AlmaBet Review: Scam or safe?

AlmaBet is an online casino and sportsbook, which has just opened its virtual doors. One of the most exciting times to find a casino is when it has just launched, because that usually means you will be able to play the newest games and benefit from exclusive promotions.

But while new casino launches usually mean better services overall, that does not seem to be the case with AlmaBet. In fact, we can say that it seems like the operator of the casino needed more time to iron out some of the issues with the house. For example, there is nothing on the page which should be listing the Bonuses of the house. There are bonuses, though – it is just that finding their conditions is difficult. Another issue is the very limited amount of payment methods that are available.

That is not to say that AlmaBet does no also do a couple of things right, though. It has launched with a license, from one of the most popular regulatory bodies in the world. Additionally, the casino has a robust selection of games, and offers betting on popular and niche sport events. The question we need to answer, then, is whether the casino is worth checking out or not. Join us as we do just that in our full review below:

Bonuses

As we said, finding the conditions of the bonuses was quite annoying. In fact, we only learned of their existence when we checked the Deposits page, which lets you opt in to one of four promotions. After also scouring the Terms and Conditions of the casino, we managed to put together the following table, which outlines the promotions that are available with the house:

As you can see, there are four of them in total – two exclusive Welcome Bonuses and two regular Reload bonuses. Here is what they can offer you:

• The Casino Welcome Bonus is a 100% boost for your funds, but its maximum is not clarified. However, we do know that it requires a pretty low minimum deposit – just 20 TRY. Usually, houses take a bit over that. The wagering requirement for the bonus is also pretty reasonable, as it sits at 30x. We should mention, though, that this is the generic requirement we found in the Terms and Conditions. It was specified that promotions can have their own requirements, which would override the generic ones. In the absence of any other information about this bonus, we can only assume it to need to be wagered 30x, though. Other casinos require a 30x-40x wager for similar bonuses, so we can say that AlmaBet is competitive in this regard.
• Similarly, the Sports Welcome Bonus is just advertised as a 125% multiplier for your qualifying deposit. The same minimum deposit is required. Also, as per the Terms and Conditions of the casino, there is a 15x wagering requirement for the deposit offer. This is not really as competitive as the on with the previous bonus, though. Usually, sports bonuses need to be wagered on games with specific odds, and have requirements which are around 10x at most, in turn.
• The two Recurring bonuses, the Sports Reload Bonus and the Casino Reload Bonus each claim to add 5% of your deposit to your account. This seems like a pretty small multiplier, and who knows what the maximum bonus amount even is! We are definitely not impressed with these small promotions – especially given the fact that they still require the same 15x and 30x wagering requirements as the Welcome bonus.

Overall, we are very displeased with the promotional policy of this casino! There are a lot of details about it which are missing. For instance, whether there is a cash out limit or not is never specified. How many times can you claim the Welcome bonuses and can you receive both of them are two more questions which AlmaBet does not bother answering.

For a bonus policy to be good, the casino needs to be transparent with its players. Even if the conditions around the promotion are more restrictive than average, we would still rate the promotion higher than the ones here.

Additionally, we should also mention that another huge issue of these promotions is that they are just generic and boring. There are not even Free Spins as part of any of the promotions! Better bonus policies usually also include different cashback incentives, fun Loyalty programs and so on. But we would ultimately like to be charitable to the casino. It is possible that bonuses are something that will be added later on, because the house is still so new. It really should have had its promotions sorted out before launch, though!

License

Regulation is probably the only aspect of this casino we have no notes on! It is excellent in that regard. Here is what the house has to say about who oversees it:

Gaming Curacao is one of the four master license holders in Curacao, a small Caribbean nation of the same name. This nation has become one of the most important destinations in the online casino world, and its regulatory bodies oversee the vast majority of houses nowadays. However, before we explain why that is, we'd like to show you the license that AlmaBet operates under, so we can verify its claim from above. Here is what that license looks like:

So why is Gaming Curacao such a popular license issuer with casino operators? Well, when it comes to regulation, there are also other bodies which stifle said operators and prevent them from offering certain bonuses or games to their players. These bodies are the stricter MGA and UKGC, overseeing the Maltese and the UK's gambling sectors. Then, there are jurisdictions which do not regulate online casino play at all, like Santa Lucia. This means there can be no guarantee for the safety of the player with the houses which run from there.

