It seems like yesterday that live dealer games at online casinos were the wave of the future, but not today. As recently as one year ago, only one software vendor was known for developing and supplying live dealer software: Playtech, already otherwise known as a top-two casino software producer.
The choice of games has expanded as well. Whereas the first live dealer casino games were essentially of two sorts, liveblackjack and roulette (the latter being particularly easy to offer, as the limit of patrons allowed at the table can be fairly high), a cursory look these days will reveal live-dealer versions of Texas hold ‘em, baccarat, three-card poker, red dog poker, and It seems like yesterday that this type of games at online casinos were the wave of the future, but not today. As recently as one year ago, only one software vendor was known for developing and supplying live dealer software: Playtech, already otherwise known as a top-two casino software producer.
Since those far-gone days of 2007-08, though, everything has changed. The biggest online gambling sites – you know, the football team sponsor-level ones – have adopted live dealer gaming at their casinos while established casino software companies now producing live dealer products are met with competition for brand new firms specializing in the stuff.
The appeal of the live dealer is easy to see: It’s a question of trust, right? Sure, the online casino player empirically knows that the virtual cards of a traditional game of internet poker or blackjack are randomly determined by the cold logic of random number generator (or RNG) software, but does he or she really *know* for sure? After all, the best substitute for a RNG is to simply actually play out the random event that would otherwise be simulated.
Finally, while the online casino industry has been bitten a bit by the global economic crisis, the live-dealer segment within the greater business has actually seen a slight upturn in 2009, again indicating that this is the catchiest thing in internet gaming right now.
On the near horizon are offerings like "live" dealer elimination blackjack tournaments, Sic Bo, Let ‘em Ride, lrummy and, believe it or not, live casino war. (Now how cool is that?)
The replacement of artificially-generated cards by actual cards broadcast via internet appeals to enough players to make the average playing history of a customer at a live dealer casino up to four times longer than that of one playing at a traditional online casino. And one recent study indicated a wide swath of players across Asia who play *only* live-dealer games online. Surely this will soon be the case in the more remote areas of Europe and someday in like places in the United States – imagine the live-dealer casino snob cliques…
All in all, all signs point to the fact that the future vis-à-vis live dealer casinos is now. Interesting that they reached into a past when poker players actually used – gasp! – real cards to play the games. Seeing is believing, one supposes; check out a live casino game and see for yourself what the hype is about.