It would certainly appear that in this day and age, the ease of building websites has allowed for many businesses to create customized experiences for subsets of a database.
In the casino world, this usually takes the form of a geography-themed site. The casino I am reviewing today, Yebo Casino, is one of many that focus on the lucrative South African market.
However, is there anything more to these casinos than just slapping some South African colors on the same old games you can find anywhere? That is what I am planning to find out during this review.
About Yebo Casino
I will admit I got a little worried when I couldn’t find out anything about the owners of this casino. Now, I am not saying that other companies just open their doors and tell you the names of all their management; usually, it is a series of shell companies with an address in countries I have never visited. However, in the case of this casino, there isn’t an About Us page that gives you the minimum amount of information.
This isn’t a complete red flag in my books. The bottom line is that if a casino is using good software and paying its customers, then the rest of it is gravy; it isn’t like you are inviting them over to your house for dinner.
I have been able to find out a few things about the company. Yebo Casino is owned by a company called Yebo Affiliates Casino Ltd. This brand launched in 2014, which isn’t all that long ago but at least they survived the first year, which can sometimes be the most challenging for a new entrant in the market.
The casino is licensed in Curacao, which is an interesting jurisdiction considering they are South African focused. The only reason I can think of for having a Curacao license is that it was one of the easiest to receive and was a requirement for their software partner or payment processor. Whatever the case, at least they went through the effort of applying for some sort of regulatory licensing.
Who Can Play at Yebo Casino?
This was another bit of a head scratcher for me. This casino is clearly focused on the South African market, and even though they say that they are restricted to players from that country, this simply isn’t the case. In fact, there are very few countries on the restricted list. Even more confusing in this discovery is that the United States is one of the countries who cannot access the Yebo Casino games for real money. Given that they are licensed in the U.S.- friendly Curacao, I would have thought they would be eager to take American players even if they are focused on another country.
Anyway, I am moving on from my confusion. Here is the list of countries currently not allowed to play at Yebo Casino:
- Guam
- Puerto Rico
- S. Minor Outlying Islands
- S. Miscellaneous Pacific Islands
- S. Virgin Islands
- United Kingdom
- United States
Software Suppliers
For this casino offering, Yebo has chosen to work with Real Time Gaming. Anyone who has read my reviews before will know that I enjoy playing the RTG games; they have done a great job building out a full suite of slots and table games. The company is also quite liberal about who they do business with, making it one of the few software suppliers that don’t turn away any opportunity.
Real Time Gaming has been developing casino software for almost twenty years, and their full suite of games are available as a downloadable client or in Instant Play formats. They also offer a full mobile casino, although when you are playing at Yebo, you may find a few titles missing; some just don’t format well for mobile screen sizes, so RTG continues to work on finding ways to best display those games.
The Good Stuff and the Bad
PROS
- Jackpots
- Tournaments
Cons
- Pop Up Window
- Bonus T&C
Jackpots
Yebo Casino takes advantage of the Real Time Gaming network progressive games to bring you some fantastic slots jackpots. When those are converted into South African Rand (the only currency used at this casino) then the jackpot totals look even better! Seriously though, the RTG jackpot slots generate large numbers but also tend to be hit pretty frequently; you should definitely put them at the top of your list when you play at this casino.
Tournaments
I think whoever came up with the idea of the slots tournament should be entered into the Casino Hall of Fame. If you have never played one of these before, it is an excellent way to create some competition when playing your favorite slots game, rather than just feeling like you are sitting alone at a machine. Yebo Casino offers their players daily slots tournaments using many of their slots titles; you can enter many of these tournaments for FREE, so there is no excuse not to try them out!
Pop Up Window
What is this, 2005? On every page of the Yebo website, I can’t get halfway down the page before another pop-up message comes on the screen. This is particularly annoying; all I am trying to do is read the information that they posted, and yet they bombard me with offers before I can finish reading. I hope this isn’t going to be on the site forever as this can quickly become very annoying, and it certainly leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Bonus T&C
Wow. Another place where I was stopped in my tracks was when I was looking through the Terms and Conditions of their Bonuses. It would appear that to clear the bonuses at Yebo, you need to meet a wagering requirement of 40x Deposit+Bonus. This is pretty high compared to the rest of industry; I understand a new casino wanting to protect itself from bonus hunters, but this is a bit ridiculous. I guess that sooner or later they will address this and bring it down a little to make it fall more in line with its competition. Otherwise, they may find that fewer players are making deposits at their casino.
