MyBookie Casino review: a 200% bonus at 40x, and the help desk explains every line of it

Is MyBookie Casino legit?

It's the casino on the same account as the MyBookie sportsbook, and the same things are missing. The About page says "online gaming pioneers created MyBookie in 2014" and calls it a trusted book offering action "in the USA & abroad". The footer calls it "a Legal Online Sports Betting Site". I found no licence, no regulator and no company named on any page I read, and the rules live on a third-party help desk. The help desk keeps a long list of countries it won't take players from, the UK, France, Spain and Australia among them, and no US states.

None of that tells you it won't pay. It tells you that if it doesn't, there's nobody named to complain to. Whether you may play at all depends on where you live, and MyBookie leaves that to you.

The games

The casino page says "100s" of games and doesn't give a count. The lobby is split into blackjack, slots, table games, video poker, jackpots, "Hold n Win", bonus buy, crash games, specialty games, MyBookie originals and exclusives. Live dealer has its own row, with blackjack tables (a VIP gold table among them), American and European roulette and baccarat. The help desk has its own section on live dealer chat rules and on refunds for a tip given by mistake.

No page names the studios behind the games. So check each game's own help screen for its return figure before you play it; the RTP guide explains what you're reading. And if you play roulette, the European wheel has one zero and a 2.70% edge, against 5.26% on the American, as the house edge page shows.

How it pays

The casino uses the sportsbook's cashier. Bitcoin is the main way out: $25 to $5,000 a request, no fee, reviewed in 12 to 24 hours, with the coins in your wallet a few hours after. Bank wire costs $35 on $100 to $500 and $50 on $501 to $5,000, and takes 5 to 7 business days. You get one withdrawal per method each week, and every deposit has to be played through once before you can ask.

That $5,000 Bitcoin cap is the number I'd remember. A $12,000 jackpot comes home over three weeks, or two if you split it between Bitcoin and a wire and pay the wire fee. Card deposits cost 4.9% on Mastercard and 6% on Visa after the first, which is free; Bitcoin deposits over $20 carry no fee.

The casino bonus, worked out

The welcome offer is 200% of your first casino deposit up to $2,000 in casino bonus cash, plus 50 free spins, from a $50 deposit with code 200MB. (The casino page's banner says 150%, so I'd confirm the number at the cashier.) The casino terms set the default rollover at 40 times the bonus plus the deposit once. Slots count 100%, blackjack, baccarat and video poker 10%, and live casino, craps, roulette and progressive jackpot games count for nothing. Bonus money expires after 90 days.

Take the top of it. Deposit $1,000, get $2,000, and you owe $80,000 in slots plus your $1,000 once, $81,000 in all. MyBookie doesn't publish its slots' returns, so say the games return 96%: the house keeps about 4%, roughly $3,240 on average, against a $2,000 bonus. On blackjack at 10% weighting the same rollover is $800,000 of hands. A smaller deposit doesn't change the shape: $100 in and $200 bonus means $8,100 of slots and about $324 given back.

Two more lines decide it for me. Win a bet placed with bonus funds only and you can withdraw at most $100 of it. And any casino bonus may carry a maximum win, $100,000 if none is stated. The help desk also isn't consistent: one rollover article says the formula is deposit plus bonus times the rollover, which at 40x would mean $120,000 on that $1,000 deposit, and the weighting table counts video poker at 10% while the worked example under it uses 20%. I'd ask support which figures apply, in writing. The rollover page and the bonuses guide show the method.

Who it's for

A recreational slots player who funds in Bitcoin, plays without a bonus or with his eyes open, and is happy with $5,000 a week out. Before the first deposit I'd set one of the daily, weekly or monthly deposit limits the banking page offers. The responsible gambling page explains the rest.