Our choice of online casino games is still increasing almost every week

There are many theories as to why online gambling has taken off in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, but here at onlinecasino.ie we believe that along with the obvious convenience of using the internet rather than needing to visit a casino or betting shop, it is the vastly improved choices we now have as a result of introduction of online gambling sites. When the leading bookmakers decided to follow the lead of the big high street retailers and invest in the technology and software necessary to establish online sports gambling sites, the first and most obvious aspect of those sites from the point of view of the customer was the huge range of sports and sporting events those sites featured. Most sports gambling fans in Ireland were used to placing their bets through their local betting shop, and very few of those displayed odds on anything other than horse racing, greyhound racing or football. Suddenly the online gambling sites gave them easy access to gambling on sports such as snooker, golf and even the GAA sports of football and hurling. This fantastic increase in choice was probably even more pronounced when the sports gambling site operators started to add a few games on their sites and created what we now know as the online casino sector. We are told that the original idea behind that decision was simply to encourage their sports gambling customers to spend a little more time on the site, but what actually happened was that the idea of playing casino games online appealed to a whole new group of people. There is no doubt that part of the reason for the immediate success of these new online casino sites was in the choice of games they decided to offer. There were already a large number of casino games enthusiasts who regularly visited their local casino, and even more who enjoyed a night at the bingo on a regular basis. These two groups of casino games enthusiasts were an obvious target for the new online casinos, and the traditional casino games such as roulette and blackjack, plus a range of numbers games based on the concept of bingo were among the first casino games to be featured on those sites. Then came the addition of huge numbers of slots games, again a decision which was almost bound to be successful. After all very few of us have not enjoyed playing a slot machine at some time in our lives, and even if we have never set foot in a real casino or a bingo club we will undoubtedly have come across a whole range of slot machines in our pubs and clubs. In retrospect the idea of setting up an online platform for people to play a large variety of different casino games was always going to be a success, but the bookmakers who started the online casino sector took quite a risk at the beginning because introducing casino games online was not as easy as you might think. Operating an online sports gambling site is very similar to setting up an online retail site, and they both require good management software to handle the financial and security aspects of dealing directly with the public. An online casino site however requires a totally different type of software, because the software is not only required to manage the site efficiently, the software designers are also responsible for the graphics associated with many of the traditional casino games and even the original invention of most of the slots games. We have applauded the huge range of casino games we can now play online and praised the bookmakers who first started the online casino sector, but the reality is that it is the casino software companies which have created what we know today as the online casinos, and without their innovation we would not have anything like the choices we now enjoy.

As far as the types of online casino games featured on all our online casinos, the vast majority are slots games in a variety of forms, with multiple winning lines, rolling jackpots and in some cases as many as five reels rather than the usual three. Many of them are based on popular films, cartoon characters and several well-known superheros, all of which are only available to the software designers because they were able to negotiate licensing agreements with the copyright holders. Although the slots games make up the biggest part of almost every online casino site, we should not forget that the traditional casino games are also very popular among many online casino games enthusiasts in Ireland. Our real casinos are generally too small to offer their customers a wide choice of traditional casino games, so most of us have been limited to roulette, blackjack and the occasional local poker tournament. The introduction of online casinos however has provided us with the opportunity to play a much wider range on traditional casino games. Games like baccarat for instance are commonly available in casinos in the rest of Europe, as is backgammon, but neither of these featured in our own casinos. Craps is another traditional casino game which is found in every casino in the States, and in many on the continent, but again rarely if ever in Ireland. The fact that we can now play all of these interesting traditional casino games online at any time we like and wherever we are has made a huge difference for fans of traditional gambling games. The other game which we have to mention when discussing how online casinos have effected access to the traditional casino games is of course poker. The number of people in Ireland now playing poker regularly has increased dramatically over the last few years and that is entirely due to the introduction first of online casinos, and then the specialist online poker platforms which allow serious poker players to compete with each other almost 24 hours a day. Even the big poker tournaments have seen a huge surge in interest as a result of these online poker sites.