| No online casino guide website will be complete without even a brief history of Internet Gambling. While this casino information is often considered as a side note, you will definitely find a few interesting tidbits reading this one.
The history of the online casino website is closely linked with that of the land based one and the advent of the Internet. The emergence of the online casino can also be seen as the expansion of 'brick and mortar' casinos into a new technology to reach wider audiences.
Also note that different games that made it into the current repertoire of casino games also have their histories in the Internet market. Many of the games were first included together in the online casino's games list before being released as stand alone games. The more popular games like poker and blackjack, on the other hand, proved worthy enough that they received their own dedicated sites way before they were included in the online casinos.
As for the first ever casino, the history books are quite unsure, considering the website boom experienced in the last decade, at the advent of the Internet to the mainstream audience. Many “historians” consider Microgaming's The Gaming Club to be the first full fledged casino online. The site began operating in 1995. Microgaming is also considered to be the the first company to offer software for the online casino community. The Gaming Club still remains active to this day, albeit under a different name, providing services to a select clients.
The later half of the 90's saw the emergence of numerous other online gambling sites on the heels of the Gaming Club's success. This marks the casino boom that jump started the online casino industry to its present state.
The online poker scene also gained popularity during the those years, with rise of online poker rooms. Planet Poker is credited as bing the first to introduce the multiplayer poker game when I began operations in January of 1996. With the opening of Paradise Poker in 1999, however, the mainstream gaming circuit took notice and thus online poker becomes very popular. It can be noted that online poker is also one of the great contributing factors as to why the game of poker itself has become very popular with the general public nowadays.
Online sports betting, on the other hand, is seen as a direct offshoot of its pen and paper cousin. Online sports betting serves as another inexpensive way to place bets without going out of the house. Intertops was the first to offer online betting services in 1996, though the company has already forayed in betting scene for quite some time.
The history of online gaming is, however, intricately linked with that of attempts to regulate it. Once a game become very popular, regulations are set forth in order to put it to more acceptable standards. At first, the general laws covering gaming activities on each state were used to regulate online casinos. When particular cases unique to online casinos arose, lawmakers enacted new laws that deal specifically with them. The first attempt at online casino regulation if the 1997 Internet Gambling Prohibition Act. The bill was intended to curtail the transfer of money from online casinos through wired devices. Present law, however, have became less restrictive and allows casino transactions, provide that the casinos are licensed to operate. This varies from state to state though. |
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