Article Surfing Archive

Today gambling facilities have become so popular and available that many people perceive hazard games as an integral part of modern life. Though, it is not well known that gambling traces its roots back to antiquity. There has been found historical evidence of the fact that Romans, Greeks, Chinese and Japanese played some kind of games of chance and skill in the early third millennium B.C.

When speaking about gambling history of USA, we should mention that Native Americans also had a concept of hazard games. They associated luck and chance with fate, considering them to be gods' signs. But the real birth of gambling dates back to the early 17th century, when the colonization of the New World began. It is interesting that gambling itself partly contributed to the formation of the new nation. Lottery income financed British colonists, lotteries, performed in all 13 colonies, earned money for building projects and purchasing equipment. Lotteries also promoted institutions of higher learning including Harvard College, Dartmouth, Yale and Columbia. There was even a ruffle that supported the American Revolution.

Currently gambling industry is a vibrant and rapidly developing branch of our life. Casinos and slot machines, poker rooms and gambling tournaments have spread all over the world and managed to gain amazing popularity. Today gambling has become a real force and affects social and economic spheres of life.

The top notch of modern world of hazard games are online casinos. The development of technologies and communication facilities made it possible to enjoy playing your favorite card game sitting at home while your opponent is on the other end of the earth. A thing absolutely unbelievable just half a century ago!

Online casinos, also known as virtual or internet casinos, allow players to gamble and make bets on casino games with the help of the Internet. They basically provide odds and payback percentage similar to traditional casinos. Some online casinos offer significant payback percentages and the information about that is commonly available at their sites.

The online casinos may be divided into three main group depending on their inter face. They are as follows:

' Download-based casinos are as its name implies - casinos that require you to download and install a certain free program to be able to play and make bets. It'll take you some few minutes but once installed such program provides excellent sound, graphics and animation.

' Browser-based casinos use all HTML and don't require any time for downloading. Such casinos feature fast gameplay and OK graphics, but do not provide animation and sound effects.

' Live casinos are the most recent ones and use JAVA or Flash instead downloaded programs. JAVA/Flash applications are ran through your browser and generally have good graphics, animation and sound accompaniment.

It is recommended to devote some time for choosing an online casino to gamble at as there is an astonishing variety of them. The main features that you should pay attention to are minimum bets, deposit requirements, casino status, sign up procedure, safety and reliability of the casino. The last two aspects are widely and frequently disputed. In support of online casino safety we can say that all online gambling facilities must have a license and therefore undergo extensive government checks. Furthermore, the security of your personal information like credit card details, address or telephone number, is also guaranteed under license agreements in all jurisdictions. You can also expect fair odds at online casinos as there is no sensible reason for casinos to fix them. Trustworthiness for online casinos is absolutely vital as news in the Internet travel fast and the company can loose its clients in no time if its fairness was put in doubt.

But how does online casino differ from their offline counterparts?

Online gambling, like everything in our life, has its pros and cons, benefits and drawbacks. Let us focus on some peculiarities of playing at online casinos.

First of all, online games of chance and skill are available 24/7 ' you need only an Internet connection to start gambling. You also can create the most convenient environment beginning from what you wear to the temperature and lighting you like.

Another benefit of online gambling is that you have a gripping opportunity to play against people from throughout the world. Just draw a picture of such situation in your imagination! Moreover, the universality of Internet gives you access to most casinos of the world, what is unbelievable in real life.

In general, online facilities have made gambling easier and more flexible to meet all your wishes. But these features also have certain drawbacks. Gambling at online casino while at home you have plenty of distracting factors: TV, radio, phone calls, chatting with friends, e-mails' Some people even manage to play at two different online casinos at a time! Sure, such atmosphere does not help you to concentrate attention on the game and frequentlu becomes a reason of failures.

But maybe the most important distinction of virtual casino gaming is the absence of intimate, face-to-face contact with opponents. This fact prevents some offline players from gambling online as they are used to read the other players, what is impossible in such anonymous environment as Internet. Besides that, online playing sessions are typically much shorter than real ones and you have no time to reveal your opponent's game strategy. It makes online gambling even more risky! Some people lack the feeling of cards and the weight of chips in their hands when playing online.

However, online casino industry is developing at a very high rate and offers more and more sophisticated and attractive opportunities for people to enjoy internet gambling. The place to gamble at is always left to your discretion, but according to the rising popularity of online casino facilities, the future of the industry is likely to be in this area.