Land-based casinos are what is otherwise known as “brick and mortar casinos”, they have real assets – buildings, hotel, restaurants, and glitzy entertainment centers.
They play host to millions of people who come to enjoy themselves spending money and, hopefully, making some money, as well. Whether you visit The Venetian Casino in Macau, China, with its 3000 game machines and 870 gaming tables, Casino Baden-Baden Germany, South Africa’s Tusk-Rio Casino Resort in the town of Klerksdorp, or whether you check out the venues in Lisbon, Portugal or Oklahoma, USA, Melbourne, Australia, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Stratford, UK, or Lyon, France, to mention just a very few, you are sure to find an incredible source of energy. This pulsating pace appears to ignore the difference between day and night, weekdays and weekends, Summer and Winter – as it is all happening in a fantastic 24/7 sounds, movements of wheels, bells, falling cards, shrieking winners and calls of croupiers.
We got fascinated by the land-based casino in movies, and – at times – had the opportunity to visit one and get taken by the magic. In fact, casinos existed even before they were named “Casino”. Houses of gambling existed in China 2300 years ago, where people could buy “white dove” raffles and win impressive sums of money. The Greeks and the Romans played games like checkers and a variety of dice-games for money – betting on the outcome of the throw or on the result of the game.
When the cards arrived in Europe from China during the Middle-Ages, things accelerated. The card game Baccarat flourished in France and Italy around 1400 AD. Cards are the type of game that has a built-in mystery – one of the reasons they still exist, 5000 years after having first been used by humans.
The word “Casino” comes from the Italian for “Cottage”, and it was in the little villas across Italy that people gathered to play and bet. Two hundred years later, around 1600,Blackjack was introduced and in 1638 the Ridotto (Italian for “The Private Room”), the first Casino in the world, was established in Venice. Initially, Casinos existed as seasonal entertainment.
During the 19th century, Casinos sprouted all over Europe and took hold also in the US – where, for example, floating Casinos operated on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. The establishing of Poker as a global card game that is played for money started during the early 1800s – probably in New Orleans.
60-odd years later, New York saw the first One-Armed Bandit. These mechanical gambling machines came out of the so-called “Penny Arcades” (the great-grandparents of modern amusement arcades) who were venues that offered coin-operated machines.
Other attractions included an early version of pinball games (without the electric component), as well as various fortune-telling mechanical contraptions that spit a pre-printed card with one’s “fortune” for a penny. These inexpensive and highly popular venues remained – basically unchanged (other than the addition of electricity and, eventually, electronics) until the birth of the video arcade, in the 1970s.
In 1891 New York-based company Sittman and Pitt introduced the first slot machine, aka “One Armed Bandit.” It had 5 drums who rolled 50 playing cards. Sittman and Pitt built their machine to be sturdy and had them installed in a host of bars around New York and, eventually, across the US – at least, in places where gambling was not outlawed.
The game cost a nickel to play and the five drums were put in action by pushing in a coin and pulling down a lever. The drums rolled and winnings were related to various poker hands that came up.
While Sittman and Pitt’s One-Armed Bandit did not have an automatic payout facility (the bar paid one’s winnings) by the early 1900s the slot machine with an internal payout system was invented.
As Penny Arcades and more refined, luxurious, gambling establishments, flourished on both sides of the ocean, gambling became strongly established as a popular, highly attractive, social activity. The less wealthy went to the Penny Arcades to have a drink and play the games, while the affluent attended casinos where they could play other high rolling gamblers.
It was during this time that land-based casinos grew in stature. After the Second World War, many gambling venues opened – firstly to accommodate the entertainment-starving soldiers who came from the battlefields of Europe, North Africa, and the East, and later – as providers of adult gaming, entertainment, and hospitality.
A major break in gambling history is linked to a small town in Nevada. During the early 1900s, Las Vegas was a desert town with very little to show for it other than, it is said, a place where unhappily married couples could get a quick divorce. By the early 1940s, the town expanded its services to offer quick weddings too, becoming the “Elopement Capital” of the US.
When, in 1931, gambling was legalized in Las Vegas, and the town’s first major waterworks project, what would eventually be known as The Hoover Dam, was built. Many of the thousands of people who came to Las Vegas to build the dam sought after-hours entertainment and frequented a string of gambling places that gradually turned a dormant town into the gigantic entertainment metropolis it now is.
And so, many cards were dealt, dice cast, bets taken and the wheels rolled from the days individuals in China’s gambling huts 2300 years ago, through the creation of games played for money in the middle-ages and, later, casinos for the Glitterati, where they could play Blackjack and Baccarat, to modern-day Las Vegas style Casinos. At the same time, Penny Arcades became electric Arcades and, eventually, Video Arcades.
By the late 1980s computers took over the world, personal computers offered speed of processing and, naturally, games. Many of which were arcade games. It is true that the first generations of the computer were much less imaginative than the video arcades. But this, too, changed as increasingly powerful graphics and sound cards were introduced, suddenly you could play a game of poker against the computer in full color and perfect sound.
These early games were limited in many ways. Firstly, one could play the game on his own or take turns playing it on a PC with others waiting their turn to play against him. While one could network easily through existing systems, these were non-graphic, dull entities who offered lightning speed communication at the cost of attracting.
