The live online casino feature has become even more real

There is no doubt that gambling has always been a popular activity here in Ireland, particularly gambling on horse racing which is now well established as one of our major industries employing a large number of people across the country. Greyhound racing has also been a popular gambling focus over many years, and is also now enjoying a resurgence since the tracks have been upgraded and hospitality facilities improved. The common factor in both of these gambling activities is the excitement of actually watching the racing live, ideally at the track but live television coverage is equally acceptable for those of us who can’t attend the racing in person. The effect that the atmosphere of a live event can have on our enjoyment is however not restricted to sports gambling, and is undoubtedly the reason why the live online casino option has become so popular among casino games fans. When online gambling was first introduced by the big bookmakers they were probably not totally convinced that their regular customers who watched the racing with other racing fans at a betting shop would take to placing their bets online. Introducing casino games on their sports gambling sites was also a bit of a risk because playing casino games such as roulette online is a far cry from playing the game at a real casino in terms of atmosphere and excitement. The same might also have been true of playing bingo at an online casino rather than at a bingo club, but in this case many bingo fans had already stopped going to the real bingo clubs so the social aspect of playing bingo had already diminished. In reality of course it was not the lack of atmosphere associated with playing casino games online that led to the introduction of the live online casino option, it was the inability of the online casino software developers to satisfactorily illustrate the movement of the ball on the roulette wheel that forced them to offer the option. For those who do not remember the early days in the development of online casinos, clearly one of the most significant factors in the success or failure of an online casino site was trust. Almost every casino game featured on an online casino site relies on a Random Number Generator to establish the winning number or combination, which means that new players need to believe that those winning combinations are truly random and fair. For most online casino games the winning combinations are relatively easy to illustrate on our screens and the computer graphics do not raise any doubts in the minds of the players, but it quickly became apparent that one of the most popular traditional casino games, namely roulette was not going to be so easy to transfer to an online casino. We have to understand that the idea of playing casino games online was a very new concept, so any doubts regarding the fairness of the games would have been potentially very serious. The solution to the problem was of course relatively obvious, but still required some original thinking from the software suppliers to make it work. The casino software company Playtech are generally credited with establishing the first live online casino feature in the online casino sector, and it entailed setting up a remote studio with a real roulette wheel and real dealers. The games were then streamed live to our screens from the studio so there was no need for any illustrative graphics, we simply saw the ball moving to the winning number on a real roulette wheel. It wasn’t long before all the online casino operators were offering a similar live online casino option for the game of roulette, and most were also offering the chance to play other casino games such as blackjack with real dealers streamed live from the studio.

Clearly establishing the live online casino option to resolve the doubts surrounding the game of roulette was a big decision for the site operators, because setting up a studio and employing real dealers obviously increased their running costs. It is also true to say that whilst it has proved popular among many roulette enthusiasts who began playing the game at a real casino, it also has a number of drawbacks as far as many other online casino games players are concerned. For example one of the big advantages of playing casino games online is that the site operators are able to allow us to play for very small stakes compared to the minimum table stakes in a real casino, but many online casinos have raised the minimum stakes for games played in the live online casino mode. It is also true that many of the new online casino customers have never played roulette in the hustle and bustle of a real casino, and are not used to the idea of having a time limit on placing their bets. Managing the game from a remote studio however means that the dealers have to run the game at a set speed because they cannot see the players.

The live online casino option was first introduced in response to concerns relating to the casino game of roulette, and almost every online casino provided that option by using a remote studio from which to stream the games. Over the last few years however we have seen the advent of a number of new specialist online casinos such as the All Irish casino, and some of those site operators are now offering another form of live online casino. The All Irish casino offers their casino games players the opportunity to play roulette, blackjack and baccarat steamed live from a real casino situated in Malta. You can play the games at the same time as the casino customers with the same real dealers and of course the same sort of atmosphere you would find in any real casino. Again it is not necessarily suitable for every online casino games player but it is certainly as close as anyone has yet come to the real thing.