New online casinos have made online casino reviews even more relevant

When taken in the context of the history of computers, the introduction of online gambling and in particular online casinos is a relatively recent event. The idea of being able to play casino games at an online casino was almost an accident in many ways, because when the big bookmakers first began to add a few games onto their online sports gambling sites the intention was simply to persuade their existing sports gambling customers to spend a little more time on their sites. We now know of course that the online casino elements of those first online gambling sites actually appealed to a whole new group of potential customers and this drove the huge expansion we have seen over the years since those early days. Here at onlinecasino.ie we have witnessed how the big online sports gambling sites operated by the leading bookmakers rapidly increased the range of casino games we could play, and how those first sites have since been joined by several good specialist online casino sites dedicated solely to offering exciting casino games, with no sports gambling options at all. Throughout the development of the online casino sector onlinecasino.ie have also carried our regular online casino reviews to keep track of any new options and to establish our list of recommended online casinos for the benefit of our Irish readers. As we have already commented, during the early years of online casinos the only sites offering any online casino games were the big sports gambling sites operated by the leading bookmakers, so our online casino reviews were rather more limited than they are today and our recommended list was significantly smaller. Nevertheless these were still interesting times because of the sheer speed with which those sites were increasing the range of casino games they were offering. They all featured a good range of traditional casino games such as roulette and blackjack which were of course familiar to Irish casino goers, but they also offered other rather more unfamiliar traditional games such as baccarat, backgammon and craps. These casino games were of course immediately popular with existing casino fans in Ireland, but the operators also began to add a range of numbers games based on the ever popular gambling game of bingo and were therefore able to tap into another group of potential online casino customers. Then we come to the introduction of the slots games which now dominate the range of available casino games at every online casino site. It is these slots games which now define the popularity of a particular online casino site and the difference between the increasing number of sites we can access here in Ireland. It is also where we start to see the huge influence that the casino software companies now have on the online casino sector of the gambling industry. Operating an online casino site is totally different from operating an internet retailing site, because the software is not only required to provide a safe and secure financial management environment it is also responsible for much of the content and product on offer. All the casino games offered by the online casino operators need to be presented attractively with good graphics of course, but when it comes to the huge range of slots games it is the software designers who come up with the ideas as well as presenting them well. It would therefore perhaps be true to say that our online casino reviews were as much to do with examining the skills of the online casino software designers as the management of the sites by their operators.

The first online casino sites operated by the bookmakers were where many of the big software companies such as Playtech began to make their mark, and Playtech in particular is still a dominant force in servicing those first sites with their casino games currently featuring on sites operated by William Hill, Ladbrokes and many others. Ireland’s favourite bookmaker, Paddy Power were also among the first to create an online casino element within their sports gambling site, but they chose to use software supplied a company called Wagerworks. In fact this was actually a very good decision because our online casino reviews during the later years when we only had access to sites operated by the big bookmakers started to notice that the casino games on many of the sites were becoming very similar. The fact that Paddy Power chose to feature casino games from a different source meant that most of those games were exclusive to the Paddy Power online casino site. The same applies to our other Irish online casino, the All Irish casino, because they have also chosen to offer games from one of the smaller software companies, in this case a company called NetEntertainment.

We have already highlighted the fact that it is generally speaking the slots games which define each online casino site, particularly now that we have so much more choice, so exclusivity has become a very important element in the success of a particular site. The introduction of the new specialist online casino sites has clearly increased the relevance of our regular online casino reviews and the resulting list of recommended sites, but they have also provided casino games fans with far more exclusive options by using a variety of different software suppliers. Online casino sites such as Yako, Instacasino and Casinoland have all decided to offer a mix of slots games from a range of different casino software companies, many of which can’t be found on any of the bigger sites. Another increasingly popular online casino identified by our casino reviews is the CasinoCasino site. The reason for that popularity is again down to the choice of slots games supplier. Any serious slot machine enthusiasts will know of the iconic slots games designed and built by Amatic Industries, but they have never been available online before so CasinoCasino have stolen a march on their rivals by featuring many of those fantastic slots games online for the first time.