Complete Lucky Nugget Casino Review

The very first phrase you see written on the site prominently in the top left-hand corner is “Established 1998.” Immediately, this gets a site a ton of brownie points in our book because longevity in this industry is only achieved through offering a great product with great customer service. Without happy and long-term customers, an online casino will crumble within a few years or a few months and slowly fade from view.

Seeing that the Lucky Nugget Casino had been in business for almost 20 years had us excited to continue the review. The initial issue, though, was that we could have guessed the site had been around for 20 years just by looking at the homepage. The site’s homepage was a menacing wall of text with an aesthetic design straight out of 1998.

Now, if this is the first site you’ve ever visited, you’re probably going to leave and look for somewhere else to play immediately. It’s easy for a new player to gauge the site based solely on the first impression which is totally understandable. The reasons we are not so quick to dismiss the Lucky Nugget Casino are two-fold. One, it’s extremely rare to find sites that have been successfully in business for this long and that carries a ton of weight with us. Two, we’ve seen A LOT of sites with awful homepages that still provide a phenomenal product.

The old adage of “Don’t judge a book by its cover” continues to hold true in this regard to online gaming sites. To get to the bottom of everything, we began our intensive “vetting” and review process. As you may already be able to tell, we do not just give you the positives about a site. We give you the honest scoop, period. Frankly, we have zero problems bashing a site into oblivion if we have to and zero problems giving a site credit where credit is due.

The point is that with our reviews you’re going to get information and analysis that you can ACTUALLY use. Too many review sites allow companies to pay for glowing reviews which just means you’re getting false information and are stuck holding the bag after a terrible experience with an online casino. This is NEVER the case with our reviews. We’re going to give it to you straight, regardless of if that is good, bad, or even sometimes ugly.

Ratings Breakdown

Overall

The Lucky Nugget Casino instantly got brownie points from us because they’ve been successfully in business for almost 20 years which is impossible to do in this industry unless you are treating your customers well and taking care of them. On top of that, game selection at the casino is strong including a lot of the expensive (for them to buy) branded games from Microgaming.

While all of these are big positives and definite cause for you to check out the site, there were a lot of things we’d like to see improvements on. First, we’d like to see the user interface for the site upgraded to be more current and easily to navigate. When you actually get where the games are, though, this is light years better, but we need to see congruence throughout the site. We’d also like to see some minor improvements with customer service options (they’re good, not great) and some expansion in the bonus department.

Overall, the site was “O.K.” and is one of those sites that may be a perfect fit for some due to the immense about of games offered but might be a miss for others due to the initial issues with the user interface. At the end of the day, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the site has been operational successfully for almost 20 years and with 4 million + players online at the time we were writing this review.

Game Variety

Though it took us a while to find them, it’s hard to deny that the game variety at Lucky Nugget Casino was strong. With over 300 different slot offerings (and possibly more on the download client), 20+ video poker offerings, 9 roulette offerings, 30 blackjack offerings, and live dealer options, you’d have to be crazy if you couldn’t find a game you liked at the casino. The games were all of high quality, and several of the slot games were branded.

The reason we docked a point was that they did not have a lot of popular table games that we would like to see like craps or any other table games outside of blackjack and roulette for that matter. A few additional table games were offered in the live casino but were not available as a non-live dealer game. We’d really like to see them expand this out before we can give them a full five-star rating.

Banking

Lucky Nugget Casino had a ton of different options available for deposits and withdrawals which are always great to see. The issue we had was that they did not list the fees or limits associated with each of these options. While we don’t think they are trying to hide anything, this is information that is extremely important when judging whether or not a website has great banking options or not. The majority of the industry has free deposits and some sort of fees on withdrawals, but there’s a growing trend of sites that are waiving all fees across the board. We’d love to know whether or not Lucky Nugget is part of the majority or the minority. Due to the lack of readily posted information, we had to dock some points from their banking rating.

Bonuses

The casino had several different promotions including welcome deposit bonuses and a few game specific promotions for you to take advantage of. We were a little confused/off-put that they had several promotions that were listed that looked to just be ads for the bonuses already offered in the games. We also would have liked to see a bit more creativity in the bonuses, but as always, we’re happy to see some healthy deposit bonuses and any forms of free stuff.

Customer Service

The site offers 24/7 live chat and email support to its customers and visitors. Usually, this would score at least a 4 on our scale; however, we weren’t completely satisfied when we tried out the live chat. The agent was friendly and prompt, but we didn’t get the answers we were hoping for or offers of additional help from an elevated agent or supervisor. That being said, we would imagine that most requests would be handled well by their customer support based on our interactions, so we only docked a half point for that. The additional point off is because we would like to see phone support added as that is becoming much more of a standard across the industry.

