Betfair Casino (now FanDuel Casino) has reaffirmed its commitment to the New Jersey online gambling industry through the reintroduction of its Let it Ride table game.
The online casino made headlines in February 2015, when a patron of the site took it for over $1.5 million on just one deal of the cards. The game: Let it Ride. Nearly 18 months later, the jackpot remains the biggest in regulated NJ online gambling history.
Later, Let it Ride was removed from the client.
Its recently reemergence came along with a number of new games, which together should propel the duo of Betfair Casino and Golden Nugget Casino — both of which operate under the Golden Nugget AC license — to even loftier heights.
Why was Let it Ride taken down in the first place?
Interestingly, Let it Ride’s removal from the client had nothing to do with the big win, nor the decreasing popularity of the game at land-based casinos in Atlantic City.
The game was originally provided to Betfair Casino by Bally Technologies. In late 2014, Scientific Games Corp. completed an acquisition of the slot machine provider for $5.1 billion.
As per a representative of Betfair, the operator had to wait until Scientific Games added Let it Ride to its own offering before it could be brought back online in New Jersey.
At present, the new Let it Ride features a $75 maximum bet on both the main game and the 3 card bonus, meaning that the most a player can win on any one hand is $228,000.
That’s a far cry from the $1.52 million jackpot won on February 14, 2015, when a man from Union County slapped down $500 wagers on each of the game’s three initial bets, and another $500 on the 3 card bonus, and was promptly dealt a Royal Flush in diamonds (odds of 1 in 649,740).
The good news for high rollers, is that the team is working to bring the table limits higher. This, also per the Betfair rep.
Betfair is only one of just a handful of NJ online casinos offering Let it Ride, the Golden Nugget’s branded site being another.
The game stands to be more popular online than live, as one of the main drawbacks of the live game is its lethargic pace. By contrast, online players can see somewhere along the lines of five hands per minute.
Other new games on display at Betfair Casino
Betfair Casino has done an admirable job of keeping up with, and in many instances, exceeding the rest of the New Jersey online casino market. Most recently, the operator added an eclectic blend of slots, table games and video poker titles to its already expansive library of games.
A few highlights include:
- Family Guy
- Dazzle Me
- Monopoly Big Event
- Natural Powers
- Five Play Video Poker
Worth noting, is that while multi-line video poker machines have become commonplace in the NJ market, the Betfair Casino versions offer some of the best payback percentages — only the variants offered by Tropicana Casino and its sister site Virgin Casino feature more attractive pay schedules.
Who needs local brand recognition?
With the new additions, Betfair now features 170 slots machines, 12 table games and 9 video poker machines.
That isn’t bad for the highly competitive for the NJ market, but hardly justification on its own as to why Betfair/Golden Nugget shot to the top of the industry’s revenue charts for June, jumping over the more locally known Borgata in the process.
Betfair’s experience on the marketing front looks to have also played a role in the duo’s ascent. The U.K based operator, which merged with gaming powerhouse Paddy Power in 2015, is one of the few operators conducting business in NJ to still actively run billboard ads and TV spots.
It also recently upped the monetary cap of its first deposit bonus to $1,500, and introduced a prepaid card cashiering option — both of which are compelling reasons for holdouts to try out the site.
Taken together with Golden Nugget Casino’s own extraordinary efforts in the game library and promotions department, and it becomes a bit easier to see why Betfair shares NJ’s No. 1 spot.