Delaware’s Luckiest Casinos Uncovered

Given that Delaware is one of seven states in the entire country, as of July 2024, that offers natives the chance to play at online casinos, they are obviously one of our favorites.

Despite the wealth of Delaware online casino options, the state only has three primary land-based casinos: Delaware Park Casino in Wilmington, Dover Downs Hotel & Casino in Dover, and Harrington Raceway & Casino in Harrington. The First State could certainly benefit from expanding its land-based casino destinations. Nevertheless, the existing casinos are quite impressive.

All three casinos in Delaware are state-regulated. Legally, gambling became permitted in Delaware in 1976, with the introduction of the state lottery. The state's first casino, Delaware Park, opened in 1937, initially as a thoroughbred racetrack. It wasn’t until 1995 that Delaware Park introduced slot machines, followed by table games in 2010.

Not in Delaware? Explore the best online casino options available in other states.

And even with just three casinos in the state, it’s still a lucrative industry, bringing in $507 million in gross gaming revenue as of 2023, according to Statista. 

We got curious about where the luckiest spot to hit the casino floor in Delaware might be, so we did some serious detective work and investigated all three of the state’s casinos. In our quest for the luckiest casino, we inevitably stumbled upon the unluckiest one, it’s just an unfortunate part-and-parcel of the research. 

Our research and analytics teams dove into review data from all three casinos, hunting for luck-related keywords such as 'lucky,' 'won,' 'winning,' 'success,' and other terms that scream 'big wins!'. Just a heads-up: this report is for entertainment purposes only. If we actually knew where the luckiest casinos were, you wouldn’t be reading this article right now.

When it comes to finding Delaware’s luckiest casino, there was a clear winner with an eye-catching luck percentage of 33.55%—and that’s Delaware Park. 

The casino and horsetrack venue boasted an impressive 102 luck-related keywords compared to their competitors, with patrons mentioning ‘won’, ‘winner’ and ‘bonus’ frequently throughout the reviews. There is a caveat here, in that Delaware Park is a casino and horserace track, so a lot of the mentions of winners or wins related to horseracing - so in this regard, perhaps the data doesn’t represent a fair estimate of the actual casino's luck. 

One person who visited in August 2019 said: “I went to the casino on a weekday early in the morning and I won the minute I walked in. Everyone was winning everywhere. I have never seen so many people winning money.”

Another added, “We played a little slots and black jack and won some money and had a good time.”

However, while we scoured the reviews, we found a resounding amount of negative sentiment in relation to the keywords. For example, one visitor wrote, “Let slots payout. You pay nothing and your points stink. I have never won anything significant there to warrant being a patron any longer.”

Likewise, another person said: “Went a couple of times and spent thousands of dollars.. I was playing really high slot machines.. I never got a bonus plus I noticed a few bad things.” 

For us at Casinos.com, it’s important we represent the facts to you. Whilst a luck rating of 33.55% sounds good on paper, our research shows it’s not all it’s cracked up to be with a vast majority of reviews presenting negative sentiment on luck-related keywords. If visiting Delaware Park, proceed with caution if you’re expecting to get lucky! 

Next on the list was Harrington Raceway and Casino, and as the name suggests, this is both a racetrack and a casino, much like the supposed number one spot. Much like its competition, Harrington Raceway and Casino present a lot of keywords when it comes to ‘won’ and ‘winning’, but many of these are related to horse racing itself. 

We did find some more positive sentiment when reading the reviews here, however, with multiple visitors highlighting jackpot wins, even if they didn’t hit the jackpot themselves.

They wrote, “When I have gone I've seen different people winning small jackpots from $500.00 - $1000.00. Even if it's not me winning; I want to know if somebody is!”

Another Tripadvisor reviewer mentioned, “New players get free play after playing roughly $180-$200 in the slot machines. There were several people who hit jackpots while I was there. I found their game selection pretty top notch.”

Bally’s Dover Casino Resort came in with a luck percentage rating of 17.55%, which in the grand scheme of things is a decent score compared to other data, which we have evaluated in other states. Like the other two establishments on the list, Bally’s Dover Casino Resort also had a racetrack on the premises, but the casino here is the main selling point, with Bally’s being a household name in the industry. 

All the usual keywords were plentiful here, with references to ‘lucky’, ‘won’ and ‘jackpot’ plentiful. We also noted a larger positive sentiment in the reviews when searching luck-related keywords. 

“With the excitement of the Preakness, the casino was full! I had a good time and hit on the slots, which made my experience more exciting!” 

Jeff, who visited in 2021, mentioned how his luck had run out in one review that appeared to be a negative sentiment, but his comment still offered some encouragement in relation to getting lucky. 

He wrote, “I’ve never seen more people in my immediate surroundings hit and win jackpots while I lose every dollar I brought.”

In summary, it’s easy to cherry-pick certain reviews and highlight the winners, but in truth, we noticed a lot of negative comments in relation to Delaware Park and Harrington Racetrack when referring to their casinos, and less so with Bally’s Dover Casino. 

In Delaware’s case, when trying to find the luckiest casino, perhaps there is more than meets the eye when it comes to Tripadvisor reviews, and we advise readers to take this into account when visiting. 

Methodology 

Casinos.com utilized Tripadvisor reviews to do an in-depth analysis of phrases associated with luck to determine the luckiest and unluckiest casinos in the state of Delaware. We calculated the percentage of luck-rated mentions in the total Tripadvisor reviews.

Keywords tracked: Lucky, Luck, Winning, Big Win, Winner, Bonus, Profit, Success, Jackpot, Hand Pay

This data was collected in July 2024. 

Disclaimer 

The data in this article is intended for entertainment purposes only. Casinos.com does not claim any one casino to be “luckier” than another. Please don’t use the information presented in this article as gambling or betting advice, and as always, please bet responsibly. 

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The data and graphics on this page are free to use as long as proper credit is given by linking to the original article. 

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