The number of online casino gambling games continues to grow

Playing gambling games at an online casino has rapidly become one of the favourite gambling activities here in Ireland and is now commonly thought to be almost on a par with sports gambling in many areas. That is quite a statement when you consider how gambling on horse racing in particular has been so ingrained into our culture over many years. Twenty years ago the term casino gambling would invariably be taken to refer to playing gambling games such as roulette and blackjack at a real casino, but the advent of online casinos and the huge range of different gambling games we can now play on those internet sites has inevitably also changed what we mean by the term casino gambling. When the leading bookmakers decided to enhance their established online sports gambling sites by introducing a few gambling games they apparently tapped into a whole new section of the public who were perhaps not really interested in sports gambling but were attracted by the opportunity to try playing gambling games online. Many of these new online gambling enthusiasts were probably already regular visitors to a real casino where they were able to play traditional casino gambling games such as roulette and blackjack, but the lack of floor space in most of our real casinos here in Ireland meant that these casino gambling enthusiasts never had the opportunity to play any of the other traditional casino gambling games. It was therefore no surprise that when the online casino gambling site operators began to feature gambling games such as baccarat, backgammon and craps, these regular casino visitors were immediately hooked on the idea of playing these games online. There was also another group of gaming enthusiasts who presented an obvious target audience for the idea of playing gambling games online and they were of course the thousands of bingo fans across the country. Although attendances at our bingo clubs had suffered a significant fall following the introduction of the smoking ban in public places, the actual game of bingo was still as popular as ever so when the online casino gambling sites began to feature the game of bingo plus a range of new numbers games based on the same concept, most of the existing bingo fans in our communities were again attracted to the idea of playing the game online. The traditional casino gambling games and the game of bingo were clearly excellent incentives in attracting existing gaming enthusiasts to the idea of playing gambling games online, but by far the biggest attraction was the ever increasing number of slots gambling games being introduced by the site operators. Almost everybody has enjoyed playing a slot machine at some time in their lives and we there are still a number of well attended slot machine arcades in our towns and cities, so it is hardly a surprise that the slots gambling games proved to be the most popular type of gambling game now available online.

The slots games and the video slots now form the vast majority of the gambling games featured on almost every online casino gambling site, but many of them bear no relationship to the slot machines many of us grew up with. There are now up to five reels with a vast number of winning lines and multiple options to increase winnings on each spin. There are even slots games which feature falling blocks rather than the traditional reels and the range of different themes is also quite staggering. There are slots games based on popular films, comic and cartoon characters as well as a whole range of different sports. There is undoubtedly now a slots game to appeal to almost everybody, whatever their interests and hobbies.

While we are discussing the appeal of the traditional casino gambling games and the slots games now available at all the online casino gambling sites we should also mention the increasingly demonised gambling machines which are now installed in almost all our betting shops. These so called Fixed Odds Betting Terminals often combine the ease of playing a slot machine with the excitement of playing a traditional casino gambling game such as roulette, and this combination is considered to be extremely addictive and many critics are convinced that they are a major cause of problem gambling. We do not propose to comment any further on the rights and wrongs of the differing opinions regarding this particular type of gambling machine as far as their contribution to problem gambling is concerned, but felt that they had to be included in any discussion about gambling games and in particular slots gambling games.

So far we have discussed the appeal of the traditional casino gambling games, bingo and the huge range of slots and video slots which have contributed to the success of the online casino gambling sites, but there is one more gambling game which has benefitted considerably from the introduction of online casino gambling and that is the game of poker. Poker is of course another of the traditional gambling games which had fallen out of favour here in Ireland primarily due to the fact that our casinos were unable to make it available on a regular basis, but has very rapidly grown in popularity since becoming available online. There are now even specialist online poker platforms set up specifically to allow poker enthusiasts to compete with other players from all over the world. Even the big poker tournaments which used to be the preserve of professional gamblers are now regularly oversubscribed as the hundreds of the new online poker fans apply for a seat. Many of these tournaments now run qualifying rounds to decide who gets a seat at the main event. The version of poker now preferred by this growing number of serious poker fans is of course the Texas Hold’em format of poker. Texas Hold’em uses five community cards together with two hole cards for each player, which tends to enhance the quality of the hands. After each community card is dealt there is also another betting round which means that there may be as many as five betting rounds before reaching the showdown stage of the game, leading to much bigger pots.