Main Review
Bottom Line
Sports-Bookie is another online casino that uses the Softec Software package. Like other Softec sites which have been reviewed at .com Casino Guide, I give Sports-Bookie high marks for the general gameplay of the software, but not for the odds. Like other Softec sites, their Video Poker payouts need improving. I gave Sports-Bookie a rating of 3.75 chips. One nice extra worth mentioning is Sports-Bookie offers much higher progressives than I’ve seen at other sites for the same games. Examples are $40,000 for Caribbean poker, and $200,000 if you play their slot machines at $20 a pop. If you’re a gambler who likes going for the long odds and high payouts, this should appeal to you.
Overview
Sports-Bookie, based in Antigua, offers both online casino and sportsbook services. For the purposes of this review, I only reviewed the casino portion of their website. They refer to this casino service both on their web page and in their software as “The Cyber Keluaran Hk Casino.” Their website is easy enough to navigate, but I wish they’d expand their help section to include things like types of money payment for example. And there’s other things they could add as well, as I found the web page to be sparse overall. I want to see more on an online casino’s homepage besides a link to a faq and a button to start downloading and playing. Customer service phone numbers and e-mail addresses are listed on the FAQ section under their “About” page.
Money Matters
New members get a $10 signup bonus and a 10% bonus on their initial deposite. I couldn’t find anywhere on Sports-Bookie’s web site that told about what different deposite options were available to players. From the information they provided to us, it appears the standard Visa, Mastercard, and money wire options are available.
Gaming
Sports-Bookie uses the popular Softec software package from Starnet Communications International, Inc. You have the option to register and receive a free CD in the mail, or you can download the Cyber Casino “Lite” version of the software package. This is a file size of 5.32M, and you get a handful of the available games. In order to get the complete package of 20+ games, you simply click on the “download games” button in the program, and pick which game you wish to add. This is a somewhat tedious process as each time you add a game you are exited from the server and must relogin in with your name and password to pick the next game you wish to download. Once you do this for all the games you think you’ll wish to play, you’ll never have to go through the process again, until they add something you like to their list. I had to retry to download several of their games during this process as the download and patch sometimes would only go partway through and then stop. It may have just been temporary server problems on the day I was doing this.
Sports-Bookie also offers 4 java games online. They are Blackjack, Jacks or Better Video Poker, Caribbean Stud Poker, and one slot machine. You can play these for fun or for real money. I’ve had trouble with the java games at other Starnet sites. They tend to reboot my machine. Since the games are the same as in their downloadable version, I didn’t attempt to play the java games for the purposes of this review.
The software package they use which you can download is actually quite nice. Graphics on all the games are very pleasing. I played for fun only, not real money, but you are still connected to their server, and I found game speed to be very quick for all games. The Craps game boots up, but as soon as you place a bet and go to roll the dice, you are notified that the game is currently offline. Other than that, I never once ran into any software or server problems while playing. There are 22 different games if you download the entire package. Overlap occurs with 4 of these being Bingo variations, 4 are Video Poker variations, 2 are slot machines, and 2 are Pachinko variations. All in all, a nice variety of games to choose from. I’ll go into more detail on each on below.
