Spielbank Dortmund Hohensyburg: games, opening hours, admission

Day ticket

€5 minimum age 18

Opened

28 June 1985 built 1983–1985

House and slots

from 11:00 to 03:00, Fri/Sat to 04:00

Dress code

none coats and headwear to be handed in

Öffnungszeiten

Spielangebot

No dress code — but a document rule that catches people out

Hohensyburg does without a fixed dress code entirely. Everyday clothing is as welcome as evening wear. The only requirements are that coats and headwear be handed in at the cloakroom, and that visitors do not turn up in visibly dirty clothes or in swimwear.

That makes it noticeably more relaxed than Hamburg, where the live tables require at least a collared shirt, and than Wiesbaden with its long list of exclusions. Rank the German houses by how much they care about clothing and you find Hohensyburg and Hamburg at opposite ends.

On documents the picture reverses. The house accepts a national identity card, a passport or a comparable valid official identity document. A driving licence and a student card are expressly not enough. The minimum age is 18, and the house states on its own account that minors are not admitted even when accompanied by an adult.

A 1980s building beside a medieval ruin

The casino was constructed between 1983 and 1985 and opened on 28 June 1985. It sits on the Syberg, immediately next to the ruins of the Hohensyburg fortress and the Kaiser Wilhelm monument, looking out over the Hengstey reservoir and the Ruhr valley.

The setting shapes a visit more than at any other house on this site. This is not a city-centre address like Kassel or Hamburg but an excursion destination on the edge of town. If you are relying on public transport, work out the return journey before midnight rather than after it.

Claims that Hohensyburg is Germany's largest casino appear in many directories, along with a specific floor area. Neither the house nor any official source supports them, so neither figure appears here.

Hours, admission and six closing days

The house and its slot floor open daily at 11:00, closing at 03:00 from Sunday to Thursday and at 04:00 on Friday and Saturday. The live tables run from 18:00 to 02:00, and to 03:00 on Friday and Saturday. A day ticket costs €5.

The closing list is longer here than at most houses: Good Friday, All Saints' Day, Volkstrauertag, Totensonntag, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On the day before Good Friday play ends at 24:00.

All Saints' Day on 1 November is a public holiday in North Rhine-Westphalia and does not appear in the closing lists of the Hessian, Hamburg or Lower Saxon houses. Visitors used to playing elsewhere in Germany do not expect it, which makes it the classic wasted journey at this address. Volkstrauertag, the national day of mourning, and Totensonntag, the Protestant Sunday of the dead, fall in November and shift each year.

Heads-Up Hold'em and the limits the house keeps to itself

The tables run American roulette, blackjack and poker. One speciality is Heads-Up Hold'em, offered daily from 18:00: a poker variant played not against other guests but against the house. That changes the logic of the game completely — there are no opponents to read, only a fixed pay table.

The house publishes no table limits. Figures appear in directories without a date or a source, and they are not reproduced here. If you are coming with a set budget, call +49 231 7740-0 on the day and ask which tables are open and at what stakes.

The same goes for the table counts that circulate — twelve roulette tables, several baccarat tables and so on. They come from third-hand listings. What is open on a given evening depends on how busy the floor is.

How North Rhine-Westphalia organises its casinos today

The operator is MERKUR SPIELBANKEN NRW GmbH, Landfermannstraße 6, 47051 Duisburg, registered at the Duisburg district court under HRB 19356. Supervision rests with the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia.

North Rhine-Westphalia ran its casinos in state hands for a long time. The move to a private operator and the terms of the current licence are reported at length in the press and in reference works, but only what the legal notice states could be confirmed officially: the company, the register entry and the supervisory authority. Purchase prices, licence terms and the number of houses transferred are therefore left out here.

The underlying structure is the same in every state. The Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021 reaches casinos only in part: § 2 paragraph 2 lists exhaustively which provisions apply — among them the objectives in § 1, advertising in § 5, the social concept in § 6, player information in § 7, the exclusion system in §§ 8 to 8d and the register in § 23. Licensing, admission, opening hours, rules of play and taxation are matters of state law.

The register check at the door

Your document is inspected at the entrance and your details compared against OASIS, Germany's national gambling exclusion register. The basis is § 8 paragraph 3 of the Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021: identification by inspection of an official identity document, or an equivalent identity check, and comparison against the register under § 23 — in land-based venues on every entry, not only on a first visit.

The system is operated by the state of Hesse, through the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, for all sixteen states. An entry made anywhere therefore applies in Dortmund exactly as it does in Osnabrück, in Hamburg or with any German-licensed online operator. A self-exclusion lasts at least three months, with one year as the default; a third-party exclusion at least a year, and it ends only on written application to the Regierungspräsidium.

Free and anonymous advice is available from the Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG) on 0800 1 37 27 00 and at check-dein-spiel.de.

Table games here, not on the German internet

Roulette, blackjack and poker exist on the Syberg at real tables. They do not exist in replica form on German-licensed websites: virtual slot games that reproduce classic banked table games — roulette, blackjack or baccarat in particular — are prohibited.

The GGL, the joint gambling authority of the German states, licenses and supervises virtual slot games, online poker, online sports betting and horse-race betting. Online casino games under § 22c GlüStV are expressly excluded from its remit and belong to the individual states, each of which may offer or license them for its own territory alone and only up to the number of casino licences its state act would have permitted as at 17 January 2020.

There is no nationwide online offering by the German state casinos. If you find a site trading on the name of a casino house, check it against the GGL whitelist under § 9 paragraph 8 GlüStV before depositing anything.

Frequently asked

Sources

1. MERKUR Spielbank Hohensyburg, official website: <a href='https://www.spielbank-hohensyburg.de/' rel='nofollow noopener'>spielbank-hohensyburg.de</a> — hours, admission, entry requirements, identity documents, dress code, closing days, games (retrieved 30 September 2026).
2. MERKUR SPIELBANKEN NRW GmbH, legal notice — company, Duisburg district court HRB 19356, supervision by the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia.
3. Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021: § 2(2) scope for state casinos, § 8(3) identity check and exclusion-register comparison on every entry, § 22c online casino games as a matter for the states, § 23 exclusion register.
4. Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt — operator of the OASIS exclusion register for all sixteen states.
5. Joint Gambling Authority of the German States (GGL), whitelist of licensed operators under § 9(8) GlüStV 2021.
6. Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG), free helpline 0800 1 37 27 00, check-dein-spiel.de.