, Red Tiger and more, unfortunately including Pragmatic Play, a supplier we regard as blacklisted. This means that you're not going to be stuck without games to choose from, as there's almost certainly something you're going to like.

Slots get the bulk of the treatment here, with more than 2000 games on offer as of the time of this review. One thing I really like is the ability to sort games by developer, feature buy-in, or with higher RTP numbers. There are progressive jackpots available, which are networked in to the developer's jackpot network and can pay out prizes into the millions of dollars if you're lucky enough to hit the top prize. All of the slots I encountered can be played on mobile devices as well. In fact, some of the games look better on the smaller screen than they do on my 27-inch monitor.

An interesting section of the casino is found under the Challenges menu item. Here the casino lists a bunch of mini competitions where prizes are awarded to the player that is the first to hit a specified target multiplier. For example, as I look at the site now, the next person to hit an 800x or greater win on Play'n Go's slot Rich Wilde and the Tome of Madness will win a Bitcoin prize currently worth around $1000. There are currently 31 of these challenges that you can shoot for if they happen to be on one of your favourite games.

Moving on to table games, punters will find a much smaller library. There are games like blackjack, baccarat, Hi/Lo, and roulette all on offer, but the total number of games comes in at 22 by my count, although this number is likely higher, given the number of titles varies based on your location. There are certainly all of the heavy hitters here, as well as some more obscure titles. Live dealer shines though, as you will find around 40 different tables from the likes Evolution and Bombay Live in the library, along with another 16 games found in the Game Shows section.

Banking and customer support



The banking options at Stake.com are minimal, as the casino exclusively operates via cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals. The casino supports the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Tether, as well as a multitude of more obscure cryptocurrencies which are better referred to en-masse as shitcoins. The casino does not impose any limits on either deposits or withdrawals which is quite the exception in these days of tight-fisted instalment payment plans preferred by so many online casinos. That policy at least earns a hearty thumbs up from me. My test withdrawal was paid within 12 hours, which is pretty good, but certainly not instantaneous as you might expect given the exclusive use of cryptocurrencies.

If managing $2 bets denominated as 0.000067 BTC gets annoying and you would prefer to play the games using a currency whose value you can more easily understand, the casino offers the option of converting and displaying your balance into a fiat currency including US Dollars, Euros, or Japanese Yen. This is cosmetic only though, and your balance remains in cryptocurrency behind the scenes. This means that your fiat balance may appear to fluctuate with the often times wild fluctuations in exchange rates between crypto and fiat currencies, even when you are not wagering.

Customer support is available around the clock using the live chat function in the lower right portion of the site. There is also email support. In my experience, customer support through live chat is fast to respond, as I waited about 20 seconds before I had a response. Once a rep was on the line, I had the answer to my banking question and was back to playing within a couple of minutes.

Safety, licencing, and responsible gambling

As mentioned in the introduction above, Stake Casino operates under a Curacao licence granted to its parent company Medium Rare NV. While that may appear to lend the site an air of legitimacy, long time readers here will know that it means virtually nothing at all other than the company paid a fee to a license issuing business in Curacao. Authorities in Curacao have been notorious in basically rubber-stamping online licences for anyone who are willing to pay the money. There are multitudes of scam casinos being run with Curacao licenses, which makes things all the worse for the legitimate operators as they can often be tarred with the same brush. To me it says nothing, either good or bad, about the trustworthiness of Stake Casino.

When logged in you are able to set limits on your account to control your gambling at the site. This includes restricting the amount you can deposit and play with, taking temporary breaks from play, and requesting self exclusion. The self exclusion process could do with some improvement if you ask me. You are required to submit the request in the system and once done, your account is temporarily blocked and set to withdrawal only for 24 hours. During that time you will be sent an email by the casino that you need to reply to and confirm to make the self exclusion apply beyond the 24 hours. If you don't reply for whatever reason (and I am sure we can all think of a few that may be beyond our control), the 24 hour block will expire and your account will be fully playable again. I concede that I can see the argument for confirmation so that a person does not have their account maliciously locked by someone with temporary access. On the other hand I am sure that would be the overwhelming minority of such requests. Leaving it open to be automatically reversed after only 24 hours is likely to lead to bad outcomes in some cases.

Summary



Stake Casino is a solid full-service betting site that has a multitude of games and a full sportsbook that will appeal to cryptocurrency gamblers. I had a pleasant experience on the site, I found the space easy to navigate, both on my computer and my iPhone, and was paid a withdrawal without fuss. On the other hand I am not impressed by the casino's Curacao "licence" or its equally pointless and no doubt extravagant spend on celebrity endorsements. Take note that it is effectively an unregulated casino so you place your stakes and take your chances accordingly.