These were nothing like the games one could play in the arcades. In addition to that, one could not pay-to-play, there was no money in it, and so gambling enthusiasts and gambling business took a rain-check on online gambling.
Initially, the internet and the World Wide Web offered very little in the way of improving on clunky PC games. The Web was slow, graphically primitive and, well, unattractive. Most gaming programs had to be installed from disks and played on one’s PC or Mac.
The main attraction of land-based gambling, be it in arcades or in casinos, was the high level of entertainment, the thrill of being involved in what is essentially an activity done among other gamblers, it was a rounded experience, a real-time ongoing event, that computers and early internet websites of the time were simply unable to match.
The main barrier to entry, as far as taking the casino or arcade home to your PC remained the system’s inability to facilitate transactions, of the kind offered seamlessly offline. There were no financial facilities, as banks only embraced online banking twenty years later. There were legal barriers to entry as well – gambling licensing laws were not able to make the transition to online gambling.
There are many examples of this: of a Swedish gambler plays in an online casino whose server is hosted in New Zealand or Argentina – which gambling laws are applicable? What happens if a gambler from a place where gambling is illegal gambles in a place offering open gambling facilities? What happens to the winnings? What happens to cross-border financial controls? And what about taxes?
These and other hindrances made the entire prospect, imaginative as it may have seemed, financially impossible to implement, and legally a potential nightmare.
When online giant retailer Amazon.com appeared, the rules, at least as far as financial aspects were concerned, seemed to have shifted. There were buyers from Sweden, using the server in Seattle, USA to buy books published in France, Russia or Japan.
Amazon also broke ground in the way money and inventory exchanged hands. The phenomenal success of the globalized economy meant that credit cards were valid in most first-world countries.
The financial transactions were simple and, with the development of international transaction protocols, they became increasingly safe. At the same time, the Amazon model offered another irresistible benefit: delivery time was shorter than anything done before. Post office delays were replaced by a cottage industry of delivery companies. Order your book (or CD, or DVD, or iPad) today and get it in a few days, wherever you are.
The age of immediate gratification was upon us, and it felt really great!
It was around that time that the various barriers to entry started to fall off, one by one. The first breakthrough was the creation of systems that are able to offer big-money transactions (your credit card can handle any amount you have in your account and are allowed legally to spend) as well as micro-transactions – that is the Penny or the Nickel used in the arcades.
When micro-transactions made the transition to online retail, things really began to move quickly – it was not possible to offer “tokens” of small amounts of money, which are charged to one’s credit card in bulk – you spend, say $100 to buy four $25 digital dollar tokens which you can use to bet.
While finances got easier to handle, the world wide web moved forward and within a few years one could enjoy HD graphic and perfect digital sound online. Casinos started to test the waters – if we build it, they asked, will they come?
It appears that “they” did come. The online experience became increasingly popular. The most important contributors to this change were the financial ease of use, the beautiful, attractive online visual experience and the increase in the speed when coupled with the decrease of data-costs.
On January 9th, 2007 Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared that Apple is set to reinvent the phone, as he introduced the first-generation iPhone. The advent of the so-called “smartphone” meant that all the amazing progress made through the internet by then, could get transferred to the new phone – with an additional, mind-altering new benefit: it was now mobile.
How did the gambler experience in the Casino fair the changes? “Experience” is a keyword here. Superb online environments were designed, offering detailed, complex gaming experiences, which can be played on virtual platforms anywhere, anytime. Issues such as physical location are irrelevant online, you can play in any Casino you wish, as long as it is available online. In fact, you can play in live casinos online – including a live, fully interactive dealer!
Another important aspect of design for mobile applications is that programming languages were adapted to the advantages, as well as the challenges, of mobile existence. New programming languages handle old headaches such as speed, memory and storage space with great imagination and inventiveness, so you are less likely to lose on the action just because your phone struggles to accommodate the app.
Your mobile facility means that you can opt for small-screen type experience without forfeiting any of the other benefits – a variety of games, live service, easy to operate financial facilities, and a host of incredible games you can play!
Additional developments are, for example, major online casinos drive to implement bitcoin technology as part of the attempt to provide a safer, easier to manage, payment facilities.
Recently, a Macau, China-based casino management company named De Club announced that it intends to form a $1 billion initial coin offering (ICO), as it plans to build a blockchain based casino.
An initial coin offering gets funding using cryptocurrencies. This is done through crowdfunding, so it is open to all interested investors, but it is also not uncommon for private ICO to raise funds.
How is the online experience made available to gamblers anywhere? Firstly, it is easy to access, you can use the browser on your desktop, iPad or tablet to access superb casino facilities, like lm333, for example, and you can also download the lm333 mobile app on your Android, IOS or PC.
But, seeing that we are in the age of social networking, this is much more than a casino. Online sites offer sport betting for most imaginable (and some unimaginable) sports, as well as lottery facilities around the world – it is all there, easy to access. Gamers will find a host of links to gaming providers.
These casinos are, first and foremost, an online equivalent to the land-based, “brick and mortar” establishments: live casino, poker, progressive jackpots, they’re all here! A one-stop shop like lm333 is easily available on our mobile. It supports the other marker of modern gaming – you can be anywhere you want, it can be the middle of the night, a public holiday, a trip across the Australian Outback or your very own backyard. As long as you have internet access, and a valid credit card, your game is on!
