Spielbank Kassel: games, opening hours, admission

Minimum age

18 ID card with address required

Live tables

from 19:00 blackjack 19:45, poker 20:00

Blackjack stakes

€5 – €200 as stated by the house

State

Hesse private licensee, state supervision

Öffnungszeiten

Spielangebot

What a German Spielbank is, and how it differs from a casino elsewhere

The German word Spielbank means a land-based casino licensed by one of the sixteen federal states. It is not the same institution as a private casino in Las Vegas or a Mediterranean resort: each state decides how many houses may exist, who may run them, what they may offer and what they charge at the door. There is no federal casino licence and no national casino chain.

Inside a Spielbank you will see two clearly separated worlds. The Automatenspiel is the slot floor, usually open from late morning and with the most relaxed rules. The Klassisches Spiel — literally the classic game — is the room with live tables and croupiers: roulette, blackjack, poker. It opens later, sometimes has its own dress code, and in some houses it is the only part that charges admission.

In Kassel the classic game begins at 19:00, blackjack at 19:45 and poker at 20:00. If you arrive in the morning, you are visiting a slot floor. Plan accordingly if you came for the tables.

Documents: why a driving licence will not get you in

The minimum age is 18. To buy an admission ticket you must present a valid national identity card showing a photograph and your registered address. Visitors from outside Germany should carry a passport.

A driving licence is not a substitute. The German plastic driving licence carries no address, and the check at the door is not a casual age check — it is an identification exercise required by law. Photocopies, photographs on a phone and digital ID apps are not accepted either.

The legal basis is § 8 paragraph 3 of the Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021 (Glücksspielstaatsvertrag, usually shortened to GlüStV). It requires identification by inspecting an official identity document, or an equivalent identity check, followed by a comparison against the national exclusion register — and in land-based venues, meaning betting shops, arcades and casinos, this has to happen every time you enter. Not once a year, not on your first visit: every time.

The admission price the house does not publish

Spielbank Kassel refers to an admission ticket but publishes no price for it. Directory sites and travel guides quote five euros. That figure comes from third-hand sources and could not be confirmed anywhere on the official site, so we do not state it as fact.

This is not an oversight in our research. Admission charges are a matter for state law and for the individual house, and no house is obliged to publish its tariff online. If you are travelling on a fixed budget, call +49 561 930850 beforehand and have the current price confirmed.

For comparison, the three Hessian houses handle this differently: Bad Homburg publishes a full scale from a €2.50 day ticket to a €90 annual card and lets the slot floor in free, Wiesbaden states that admission is free for both areas, and Kassel says nothing. One state, three approaches.

Opening hours and the seven days the doors stay shut

The house opens at 09:00 Monday to Saturday and at 12:00 on Sundays and public holidays, closing at 03:00 in both cases. These hours are given for the house as a whole; the slot floor is not listed separately, and the site does not explicitly state that every machine runs from nine in the morning.

Seven days a year there is no gambling at all: Good Friday, 1 May, Corpus Christi, Volkstrauertag, Totensonntag, 24 December and 25 December.

Two of those need explaining for visitors. Volkstrauertag is Germany's national day of mourning and Totensonntag the Protestant Sunday of the dead; both fall in November, both move each year, and both are legally quiet days on which gambling venues close. Corpus Christi is a public holiday in Hesse but not in northern Germany. If you are travelling in November or around Easter, check the date first.

Tables, stakes, and the numbers we refuse to print

Kassel is one of the few German houses that publishes stake information itself. Blackjack runs from €5 to €200. Texas Hold'em poker has a €100 buy-in with blinds of €2 and €4. American roulette is offered in the classic game, and the slot floor runs throughout opening hours.

For the other six houses described on this site, directory pages also list table limits. Those figures invariably come from aggregators rather than from the houses, and limits change with the day of the week and how busy the floor is. An out-of-date minimum costs you money at the cash desk, so these pages carry only what each house states itself.

What is actually open on a given evening depends on attendance. A poker table opens when enough players turn up; on a quiet Tuesday it may not. If you are travelling for one particular game, phone on the day.

OASIS: the register every visitor is checked against

OASIS is Germany's central gambling exclusion register. It is operated by the state of Hesse, through the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, on behalf of all sixteen states. Anyone listed in it is turned away at the door of any licensed venue in the country and blocked by any German-licensed online operator.

An entry can be requested by the player or prompted by a third party, including a relative. A self-exclusion lasts at least three months, with one year as the default setting; a third-party exclusion lasts at least a year. No exclusion expires by itself: after the minimum period it simply continues until a written application ends it. Applying and lifting are both free of charge for players under § 8c GlüStV.

If gambling has stopped being fun, the Federal Institute for Public Health (Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit, BIÖG) runs a free and anonymous helpline on 0800 1 37 27 00, with information at check-dein-spiel.de.

A German Spielbank is not a German online casino

Because a Spielbank offers roulette and blackjack, visitors often assume the same games are available from German-licensed websites. They are not. The joint gambling authority of the states, the GGL, licenses virtual slot games, online poker and sports betting. Virtual slot games that replicate classic banked table games — roulette, blackjack or baccarat in particular — are expressly prohibited.

Online casino games in the narrower sense fall under § 22c GlüStV and are explicitly outside the GGL's remit. Each state may offer or license them for its own territory alone, and only up to the number of casino licences that its own state casino act would have permitted as at 17 January 2020. There is no nationwide online offering by the German state casinos.

So if you find a website advertising online roulette under the name of a German Spielbank, treat it with suspicion. Several houses now state on their own pages that they run no online game at all.

Frequently asked

Sources

1. Spielbank Kassel, official website: <a href='https://www.spielbank-kassel.de/' rel='nofollow noopener'>spielbank-kassel.de</a> — opening hours, admission, identity documents, closing days, games (retrieved 30 September 2026).
2. Spielbank Kassel, live games page: <a href='https://www.spielbank-kassel.de/live-games.html' rel='nofollow noopener'>spielbank-kassel.de/live-games.html</a> — table start times and stake information (retrieved 30 September 2026).
3. Interstate Treaty on Gambling 2021 (Glücksspielstaatsvertrag): § 2(2) scope for state casinos, § 8(3) identity check and exclusion-register comparison on every entry, § 8c costs, § 22c online casino games as a matter for the states, § 23 exclusion register.
4. Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt — operator of the OASIS exclusion register on behalf of all sixteen states.
5. Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG), free helpline 0800 1 37 27 00, check-dein-spiel.de.