The term online casino games now refers to many different types of game

There is one aspect of human nature which does not appear to have changed much throughout our history, and that is our love of games. It is certainly true that the actual games we play have changed over the years but the love of playing games remains a fundamental part of our nature. It would not be too difficult to argue that playing sports dates back to the Roman Empire or even ancient Greece, although the team games we now play are generally far more recent developments. Similarly many of the gambling games we now refer to as casino games also date back hundreds of years, and have gradually changed to become the games we know today. Gambling has also always been associated with playing games, watching others playing games or competing in sporting events. In fact some of those sports such as horse racing would probably not even exist in their current form without that gambling element, and it also has to be said that without the gambling element many of our popular traditional casino games would also not exist. Our love of playing games and sport has always been linked with our love of gambling in one way or another, and probably always will be. What has changed however is how we enjoy our sport and even more significantly how we enjoy playing games. Many of us now prefer to enjoy our sport through television or the internet, and most casino games enthusiasts now play at online casinos rather than at real casinos, bingo clubs or even on slot machines. When the first online sports gambling site operators started to add a few gambling games to their sites they created a whole new gaming market, which has since grown unbelievably quickly and has not only established the online casinos as the most popular way to access playing casino games, but has also changed what we mean by the term casino games. In Ireland in particular the term casino games would only have been used to refer to games such as roulette and blackjack, which were the only games available at most of our real casinos. Those of us who had been fortunate enough to have been able to visit casinos on the continent or in America would perhaps include games such as baccarat or craps in our definition of casino games, but there was little or no opportunity to play them regularly in Ireland. These are of course what we should refer to as the traditional casino games, but when it comes to playing games online, the term casino games refers to a huge range of different games. There are now more than two hundred different games at many of the big online casino sites, and although the vast majority of these games are slots games in various forms there are also a number of dice games, lottery games and of course bingo and other numbers games, all of which now come under the heading casino games.

In spite of the fact that the first people other than sports gamblers to be attracted to the idea of playing casino games online were probably casino members or bingo fans, it was the slots games which were probably most influential in the eventual success of the online casinos. Playing the slots games required no prior knowledge or experience so new online casino games players would obviously gravitate towards the slots as opposed to the more traditional casino games. That was the reason why websites such as this one at onlinecasino.ie decided to dedicate a significant part of their site to detailing the rules of these traditional casino games which were now available online, so that new players would feel more able to give them a try. Most people were probably already familiar with roulette and blackjack, but casino games such as baccarat or backgammon which have always been popular in casinos in the rest of Europe were virtually unknown over here. The fact that we can now play these traditional games also means that some of the myths that surround games such as baccarat can be dispelled forever. There is no more misunderstood casino game than baccarat, which for various reasons has acquired a reputation for being complicated and the preserve of high rollers. Certainly the rules of baccarat are a little complicated, but the player does not need to know them because the game is controlled entirely by the dealer. Playing baccarat online is no more difficult than calling heads or tails on the spin of a coin. There are only three potential out comes of a hand of baccarat and one of those, a tied hand is so unusual that it is rarely backed. Basically the choices are that the dealer’s hand will win or the player’s hand will win, no more complicated than that. Backgammon on the other hand is a casino game which needs to be learnt, and for which it is true to say that experience is certainly an advantage. It is however well worth the effort and a fascinating game to play.

Another traditional casino game in which skill and experience also provides an advantage is of course poker. Of all the traditional casino games which have benefited from the introduction of online casinos, it is poker which has seen the most dramatic rise in popularity. There are now dedicated online poker platforms which enable poker enthusiasts to play against each other any time of the day or night, and all the online casinos offer a whole range of poker formats which can be played for fixed odds against the house. There are now thousands of serious poker players in Ireland as a result of the resurgence of the game led by the online casinos, and even the big poker tournaments such as the Irish Open are now oversubscribed. The poker format of choice for these serious poker players is of course Texas Hold’em, because it is used in almost all the poker tournaments, but the online casinos offer many other versions of the game, including draw and stud poker as well as newer formats such as Omaha poker.