Casinos rise and fall faster than you can blink an eye. The first
casino was opened in 1941 on the Los Vegas strip; however by 1992 all of
those casinos had been demolished to make way for new modern casinos.
Online it has been the same evolution with casinos sprouting around
every corner of cyberspace. These have come and gone faster than the
click of your mouse. But how did this start?
Let's start with
Google the internet search engine. Type in online casino and it brings
back more than 27 million websites. The shear volume for the term online
casino reflects how many people have vested interests in the gaming
industry and how popular online casinos have become. The first online
casinos first made their appearance during 1996 and a mere US$17 million
was wagered, compared to US$3 billion by 2000.
It is estimated
today that more than a trillion dollars gets spent online each year with
online casinos worldwide. Bear Stearns, a leading worldwide investment
banking and securities trading and brokerage firm, estimates that during
2003 more than US$ 6 billion had been spent on online casinos by US
gamblers alone! With the growing adoption of broadband internet this
online pool of gamblers increases each year.
With online casinos
there has also been the expansion of online advertising to gamblers,
which according to the BBC places gambling advertisers as the fifth
largest advertisers on the internet. Online casinos make use of two
types of software. Those that you can download and install onto your
computer and the true online casinos where you gamble on the interface
of the online casinos web page. Each party makes their choices of how
they wish to interact online. With all this sophisticated software, how
do online casinos compare to your average brick and mortar casino? Each
has their advantages. In an online casino you can play more than one
poker game at a time or even gamble on more than one game at a time. In a
normal casino this would not be physically possible. The advantage of
any real casino compared to an online casino is that you can always
judge the physical reaction of the players around the table.
With
an online casino it is impersonal and you would never be able to guess
the cards the other person is holding. Online casinos have made great
strides in trying to mimic the feel of a real casino in the fashion of
the bricks and mortar casinos. They have flashy web pages and music to
lure you to play. Domain names in it self have become a big issue with
the purchase of misspelled domain names for online casinos.
A
recent dispute with the domain name of Sportsodds springs to mind. This
domain name was registered by their competitor to drive traffic to the
competitor's webpage's. This ended in a legal dispute. Online casinos
are big business judging from the amount of money that gets placed on
bets and by the amount of money being spent on it. Where there is big
money, there will always be disputes.
Online casinos are open 24
hours a day, 7 days a week and they are accessible from anywhere in the
world. Casinos use to be down the road or in your next big town. That
has changed in the 21st century. With the advent of online casinos the
casino is now in your home. Better yet, if you are reading this, you are
already at the casinos doorstep. What is stopping you from placing your
bet at an online casino today and joining millions of others?