Game Selection
Slots
The RTG slot machines have been the jewel in their crown for many years. You will be able to see the quality of the development work as soon as you open one of their titles. From excellent themes to great pay line structure, nothing is missing from these games. Now, there aren’t as many titles as you might find in a Microgaming or Playtech casino, but you are sure to find something you like here, including their biggest jackpot game, Aztec Millions.
Here are some of the slots games you will find at Yebo Casino:
- Achilles
- Aladdin’s Wishes
- Aztec’s Millions
- Aztec’s Treasure
- Aztecs Treasure Feature Guarantee
- Bank on It!
- Basketbull
- Big Shot
- Bonkers!
- Boy King’s Treasure
- Bubble Bubble
- Builder Beaver
- Bulls & Bears
- Bunko Bonanza
- Caesar’s Empire
- Cash Bandits
- Cash Bandits 2
- Cleopatra’s Gold
- Coat of Arms
- Count Spectacular
- Coyote Cash
- Crazy Vegas
- Crystal Waters
- Derby Dollars
- Diamond Dozen
- Diamond Mine
- Diamond Mine Deluxe
- Double Ya Luck
- Dream Run
- Enchanted Garden
- Enchanted Garden II
- Eternal Love
- Fame and Fortune
- Field of Green
- Food Fight!
- Football Frenzy
- Fruit Bowl XXV
- Fruit Frenzy
- Fucanglong
- Funky Monkey
- Ghost Ship
- Glitz & Glamour
- Goblin’s Treasure
- God of Wealth
- Goldbeard
- Golden Glove
- Golden Lotus
- Golden Retriever
- Green Light
- Hairway to Heaven
- Happy Golden Ox of Happiness
- Haunted Opera
- Hen House
- Hidden Riches
- High Fashion
- High Rollers
- Hillbillies
- Hillbillies Cashola
- Hockey Hero
- Honey To The Bee
- Incan Goddess
- It’s a Mystery!
- Jazz Time
- Jumping Beans
- King of Swing
- Kung Fu Rooster
- Lion’s Lair
- Loch Ness Loot
- London Inspector
- Loose Caboose
- Lucha Libre
- Lucky 6
- Lucky 8
- Lucky Last
- Lucky Lightnin
- Lucky Tiger
- Mayan Queen
- Medal Tally
- Megaquarium
- Megasaur
- Mermaid Queen
- Mice Dice
- Mister Money
- Monster Mayhem 50-Line
- Mystic Dragon
- Orc vs. Elf
- Outta This World
- Panda Magic
- Paradise Dreams
- Paris Beauty
- PayDirt!
- Penguin Power
- Pharaoh’s Gold
- Popinata
- Prince of Sherwood
- Purrfect Pets
- Rain Dance
- Realm of Riches
- Red Sands
- Regal Riches
- Sea Captain
- Secret Symbol
- Sevens and Stripes
- Shark School
- Small Fortune
- Snowmania
- Sunken Treasure
- Super 6
- Sweet 16
- Tally Ho
- Texan Tycoon
- The Big Bopper
- The Elf Wars
- The Naughty List
- The Nice List
- The Three Stooges
- Treasure Chamber
- T-Rex
- Triple 7 Inferno
- Triple Toucan
- Triple Twister
- Triton’s Treasure
- Victory
- Vikings Voyage
- Witch’s Brew
- Wok & Roll
- Wooden Boy
- Year of Fortune
- Zhanshi
Table Games
While the sheer volume of Table Games isn’t overwhelming at Yebo Casino, they do have all the basics covered. I have been playing the RTG Blackjack tables for years; the speed of the game is great, and the smoothness of the card delivery (yes, that is something you should care about) gives the game a great look and feel. Here are all the table games you will find at this casino:
- Baccarat
- Blackjack
- Blackjack + Perfect Pairs
- Caribbean Hold’em Poker
- Caribbean Stud Poker
- European Blackjack
- Face Up 21
- Let Em Ride
- Match Play 21
- Pai Gow Poker
- American Roulette
- Craps
- European Roulette
- French Roulette
- Pontoon
- Suit Em Up Blackjack
- Super 21
- Tri-Card Poker
- Vegas Three Card Rummy
Video Poker
No matter what happens when I start to review an online casino, I always manage to get myself stuck playing video poker for much longer than I expected. This was again the case when I played the Yebo Casino version (it didn’t hurt that I hit a few hands early on in the session). They offer a good selection of variants, plus most of them can be played in multi-hand formats, all the way up to a 52 hand machine for those of you junkies like me!
