In US states where online gambling is not yet legal, the best alternative is sweepstakes casinos.
Also known as social casinos, sweepstakes casinos give you that same online casino experience, minus the real money wagering game in, game out. With sweepstakes casinos, these take on sweepstakes laws. Meaning, real money can be won at these, but only in sweepstakes fashion. Check out our following Sweepstakes casino suggestions, Pulsz & Rivers Casino4Fun.
Best Sweepstakes Casinos For Online Sweeps Games
These types of online casinos will have a virtual currency that you will play with. Some of them have two kinds, with one of them having the ability to be exchanged for real money. To win money, however, you’ll need to participate in sweepstakes and leaderboard contests, but the games you’ll play are all your online casino favorites!
Slots
Slots are the lifeblood of sweepstakes casinos. In fact, there is a sweepstakes casino, LuckyLand Slots, that is based totally around them. With sweepstakes casinos, a lot of slot titles will be proprietary. This means that the sweepstakes casino itself developed the game. However, it is not uncommon for sweepstakes casinos to enlist big-name game developers who work with real money casinos to create games. With sweepstakes casinos, games, including slots, can be locked but opened and available to play as you continue to play.
Below are 10 slot games at sweepstakes casinos you should check out, including the sweepstakes casino:
- Big Bucks Bandits: Chumba Casino
- Odin Infinity Reels: Chumba Casino
- Madame Tarot: LuckyLand Slots
- Book of Ra: Hard Rock Social Casino
- The Java Cafe: Funzpoints
- Stampede Fury: Chumba Casino
- Snow Queen in 3D: LuckyLand Slots
- Prosperity Dragon: Hard Rock Social Casino
- Start Your Engines: Funzpoints
- Diamond Panther: Chumba Casino
Table Games
Depending on the sweepstakes casino, you’ll be able to play many of the classic table games found at online casinos. These games play precisely the same as their real money counterparts, with the exception of using virtual currencies. Aside from that, Sweepstakes table games are identical to both online and retail casino table games in terms of everything from gameplay to table limits.
These are the most popular table games you’ll find on Sweepstakes Casino sites:
- Blackjack
- Roulette
- Poker
Blackjack
The classic game of 21 is available in the sweepstakes casino format. In sweepstakes casino Blackjack, players wager coins instead of cash. Beating the dealer nets you more of these coins.
Most sweepstakes casino sites use two varieties of coins: Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins. Depending on the sweepstakes casino, specific amounts of Sweeps Coins can be exchanged for valuable prizes, including real cash.
If you are out of coins, you can purchase more with real money. Only Gold Coins may be purchased. However, Sweeps Coins are often given as a bonus with your purchase.
The Gold Coins themselves have no value and are used to wager for fun only. Think of them as practice for when you’re ready to wager your Sweeps Coins for a chance to win real prizes!
Roulette
Roulette is another wildly popular table game that fits very neatly within the sweepstakes casino format. There are minimum bet requirements no matter which type of coin the player wagers. Different areas of the board will have larger requirements than others.
Once a player decides where to place their bets, the wheel spins, and the player waits with anticipation to see where the ball will land. If it lands on a number or color that corresponds to any of the player’s bets, those bets are paid. The payouts are the same as they are on retail and online casino Roulette tables.
The unpredictability of this game is a part of its charm. And, for many gamblers, the suspense of waiting for the ball to drop and the thrill of guessing correctly is an experience that is unsurpassed by any other game.
It says a lot about Roulette that the suspense is still intact even when playing without real money. Don’t believe us? Change your wager from Gold Coins to Sweeps Coins and see if you aren’t sweating bullets.
Video Poker
Video Poker is essentially like playing real poker, but without the opposing human element. This is a popular game type at regular, real money online casinos and can be played at social casinos.
In video poker, you are playing against the computer. This form of poker typically includes draw poker game types. Video Poker is usually a bit more fast-paced and is sometimes considered more challenging to win. However, that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most wildly popular casino games available today.