In the end, a balance between being regulated and being able to protect players, as well as not being overly restricted by said regulation, is required. And that is where the Curacao regulators come in. They are more permissive as to what casino operators can do, while still offering you a series of benefits. Here is what those benefits to the player look like:

• There is a lot of data you need to share with online casino. That is necessary to pass their KYC checks, which in turn help combat and prevent financial crime, like, for instance, money-laundering. However, an often overlooked question is what happens to your data when it is gathered by the casino operator? Since that information is valuable, to you and to hackers alike, the houses licensed with Gaming Curacao need to store it safely, using some of the strictest encryption protocols they have access to. This means the possibility of a data leak, or breach, is very small!
• Secondly, the games you can play at licensed casinos have been certified to be provably fair. What does that mean? Well, the vast majority of casino games nowadays use random number generators to produce the outcomes of every bet. The only notable exception from that are live table games, like poker. These generators are complex mathematical algorithms, and it is important to the regulatory bodies that there is no bias in them. That is why said algorithms need to be submitted for audits by every license holder. The audits are performed by independent professionals, hand-picked by the licensing bodies. This ultimately means that when you are playing with licensed casinos you are going to be playing actual games of chance!
• Finally, but definitely not least important, are the protections from problem gambling which casinos need to implement. These protections include two main sets of measures that houses need to comply with. The first set is aimed at providing players with sufficient information so that they can determine whether they have developed such problematic tendencies, as well as seek help. The second set of protections is the self-exclusion measures you will have access to with licensed houses. These are pretty varied, and range from setting custom deposit limits to even being able to close down your account, should you feel the need to do so! This set of policies helps create a safer and more mature online gambling space.

Overall, we are quite happy with the regulation of this casino. In general, we consider licensed houses to be a safer bet, and to offer a better service. Nevertheless, let's get back to our review of the casino. Here are two lists – one of the languages you can view its website in, and one where the house does not accept players from, due to regulatory rules:

Languages: English, Spanish, Turkish

Restricted countries: Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, Curaçao, France, Iran, Iraq, Netherlands, Sint Maarten (Dutch part), Spain, United Kingdom, United States, United States Minor Outlying Islands, Virgin Islands, U.S.

Deposit and Withdrawal

The list of payment methods you can use with this casino is very short. There are a couple of Turkish payment providers, through which you can deposit with credit card or bank transfer. Also, there are a number of cryptocurrencies you can cash in with. Here is an outline of the payment policy as well as a list of the accepted currencies:

Currencies: Turkish Lira (TRY), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Binance Coin (BNB)

The fact that the only account currency is the Turkish Lira is somewhat annoying. Usually houses offer players a range of currencies, and it is best to pick your native one, whenever available. Otherwise, you will need to cover conversion fees whenever you cash in. With just the Lira as the only option, every player outside of Turkey, and even the ones inside the country cashing in with crypto, will need to cover this fee.

As for the deposit conditions, crypto payments have a minimum deposit of 1 TRY. As for the rest of the payment methods, AlmaBet requires 50 TRY for credit card payments and 100 TRY for bank transfers.  These are all very low amounts of money overall, and much lower than the industry average.

There are no fees, but if the player's payment incurs any third party charges, they will need to be covered by that player. These can be the miner fees, owed in any crypto transaction, or processing fees from the unknown Turkish payment providers which handle bank transfers and credit card payments for AlmaBet.

