REVIEW:

Ladbrokes is a British-based gambling company that can trace its history all the way back to 1886. For more than a century, Ladbrokes has provided gambling services with great integrity. When Ladbrokes ventured online in the 90s, it came as little surprise that it experienced so much immediate success. Ladbrokes, however, wasn’t satisfied succeeding based on reputation alone. Instead, it is one of the online gambling industry’s greatest innovators, and its latest innovation is its live casino.

Ladbrokes Live Casino

Most lives casinos work through a collaboration between an online casino and a land-based one. The land-based casino provides the live services, and the online casino provides banking services and serves as a proxy for the player. Ladbrokes has two distinct partners: Evolution Gaming and CWC Gaming.

The greatest benefit to this multi-partner configuration is choice for the client. It provides greater game and dealer selection, and at the very least, serves as a nice change of pace for Ladbrokes’ regular live casino clients. Nevertheless, the client only deals with Ladbrokes, so the entire experience is seamless.

Ladbrokes offers its live casino software in browser-based and in-client versions. The software is consistent though, so whether you play at Evolution Gaming or CWC Gaming, or in the client or in the browser, the experience translates. That doesn’t mean it’s the same, however. Evolution Gaming and CWC Gaming have very distinct atmospheres.

Our Experience

For the purposes of the review, we spent time at both Evolution and CWC. As mentioned, both casinos have very distinct atmospheres. Streamed from Latvia, Evolution has more than 40 tables, uses Eastern European dealers and has a very traditional theme. CWC, on the other hand, is somewhat smaller, has a more diverse dealer base and uses a modern Las Vegas-style theme.

At both locations, traffic is impressively high. Despite this, we never experienced significant wait times, even at CWC, where they have fewer tables available. We did prefer the dealers at CWC slightly.

Streamed from Costa Rica, they use both European and Latino dealers, and annunciation was impeccable.

At Evolution, which uses mostly Latvian dealers, the accents were a bit thicker, which might require an acclimation period, but they are still beautiful!

Ladbrokes offers high-definition streams at both locations. These perform excellently, and allow you to play with the stream maximized. We find this provides the greatest level of immersion. The GUI elements, such as controls and chat window, are well integrated and don’t interfere with the experience. Ladbrokes also provides a graphical mode, which uses a small stream window and a standard graphical display. This is convenient for times when an SD display is the only option because the graphical table is easier to read.

Ladbrokes Live Casino Games

Through the Evolution Gaming platform, Ladbrokes offers baccarat, blackjack, European roulette and French Gold roulette. French Gold not only allows the French bets, it has higher bet limits than the standard wheels do. Through CWC Gaming, Ladbrokes offers baccarat, blackjack, European roulette and sic bo. The bet limits are similar across both platforms: baccarat and sic bo are $1 to $5,000; blackjack is $5 to $5,000; and roulette is $0.50 to $100,000. VIP limits are also available via application, and when Ladbrokes approves the application, you have that limit available at both Evolution and CWC.

Ladbrokes Bonus

Ladbrokes offers a tiered welcome bonus, but only the first level applies to the live casino: 100 percent match on deposits from £5 to £50. New clients can take advantage of the other tiers by depositing more, but those portions of the bonus will not be clearable via the live casino. The clearing rate for the first tier is 20 times. So if a new client deposits £50, they have to play through that £50 once. Then, they can make the claim for the bonus. Ladbrokes will immediately deposit £50, and that bonus will clear for withdrawal once the client has wagered £1,000 more.

In addition, new and established players can take advantage of a £25 bonus for playing live roulette. To qualify, make a claim for the bonus, deposit £25 and then hit the live roulette tables any Friday between 8pm and 2am GMT. Once you’ve played through £50, Ladbrokes will give you a £25 bonus, and there’s no need to clear the bonus. You can withdraw it immediately.