There is now a huge range of gambling games available online

One of the most significant aspects of the growing availability of online shopping is undoubtedly the greater range of products that online retailers are able to make available to their customers. The most obvious example of this is of course the hugely successful internet giant, Amazon. What started out as an online book shop has now developed into what can only be described as the biggest general store in history. There is now almost nothing you can’t buy through the Amazon site because they not only offer access to products which they hold in one of their huge warehouses, they also enable us to purchase products which they do not hold on stock but will be despatched direct from the manufacturer. Although Amazon is clearly the best example of the increased choices which can result from trading online, almost every other online business is also able to offer a much greater product range than we can access on the high street. Here at gambling.ie we are obviously specifically interested in the online gambling sector, and there is no doubt that this is another internet business sector which has been successful because of the much greater choice of gambling options the online gambling site operators can offer their customers. The first online gambling sites were all focussed on providing sports gambling options to their existing betting shop or telephone account customers, most of whom were previously restricted to gambling on horse racing, greyhound racing or football. Suddenly there was a whole new range of sports and sporting events they could follow online, including games or events from the other side of the world. The first online gambling site operators were of course the leading bookmakers, but when they decided to try to increase the potential returns on their investments by adding a few gambling games to their sites they created a whole new online gambling sector which we now call online casino gambling. Once again the success of online casino gambling was not only based on the convenience of being able to play these gambling games from home, it was the huge range of gambling games these casino gambling sites were able to offer. Before the online sports gambling sites started to introduce gambling games on their sites, casino gambling meant visiting a real casino where we would almost certainly be restricted playing either roulette or blackjack, with perhaps also a few slot machines. Online casino gambling on the other hand meant that fans of playing gambling games suddenly had access to other traditional casino gambling games such as baccarat, blackjack and even craps. Most real casinos in Ireland could not offer their customers access to these traditional games because of lack of floor space, but online gambling site operators have no such limitations and most of the big online casino gambling sites now offer well over a hundred gambling games, and sometimes as many as two hundred or more different games.

The vast majority of the gambling games we can now access at the online gambling sites are of course slots games in various forms, and it is these slots games which have undoubtedly been mainly responsible for the huge increase in the number of people playing gambling games online. It is also the slots games which have led to a number of new online casino site operators coming into the sector over recent years. These specialist online casino operators do not offer any sports gambling options, but focus their efforts solely on providing their customers with an exciting range of slots games. Nowadays most online gambling games fans would choose their favourite sites solely on the basis of the range of slots games they offer.

The success of these online casino gambling sites is however not solely down to their range of slots games, the ability to offer a huge range of different games has also enabled the site operators to appeal to other sections of the gambling fan base, including the huge number of bingo fans around the country. For many years playing bingo was probably more popular than gambling on horse racing in terms of the number of people actively participating, and it was only the smoking ban which caused a reduction in the number of people regularly playing bingo at one of the many clubs in our towns and cities. The game itself however has not fallen out of favour, and playing bingo online is very popular indeed. There are now even specialist bingo platforms which enable bingo fans to play 24 hours a day if they choose.

Another traditional casino gambling game which has seen a huge rise in interest partly as a result of the introduction of online casino gambling is of course the game of poker. After many years of being a gambling game played solely by a few diehard fans, usually amongst themselves at somebody’s home, poker has rapidly become one of the most popular online gambling games all over the world. Even the major poker tournaments across the world are now regularly oversubscribed with new players eager to try their luck against the best. The game of choice for most serious poker players is the Texas Hold’em format of the game, which uses community cards and provides multiple betting rounds to boost the pot, but it is not the only poker format available online. Poker, particularly Texas Hold’em poker is definitely a gambling game which tends to favour the experienced player in the long run, so it is wise for new players to learn the game as well as they can before getting involved in playing on one of the many specialist online poker forums. Not everyone has ambitions to play poker for high stakes, so it is worth noting that almost all the online casino gambling sites also offer a whole range of poker games which can be played against the house for small stakes. Access to gambling games such as poker and bingo is just another example of why the online gambling sites have proved to be so popular because of the increased choice they are able to offer.