User Interface

This was a tough one to score for the site because it felt as if there were two different sites rolled into one. When we first visited the main landing page of the site, the user interface was awful. It was hard to navigate, contained just a wall of text, and was not visually appealing at all. However, once we got to the instant play section of the site (which took a while to find), the interface was significantly better and felt like a totally different site. There were still a few issues with that site (scroll bar way too small to click, multiple lists of games in one), but overall it was much better than the initial. We probably would score the first part of the site a 2/5 and the second part a 3.75 or 4/5. We averaged them to get the 3 out of 5.

Slots

While getting ready to review the slots portion of the website something became painfully clear. The poor layout of the homepage continues throughout more of the internal pages as we searched for the slot games. That being said, the casino has a downloadable client that we’re going to focus on for the rest of this review. This is mainly because they say that not all of their offerings are available via the instant play option and also because navigating the site is making our eyes bleed.

While downloading the Lucky Nugget Casino client, we had some more bad news. The download client did not work correctly and would never load. We tried downloading it multiple times, and it would fail to open several times and kick some scary looking error messages our way. Because of this, we were forced to go back to the instant play option which they say does not have all of the options mentioned.

Once we got to the instant play section, the layout and graphics did get considerable better. Frankly, it looked like a new site within a site. The slot games were organized into a Popular section, Jackpots section, and a general Slots section. The games were alphabetized and searchable which are both positives and making us potentially start warming back up to the site.

The one interesting thing about the slots list was that it was alphabetical, but there were two sets of games on the same list, so it ran from A to Z once and then A to Z once again. If you’re looking for a game, be aware of this and keep scrolling.

One other side thing that we weren’t huge fans of was the scroll bar on the right side of the screen to get through the games was about a millimeter thick. You had to have expert aim to be able to grab the bar and scroll through the games. If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, that will work and fix this problem, but if you have a cheaper mouse or your scroll wheel is broken like ours is from years of online poker slamming, you’re going to struggle to scroll.

Regarding game quality, things were great for the site. They had a ton of options which included newer, high-quality games as well as several branded games (games designed after TV and Movies). We’ve included the complete list of games available on the instant play side of Lucky Nugget Casino here. Remember, the site claims they have more offerings in the downloadable client, but we could not get it to work properly on multiple tries.

Normally, a site will have their Jackpot slots listed in the main slots list as well so that you can find the games in both places. The Lucky Nugget Casino for some reason had the Jackpot slots ONLY in the Jackpot slots section. This isn’t really that big of a deal, but we have listed those here as well as they’re omitted from the list above.

• Cash Splash Progressive – 5 Reel
• Major Millions Progressive – 5 Reel
• Mega Moolah Progressive
• Treasure Nile Progressive
• Cash Splash Progressive
• Cyberstud Progressive
• Fruit Fiesta – 5 Reel
• Fruit Fiesta Progressive
• Jackpot Deuces Progressive
• King Cashalot
• Lots of Loot Progressive
• Lotsaloot – 5 Reel
• Major Millions Progressive
• Mega Moolah – Isis
• Tunzamunni
• Wow Pot Progressive

Casino Games

The casino game offerings at Lucky Nugget Casino were equally as vast as the slot offerings. They’re definitely toward the higher end of variations offered for roulette and for blackjack. We would have liked to see a few more popular table games outside of roulette and blackjack, but the selection in those categories was still strong.

The casino games were broken up into Video Poker, Roulette, Blackjack, and a separate Live Casino tab. The Live Casino tab housed all of the live dealer games offered by the Lucky Nugget Casino. If you’re unfamiliar with live dealer games, you’re definitely going to want to check them out. Through the use of streaming technology, you’re able to take a seat at a real live table from the comfort of your own home. All of your decisions are made from your computer or mobile device, and then the action all takes place at a real table set up with a real dealer somewhere in the world. This option is great for anyone still skeptical about online gaming who wants to see the action take place with real cards and real roulette wheels.

The game options available in each category on the instant play platform were as follows:

Video Poker

• Aces & Eights Video Poker
• Aces and Faces
• Deuces Wild
• Deuces Wild Bonus Video Poker
• Double Double Bonus Poker
• Jacks or Better
• All Aces Video Poker
• All American Video Poker
• Bonus Poker
• Bonus Poker Deluxe
• Deuces and Joker
• Double Bonus Poker
• Double Joker
• Hold’Em High Gold
• Joker Poker
• Louisiana
• PowerPoker – Aces and Faces
• PowerPoker – Deuces and Joker
• PowerPoker – Deuces Wild
• PowerPoker – Double Joker
• PowerPoker – Jacks or Better
• PowerPoker – Joker Poker
• PowerPoker – Tens Or Better
• Tens Or Better

