The live online casino feature has now been developed even further

We often read reports commenting that the number of people who enjoy gambling in one form or another is continually increasing year on year, with the biggest increase being through online gambling sites. If you think about it however that situation is not really that surprising for a number of reasons. First and foremost, certainly here in Ireland we have always enjoyed gambling anyway so the fact that it has become easier is clearly going to encourage more of us to have a flutter. This is particularly true now that we have easy access to a choice of online casinos and the huge range of casino games they offer on their sites. Even if we look at casino games such as roulette and blackjack which were available at all our real casinos, the number of people who lived within easy reach of one of those casinos and could therefore play casino games regularly was fairly limited. The same applies to the other popular gambling game which is now available at the online casinos, namely bingo. The town centre bingo clubs were generally well supported, but they also relied heavily on players who lived locally. You could argue that almost everybody had access to a few slot machines either in their local pub or club, but the variety of different slots games was nowhere near what is now on offer at any of the online casinos. Here at onlinecasino.ie we believe there was never any doubt that the concept of being able to play casino games online was bound to be welcomed by existing casino games and bingo fans, but was also likely to attract new players. When the leading bookmakers first decided to maximise their investment in online sports gambling sites by adding a few games they perhaps did not realise just how popular playing casino games online was going to be. It was also not quite as straightforward as they had hoped, particularly when it came to persuading their customers to accept the use of Random Number Generators or RNG’s. To their credit however the online casino operators and their software suppliers did respond to all the initial reservations that their potential customers had over the use of these devices, particularly with the live online casino option they developed. Almost all the casino games we now play at our online casinos rely on a RNG to determine the winning combinations of either numbers, cards or other symbols, and for the vast majority of these games there are no problems with this use of RNG’s. When it came to the game of roulette however, using an RNG to determine the winning number was not at all well received by existing roulette enthusiasts who were used to playing in a real casino and suspicions started to be raised about the whole concept of using RNG’s and how fair they were. The problem was that the computer graphics illustrating the roulette wheel could not satisfactorily replicate the natural movement of the ball on a roulette wheel as it was directed to the number selected by the RNG. Something had to be done to resolve these doubts quickly before the suspicions spread, and the answer they came up with was the live online casino option.

The development of the first live online casino feature is generally credited to the now leading online casino software supplier Playtech, and involved setting up a remote studio in Eastern Europe with a real roulette wheel and real dealers. Every game was then streamed to our screens live from that studio. The idea was quickly taken up by all the leading bookmakers who were operating online casinos as part of their sports gambling sites, and the live online casino became an option on almost every site. In the early days it was only roulette that was offered in the live casino mode, but having decided to employ real dealers and set up a studio it clearly made sense to offer other casino games live with real dealers. Most online casinos now also offer a number of card games such as blackjack and baccarat as a live game, as well as roulette. There is no doubt that many casino games players who started playing roulette at a real casino were extremely pleased when the live online casino option became available, but it is not an option that is universally popular with everyone. The problem is that one of the advantages that an online casino operator has over their land based rivals is the very low overheads associated with running an online operation, which enabled them to offer very much smaller minimum table stakes on their casino games than their rivals. Employing real dealers, even in a relatively low wage country clearly increases their costs and has resulted in most of the online casinos increasing the minimum table stakes for casino games in the live casino mode. There is also the question of timing, particularly when it comes to roulette. Those of us who played roulette in a real casino will remember that placing multiple bets on a roulette table could sometimes be a bit frantic if the table was busy, and for obvious reasons the croupiers did not wait any longer than necessary before calling an end to betting. Dealers operating the game from a remote studio have an even bigger problem because they can’t even see the players, so there is a fixed time limit on placing your bets when playing in the live casino mode, which again does not suit everybody.

Since those early days of streaming the live casino games from a remote studio, the doubts and suspicions have of course died down, but there are still many casino games fans who prefer to play casino games in the live casino mode. Many of them will also applaud the latest development of a live casino feature introduced by the All Irish casino. We can now play roulette, blackjack and baccarat literally live with games streamed from a real casino in Malta in real time. If you want the atmosphere of a real casino there is no better place to play online than the All Irish casino.