Don’t forget the traditional online casino games when playing online

When the leading bookmakers decided to provide their sports gambling customers with the opportunity to place their bets online instead of needing to attend or call a high street betting shop, they started what turned out to be a huge increase in the number of people regularly gambling. It was not so much the number of people gambling on sports and sporting events however where the most noticeable increase took place, it was the increased popularity of playing games online where the most significant effect was seen. The first online gambling sites were of course solely targeted at sports gambling enthusiasts, but when the operators began to add a few games to their sites they then created almost a completely new online gambling sector, which we now call online casinos. From those very early days when all the online casinos were part of sports gambling sites operated by the big bookmakers, the concept of playing casino gambling games online has developed very rapidly indeed and we now have several specialist online casinos to enjoy as well as the sites operated by the bookmakers. The success of all these online gambling sites, including the original sports gambling sites is almost entirely down to the increased choices that they are able to offer. Sports gambling fans can now follow a huge range of sports and sporting events from all over the world, including many which would have been considered to be minor sports, but it is in the still increasing variety of online casino games where the greatest expansion of choice can be seen. Here at onlinecasino.ie we have watched and reported on how the original online casino sections of the bookmakers’ sites continued to add more and more games, and how more recently we have also been pleased to welcome several excellent small specialist online casinos offering an even greater choice of casino games for us to enjoy. Most of the online casino games are of course slots games in a variety of forms, but there are also a whole range of games designed to appeal to those of us who already enjoyed playing gambling games before the advent of online gambling. Bingo fans for example are well catered for by almost all the online casinos and they all offer a range of numbers games based on the principle of bingo. Many of the bingo enthusiasts who used to regularly visit their local bingo club before the problems attributed to the smoking ban reduced their numbers have returned to the game and are now playing online. The other group of gambling games fans who were clearly targeted by the online casino site operators were of course the regular members of the real casinos. In some ways it is this group of gaming enthusiasts who have seen the greatest benefit from the introduction of online casinos, because although the numbers of real traditional casino games they can now play are far less than the hundreds of slots games featured at most online casinos, the degree of choice they offer compared to what was available before online casinos is huge. The reason for this is of course that traditional casino games fans in Ireland had very little choice indeed. Most of our real casinos were so limited for space that they were generally only able to offer us the choice between roulette and blackjack, plus perhaps a few slot machines. Some organised the occasional poker tournament for their members, but that was it as far as our choice of casino games was concerned.

Whilst it is probably true that most online casino games players play the slots games more than any other games on offer, we should also recognise that the specialist online poker forums and bingo platforms have become very popular indeed across a wide section of the population of this country. Clearly with the exception of poker most of these casino games require no specific knowledge or skill to be able to play, but the rules of some of the traditional casino games we can now play do often need to be learnt. Here at onlinecasino.ie we have detailed the rules of many of these traditional casino games on our individual casino games pages, and we hope that we can encourage more people to try these traditional games now they have the chance. The game of craps for example is ever present in every American casino, but almost never in Ireland. It is not a difficult game to play once you have found your way round the craps table and assessed the available betting options. Anyone who enjoys playing roulette will almost certainly also enjoy playing craps. Baccarat is another traditional casino game which you will find in almost every continental casino, but never in Ireland. This is a casino game which has for some reason acquired an unwarranted reputation for being very difficult to play and generally reserved for high rollers. Part of the reason for this is that even on the continent baccarat is often played away from the main floor, but the game of baccarat when played at an online casino could not be easier. It is true that the rules of baccarat are a little complicated, but the game is totally controlled by the dealer and the played does not need to know the rules at all. Here are only two hands in baccarat, the dealer’s hand and the player’s hand, and object of the game is simply to predict and bet on which of those two hands will win. It is therefore no more difficult than calling heads or tails on the toss of a coin.

There are of course a few traditional casino games which do require a degree of skill or experience to play successfully, including for instance backgammon in which the player needs to learn how to move the checkers in the most effective way. Clearly some versions of poker also require a level of skill to increase your chances of winning.