Now, let's take a look at the withdrawal conditions:

The house has a pretty good set of those, and the minimum amount you can cash in is set to 50 TRY, for both of the available methods. These methods are bank transfers and crypto, as withdrawals to a credit card are not possible. This is a comparatively low minimum too, and the maximum of 50 000 TRY per transaction is great. We should mention there is a daily withdrawal limit of €10 000 as well.

However, since withdrawals take two days to be processed, and since you can only have one pending request to cash out at a time, as per the Terms and Conditions of the casino, the actual limit is just 50 000 TRY each two days.

There are no fees by the casino itself, but what we said about third party charges stands true here as well.

There is a requirement to wager whatever you have deposited at least once to cash out, which is reasonable, and a pretty standard AML policy. What is less reasonable is the following clause:

It limits your maximum daily wins to €100 000. Now that is a pretty huge amount of money, but we always see such restrictions as going against the purpose of playing games of chance in the first place.

There is no information about an inactivity fee and it is possible that AlmaBet does not charge that kind of tax.

Games and Game Suppliers

The list of Game suppliers with AlmaBet is decently long, and we counted around 60 of them in total. Here is who these suppliers are:

Game providers: 1spin4win, AvatarUX, Betsolutions, CT Interactive, Fugaso, Ggames, KA Gaming, Merkur, NetGame, OneTouch, 1x2gaming, Belatra, BGaming, Endorphina, GameArt, Habanero, Kalamba, MPlay, Nolimit City, 3 Oaks, Onlyplay, Bet2Tech, Blueprint, Espresso Games, Gamebeat, Hacksaw, Leap-Gaming, Mr Slotty, 5 Men, Betixon, Caleta, Corps, Igrosoft, Lucky, Nucleus, Oryx, Amigo Gaming, Betsoft, Evoplay, Gamomat, Iron Dog Studio, Mascot, NetEnt, Petersons, PGSoft, Quickspin, Revolver Gaming, Stakelogic, Wazdan, Platipus, Red Rake, Salsa Technology, Thunderkick, Wizard, Playson, Red Tiger Gaming, Smartsoft Gaming, Tom Horn, Yggdrasil, Playtech, ReelPlay, Spinomenal, Turbogames, PragmaticPlay, Reevo, Spribe, Other

Usually, new houses manage to partner with with 50 of the developers at most, so we can say AlmaBet is a bit ahead of its competition in this regard. Here is what games you can play:

• Slots: The Slots library struck us as petty well-organized, and you can filter out the games by the mechanics they feature. That way, if you are looking for Bonus Buy games, you can find them among the rest of the Slots. The games can also be sorted by their Suppliers, and there are some great classics among them. We are talking about slots like Big Bass Bonanza, Dog House: Megaways, Book of Dead, Wolf's Gold and Gates of Olympus, along thousands of others!
• Table Games: No casino experience would be complete without a couple of Table games, and AlmaBet does deliver on that, with a bunch of versions of Baccarat, Poker, Blackjack, Roulettes and Sic Bo, playable with live or virtual dealers
• Game Shows: There are a couple of Game Show lobbies listed, but they do not seem to be working all too well at the time of writing. We did not manage to access any of the Game shows that AlmaBet had to offer.
• Crash Games: Spaceman, Aviator and Mines are just a couple of the games which are available in this section of the casino's website!

As far as the Sports betting is concerned, we consider that the sportsbook is quite decent. You can find thousands of events to prematch bet on, as well as a surprising amount of live games, from major markets like Football and Basketball, to more niche local events. You can place bets on Aussie rules Rugby for instance! There is a whole separate section for eSports, where you can bet in real time or before MLG events on games like DOTA 2, LOL and other massive esports.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, AlmaBet is a decent enough casino if you wish to deposit using the Turkish Lira. However, other players will find its payment policies restrictive. There is also a lot of issues with its bonuses, and so, we cannot really recommend the house. Granted, it also does get a lot of things right, like its excellent license and its robust games library. Overall though, there are better options out there.