- Aces and Eights
- All American Poker
- Bonus Deuces Wild
- Bonus Poker
- Double Bonus Poker
- Double Double Bonus
- Jackpot Poker
- European Slot Poker
- Jacks or Better
- Joker Poker
- Loose Deuces
- Mystery Bonus Poker
- Pick ’em Poker
- Sevens Wild
- 7 Stud Poker
Promotions
With a great offering of games, sometimes a casino can forget that you still need some interesting offers to attract players to become depositors. Yebo Casino has a few regular promotions listed on their website, along with some teasers of other promotions that may be coming. I am going to look at a couple of these offers here.
Welcome Bonus
The Welcome Bonus is a critical part of the player journey at an online casino. This is a chance for the casino to make the player feel important by offering them something valuable just for making a deposit. Well, at Yebo Casino, they go one step further, giving you 50 Free Spins just for registering an account! After you are done with those spins, you are given a three-step deposit bonus:
- 150% match up to R2250
- 75% match up to R3750
- 50% match up to R6000
Personally, I like when a bonus is split into multiple deposits; it doesn’t seem outrageous like some of the massive one-time bonuses can be. Again, you need to be wary of the high playthrough requirement for these bonuses, and that they are weighted towards slots players, but aside from that this a decent Welcome Bonus.
Lucky 13 Rebate Program
Well here is something you don’t see every day: a rebate on losses that doesn’t require jumping through a bunch of hoops! Personally, I prefer these promotions to deposit bonuses as I like having the insurance of having some of my potential losses returned to me.
Here are the details of the program:
The Yebo Casino Lucky 13 Daily Rebate Program is our daily rewards program that will pay you a guaranteed 13% on ALL losses made from deposits without a bonus, EVERYDAY!
For each and every valid deposit players make in the casino without claiming a coupon or bonus, automatically receive 13% of your lost deposit(s) straight back into your account the very next morning.
There is no requirement to opt-in, and you don’t need to request your daily rebates, it’s automatically added to your account every morning based on your previous day’s lost deposits.
Daily Promotions
The casino promises you that you will never get bored there with all the great daily promotions you will find via email. This obviously gives them the flexibility of changing offers all the time rather than having an offer left up on a web page for a longer period of time. I have enrolled for the emails, so I will update this review as promotions start hitting my inbox.
Banking
As I mentioned earlier, the Yebo Casino only uses South African Rand as currency, but that won’t stop you from making a deposit in your local currency. I would just make sure your payment method doesn’t charge you a fee for converting the currency; if they do, you should email the casino and see if they will give you a credit for that charge as many will accommodate that request.
Deposit Options
- EcoPayz
- MasterCard
- Neteller
- Skrill
- Visa
- Wire Transfer
- Easy EFT
- SID
Withdrawal Options
- Bank Wire Transfer
- EcoPayz
- Neteller
- Skrill
- Easy EFT
- SID
Another thing to take note of is that there is a restriction on withdrawals in the early stages of your lifespan with Yebo Casino. Until you have deposited R 1,000 in total, you can only request a withdrawal of 20x your accumulated deposits. It does seem like an odd rule, but really it just limits their exposure to bonus hunters and jackpot winners.
Comp Program
The Comp Program at Yebo Casino uses the same scheme as all the Real Time Gaming casinos. You earn points for playing real money games, and you can convert these points into cash at a rate of 100 points for $1.
VIP Program
Yebo touts that they have an excellent VIP program for their players, but that is where the public information stops. This drives me mad; what is the point of having a carrot for players to chase if there are no details about what they get? The program requires that you send their team an email request, which again is a bit cumbersome. I hope the casino figures this out and comes up with a better solution in the future.
This casino offers you 24/7 support for any issues you may have. You can reach them via email, Live Chat (which is stationed at the top right of every web page) and also by telephone (which is toll-free if you live in South Africa; the rest of you are likely going to be paying some sort of long distance charge).
Would I Play at Yebo Casino?
Overall, this is a great casino option for our readers. The website has a clean look and feel with a lot of great information (except about their VIP program). The Real Time Gaming selection of games is vast and robust, giving you a great playing experience. Jackpots and Tournaments further enhance the overall enjoyment you will feel when playing here. Yes, they have a very high wagering requirement for their bonuses, but they also offer insurance in the form of their 13% Rebate program.
In conclusion, I am happy to recommend Yebo Casino to you as an option for your deposits. If you decide to play here, please send us your feedback, and we will incorporate it in the updates to this review!