Here at onlinecasino.ie we have been able to watch how our online casinos have developed from simply being an experiment by the leading bookmakers through to having a successful identity of their own. For those who do not know the history of what we now call online casinos, the idea of being able to play casino games online came about as a result of the big bookmakers looking for a way to derive maximum returns on their investment in the technology and software necessary to operate their online sports gambling sites. One of the potential solutions they came up with was to introduce a few gambling games onto their sites, initially hoping that their sports gambling customers would enjoy playing a few games as well as placing their sporting bets. We now know that the idea was a huge success, not only among their existing customers but it also appealed to a whole new group of people who were not necessarily interested in gambling on sports. Clearly the option of being able to play casino games such as roulette and blackjack online appealed to those people who were already members of a real casino, but when other games such as bingo were introduced there were also masses of bingo fans eager to play their favourite game online. Since those early days when our recommended list of online casinos was limited to the multiple interest sites operated by the leading bookmakers, we have seen a whole new type of online casino become available to Irish casino games fans. These new specialist online casinos do not offer sports gambling options and concentrate solely on providing a diverse range of interesting casino games. These new online casinos have rightly been recognised on our recommended list and deserve their places, but we should not forget that many of the best developments we have seen over the years were brought about by the big bookmakers and the casino software companies they employed. One of most important of those developments was the live online casino option, and there are many people who now enjoy playing casino games such as roulette online only because of the innovation shown by the original online casino operators. The live online casino option was of course the result of the need to use Random Number Generators or RNG’s as the only way to select winning outcomes for almost all the games featured at the online casinos. The RNG was not a new concept of course and many of our readers will be old enough to remember when the first RNG, known as ERNIE was introduced to select the winning Premium Bond numbers. It was however the first time an RNG had ever been associated with casino games, or any gambling games for that matter, so it was perhaps not surprising that their use was not universally accepted. Most of the casino games featured by the online casinos were of course slots games, and the use of RNG’s to determine winning combinations on most of these games was perfectly acceptable for most players. Unfortunately there was a problem associated with using RNG’s to determine winning numbers when they were used in the game of roulette. In spite of all the efforts of the casino software designers it proved impossible to satisfactorily replicate the movement of a ball on the roulette wheel as it moved to a winning number selected by an RNG, which in the early days of online casinos did not help establish trust in these sites.
The online casino operators knew that something had to be done and we now have the live online casino as a result. The first live online casino feature was developed by the software supplier Playtech, who set up a remote studio in Eastern Europe from which they were able to stream live games of roulette using a real roulette wheel and real dealers. The idea was quickly taken up by all the leading online casino sites at the time and became a feature of almost every site. Most online casinos also started to offer other casino games such as blackjack and even baccarat in the live online casino mode with real dealers so that they got maximum benefit from the increased overheads which were inevitably associated with employing real dealers and running a studio. For many fans of these traditional casino games the live online casino option is one of the most welcome of all the changes we have seen in the online casino sector, but the increased costs have also led to some increases in the minimum table stakes associated with playing these casino games in the live casino mode and has therefore not been universally popular. Many observers believe that the success of the online casinos has been due to the fact that most of the casino games can be played for very small stakes so that you can still enjoy gambling on your favourite games but your money goes further. There is also another reason why the live online casino option is not to everyone’s taste, and that is the speed of play. Casino games such as roulette in particular are popular because of the multiple betting options, but anyone who has ever played roulette at a real casino will know that placing multiple bets can be a bit hectic at times and there is usually a time limit set by the dealers depending on how many people are playing on the table. The problem with playing roulette when the dealers are in a remote studio is that they can’t see the players so the time limit for placing your bets is fixed, and may not be long enough for some players.
The latest innovation in the live online casino feature was first introduced by the All Irish casino, who have agreed a deal with a real casino on the island of Malta which enables them to stream roulette, blackjack and baccarat live from the casino to our screens. This comes with all the atmosphere you would expect from playing in a real casino and is proving a popular new development.