Internet casino – a fairly broad concept. Such institutions can provide access to a variety of gambling entertainment: from simple slot machines to roulette, poker or lotteries. Ways of playing also vary significantly. Most often, online casinos provide games on their website, but recently more and more players are using special downloadable clients for computers and laptops, as well as applications for portable devices (phones, tablets, etc.).
The main features of online gambling
Online casinos are fundamentally different from ordinary gaming establishments. The main feature of such entertainment is the use of random number generator to calculate any game results. Slot machines in the hall of ordinary casinos have a similar principle of operation, but the winnings in more classic games: poker, roulette, blackjack, etc. in real institutions depends only on chance.
Demo Games
Another important feature of online casinos is the ability to play slot machines for free and without registration. In classic casinos there is no such opportunity for quite understandable reasons. Their goal is to make money, so playing for free the visitor takes the place of the player for real money. On the Internet there is no problem with the number of seats or a limited range of games. Free game not only does not harm the business, and even significantly increases the interest of customers to the institution.
Availability
Today in the world there is a tradition to transfer all game facilities to special “game zones”. Thus, government agencies in many countries are trying to control the activities of gambling business. In this regard, online casinos look more and more promising and convenient type of entertainment. Availability of virtual projects is much higher than in the usual stationary entertainment complexes. Stable access to the Internet is now available to more than 90% of the population of developed countries. Therefore, it is much easier for a gambler to access the Internet casino than to go to a gambling zone.
Threshold of entry into the game online casinos specifically adheres to the low level. Minimum top-up amounts are often set at a few dollars. This allows you to attract a large audience.
High return rate
Each slot machine of the casino has a fixed percentage of funds returned to players. It varies depending on the manufacturer of the game. In ordinary institutions it rarely reaches 95%, but for online casinos this figure is considered to be the minimum.
Bonuses and other types of incentives
The specificity of virtual institutions allows them to offer various deposit or non-deposit bonuses and coupons. Also bonuses can take the form of a cacheback (refund of part or all of the money spent on the game for a certain period) or a one-time payment.
Particular attention worthy of lotteries online casinos. This is one of the most common types of attracting customers. Due to the high turnover of funds, many large online resources regularly raffle prizes for millions of dollars. This phenomenon looks like an unnecessary waste, but in fact, by attracting a large number of new customers, many times pays off the costs.
How online gambling works
In classic gambling such as baccarat, poker, roulette and even lotto, the result depends on a huge number of objective factors. For example, distribution in poker depends on quality of shuffling of cards, their casual distribution in a deck, sequence of distribution and many other things. Slot machines in online casinos work on a completely different principle. All slot results are generated by a special program – random number generator.
Video slots offline gaming institutions and online casino machines work on a similar scheme. Manufacturers embed in them their own random number generator, which constantly produce sets of completely random values. The program performs millions of operations per second and never stops. The product of its activity is a sequence of 64 numbers. At the moment when the “Spin” button is pressed on a slot, the program selects the currently generated row and already processes it to display the results.
Further processing of data by the random number generator is no less important for the player than the set of numbers generated by the generator. The point is that 64 values are often too many for slot machines. Most of them use only a few numerical results. So, for example, roulette gives the user only 1 number behind the back. That is why a series of numbers generator random numbers superimposed on a special matrix, which determines the result.
For example, a slot contains 3 reels of 3 rows of characters. For each reel, a random number generator will give you its own sequence of numbers. The program needs to select only 3 values, so it will be checked against the drop-down matrix. In the matrix, each character is assigned a certain position. In this case, because the pictures in the slot are less than 64, some people get more positions, respectively, and a greater chance of falling out. For example, the scatter and the “wild” symbol of classic slots will have only 1 position, while the “cheapest” signs will get 2 or 3 chances to hit the screen. Thus the slot matrix has a direct impact on its rate of return.
Unfair online casinos change the matrix in the source code of the machines themselves, thus lowering the rate of return. That is why it is important for players to pay attention to the availability of certificates of independent centers to check gambling software on the Internet casino website. It is also worth playing on slots of well-known manufacturers, as their products have the highest level of protection against hacking.
How did online casinos come into being
First appearance
The first platform for network gaming business was developed by Microgaming in 1994. Immediately after its release, the State of Antigua and Barbuda passed a bill that allowed for the licensing of online gambling. These two events gave birth to the virtual gaming business.
Together with Microgaming, the pioneer of online gambling industry is Criptologic. Criptologic was one of the first companies to develop special online applications and games. In 1999, they were joined by the famous developer Playtech.
Further development
Initially, the industry developed through betting offices and virtual counterparts of popular casinos. However, in 1998, there was another surge of user activity, which led to the emergence of a huge number of exclusively virtual projects. The reason for the boom was the development and widespread introduction of the “progressive jackpot” concept. Its essence was that some of the money lost by users was accumulated and issued as a jackpot. The amount of such winnings grew very rapidly and reached astronomical proportions, attracting the attention of an increasing number of gambling public.
Since 2001, gambling on the Internet has become one of the most promising and highly profitable. Competition between game software producers has increased significantly. This has played into the hands of users. The assortment of games has significantly increased and the quality has improved. Moreover, new gambling platforms generated more and more progressive jackpots. If in 2001 the maximum win was 415 thousand dollars, in 2002 the lucky player received 1.5 million dollars. To date, the amount of payments on the largest jackpots reaches 10,000,000 dollars.
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