Roulette

• American Roulette
• European Roulette Gold
• French Roulette
• Roulette
• Multi Wheel European Roulette Gold
• Premier Roulette
• Premier Roulette Diamond Edition
• Spingo
• Wheel of Riches

Blackjack Games

• Atlantic City Blackjack Gold
• Classic Blackjack
• Classic Blackjack Gold
• European Blackjack Gold
• Vegas Single Deck Blackjack Gold
• Vegas Strip Blackjack Gold
• Atlantic City Blackjack
• Atlantic City Multi-Hand Blackjack
• Big 5 Blackjack Gold
• Blackjack – Multihand
• Bonus Blackjack Multi Hand Gold
• Double Exposure BlackJack
• Double Exposure BlackJack Gold
• European BlackJack
• European Blackjack Redeal Gold
• Hi Lo 13 European Blackjack Gold
• High Limit European BlackJack
• High Streak Blackjack Gold
• Multi Hand – Atlantic City Blackjack Gold
• Multi Hand Perfect Pairs European Blackjack Gold
• Multi-hand Black Jack Gold Series
• Multi-hand European Black Jack Gold Series
• Multi-hand Vegas Downtown Black Jack Gold Series
• Premier Hi Lo 13 Euro Blackjack Gold
• Premier High Streak Euro Blackjack Gold
• Spanish 21 BlackJack Gold
• Spanish BlackJack
• Super Fun 21
• Vegas Downtown Blackjack

Live Dealer Games

• Blackjack
• Blackjack
• Roulette
• Baccarat
• Blackjack
• Casino-Hold-em
• 3-Card-Poker
• Stud-Poker

Banking Options

The Lucky Nugget Casino has a lot of different banking options available, and they vary by which country you are in. The site did not have limits and fees posted for each method, and we were unable to get that information from anywhere on the site. We would highly recommend contacting support to get things clarified before you get set up to make a withdrawal so that you use the best method available.

Options Available

Bonus Promotions

The site had several promotions including specific game promotions and deposit bonus promotions.

Deposit Welcome Bonuses

The site gave you the option of choosing between two different deposit bonuses. It looks like you have to make your selection at the beginning of the process as there are two big Claim Now buttons when you first come to the site.

1. 100% Deposit Match up to $1000
2. 150% Deposit Match up to $200

Life of Riches

For every £50 you wager, you get one entry into a drawing to win a piece of 1,000 free credits. This is a monthly promotion.

Lucky Draw

Players will earn drawing tickets for depositing and playing on the site. 10 players will win a share of 200,000 loyalty points from the site.

The site listed several other “promotions” that looked to be nothing more than the bonuses already available on the games. It’s possible we are misreading this, but it was a little deceiving.

Customer Service

For customer service, the Lucky Nugget Casino offers email support and 24/7 live chat support. We tested out the live chat, and we drew some positives and negatives from it. The positives were that we were able to get a real agent on the line fairly quickly. They were friendly and prompt to try and assist us with our question. The problem was that we didn’t get much help with our question and they didn’t offer any other options afterward besides “Have a great day.”

Our request was a bit strange, so maybe we’re being a little hard on them, but it would have been nice to see them elevate our request to a supervisor or someone that might have been able to help us. Our guess is that with more “normal” requests you will get better service, but anything that confuses your agent doesn’t look like it’s going to be elevated to the right level properly.

The site also had no phone support which isn’t a huge deal, but phone support is becoming more and more standard in the industry, so this dinosaur in the industry is probably going to have to get with the program sometime in the near future if they want to continue competing.

Conclusion

The Lucky Nugget Casino was an interesting one that almost warranted a complete rewrite once we found our way into the actual game section of the site. The home page of the site is a nightmare to look at, and the navigation of the site is rough. Getting to the actual games was a challenge as we couldn’t get the download client to work and finding the instant play client took way too long.

However, once we got to the instant play client, the game selection was great and of high quality. Not to mention, the site has been around successfully for almost 20 years, so it’s hard to neglect the trust that comes with that. No site could operate that long unless they were doing right by their clients. Bonuses offered were ok (not bad, but not great) and customer service was also ok. Banking had a lot of different options, but without access to the possible fees or limits, it’s hard to say whether this is good or not.

Overall, the Lucky Nugget Casino is best described in one word – O.K. The site was not something we’re ranting and raving to our friends about, but it’s certainly not terrible and the fact they’ve been in business for almost 20 years says a lot about how they operate. This is one that is going to be up to your personal tastes and preferences. We’d recommend checking it out if you were recommended by a friend, have limited options in your area, or if you’re just curious. Most countries probably have some better options that exist, although if this site has the games you like, it may be a win for you.