Video Poker is the kind of game where players will find themselves thinking they’ll play just one more hand, and the next thing they know, another thirty minutes have passed. This is due in no small part to the endearing simplicity of the game.
Players will find a variety of Video Poker games across the various sweepstakes casino sites. Some of these titles include Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild, among others.
How Do You Play Video Poker?
In Video Poker, the objective is to acquire the best five-card hand possible. The game begins once you place your wager. From there, you are dealt a five card hand. You can now select any number of cards to hold.
Next comes the draw, where the player will receive anywhere from 0 to 5 cards, depending on how many cards the player has decided to hold onto. The number of cards received is 5 minus the number of cards the player decides to hold. After the draw, the player’s hand is evaluated.
Most Video Poker games consider only a pair of jacks or better to be a winning hand. If the player has jacks or better, they are paid according to the pay table. The higher the hand ranking, the higher the payout.
Online Poker
To play online poker in a sweepstakes casino setting, the only place you’ll be able to do so is Global Poker. Global Poker awards players Gold Coins for wins instead of actual cash, but again, there are sweepstakes elements that come into play.
Like other sweepstakes casino sites, Global Poker has Sweeps Coins in addition to their Gold Coin currency. Sweeps Coins cannot be purchased, but are given as a bonus when players purchase Gold Coins. These Sweeps Coins can be used to play tournaments and cash game-styled poker games.
Even as a sweepstakes casino, Global Poker has a very wide selection of game types for poker. The poker games you’ll find include Texas Hold’Em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Bounty Poker, Jackpot Sit’N’Go, Caribbean Poker, and Crazy Pineapple.
The game lobby looks like your typical online poker room, including the number of seats, blinds, and filtering options in terms of format, limits, and buy-in. But newcomers to Global Poker may be surprised by its robust tournament selection. The sweepstakes poker site offers daily and weekly multi-table tournaments (MTTs). Players will also find regularly occurring tournament series on Global Poker.
Sweepstakes Poker Tournaments (Weekly)
Global Poker’s premier tournament is undoubtedly their Sunday Scrimmage. A weekly MTT, the Sunday Scrimmage has a guaranteed prize pool of 50,000 Sweeps Coins (SC) and a buy-in of 218 SC. Global Poker also offers numerous satellite tournaments for the Sunday Scrimmage. By competing in these satellite tournaments, players can earn a seat in the big tournament for 2.20 SC.
Global Poker also offers a weekly Bonanza tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of 5,000 SC. While the prize pool is only a fraction of the Sunday Scrimmage, the buy-in to the Bonanza is only 0.11 SC!
There is some fine print involved, however. Before players can enter this tournament, they must first see at least 500 flops during the week.Fortunately, this requirement will be much less costly than it sounds. Any number of these flops can come from Gold Coin tables, which are a much less precious commodity than Sweeps Coins.
Sweepstakes Poker Tournaments (Daily)
In addition to these very good weekly tournament offerings, Global Poker also has two tournaments which occur every day. These are their Daily Hundo tournaments. They are as follows:
- 100 SC Guaranteed with a buy-in of 1 SC
- 500 SC Guaranteed with a buy-in of 5 SC
These two daily tournaments have a play requirement similar to the Bonanza tournament. But the requirement for these Daily Hundos is much lower. Players only need to play 25 hands on Gold Coin cash tables to unlock these daily tournaments.
Conclusion
When it comes to sweepstakes casinos, some people may write them off as unimportant. While that is unfortunate (because sweepstakes casinos are pretty popular), the purpose of this article was to show players who want to play an online casino a rock-solid alternative if they don’t live in a real-money state.
Here, we’ve also illustrated that sweepstakes casinos are not gimmicks and that the games offered have the same rules as the real-money casino contemporaries but are just packaged differently.
If real money online casinos are not available in your state, you now know of another valid option to help scratch the online casino itch.