Roulette has changed. From a game played in the backrooms of casinos, to a downloadable client played on your own in front of a computer screen, to a multitude of live TV roulette shows, Roulette has evolved. In the first of two articles, we will look at the general evolution of roulette on the internet, up to the streaming games played online.

Always one of the most popular casino games, with the dawn of the internet, roulette found a new way of gaining fans and players. Online casinos popped up all over the place – indeed you could barely surf your way around the internet without being bombarded by adverts for online casinos. “Free Play Roulette” or “The Best Online Casino Here” pop-ups appeared left, right and center. Mostly right over the actual article you were trying to read!

Despite the intrusive advertising, these casinos, offering a wide variety of games, and free play to entice the online gambler, gained massive popularity. Typically, the user would register with the site, and download a small program to their desktop. After running the program which would then connect to the casino over the internet, the player would be able to play the games.

Initially the games were simple; the online equivalent of slot machines and video poker. Roulette wasn’t even among the first batch of online games. Gradually, the games became more complex; card games such as Blackjack were added, and lottery games like Keno. Finally Roulette was added. These games didn’t deal with real, live casinos however. The results were computed – that is a highly complex random number generator was used in the background to calculate results. Regulation of the results ensured that the games were fair.

At this time, online poker exploded in popularity. Again played by a downloadable client with computer generated cards, this time there was a difference. Instead of playing alone, just you and the PC screen with no-one else around, you were playing against real players ; you could talk to people, communicate with fellow players – even goad them into placing bets they didn’t want to – and generally build up the feel of being involved in a ‘real’ game, even though the game was still computer generated.

On the internet itself a quiet revolution was also taking place. Broadband access was becoming more popular. This allowed larger packets of data to be sent over the wire in far less time than was previously possible, and the casinos saw the possibilities. It was now unnecessary for people to download the ‘client’ software – the user could play without ever leaving their browser. Video was possible, thanks to the faster connections and faster computers.

The casinos started to wonder…would it be possible to somehow merge these aspects? Could we somehow combine a browser client, streaming video, and a sense of interactivity? Could we somehow get rid of the computer-generated results?

The answer was a resounding ‘Yes’. Casinos like the Fitzwilliam Card Club in Dublin started placing a webcam above their roulette tables, so it was possible to play in a live casino, by viewing the game on their website and players could place their stake online. The Dublin Bet Roulette website became a great success.

Streaming roulette video to online and placing bets over the internet, along with chat rooms, increased the popularity and success of the game. It allowed people the feel of visiting a real casino, and the ability to get real results from a real wheel – no longer would computer generated results plague users doubts as to the authenticity of the bet.

In the next article, we will look at the further evolution of live roulette; the way websites such as Super Casino, Smart Live Casino, and Challenge Jackpot with its Roulette Nation show have moved roulette to yet a wider audience with Live TV roulette, as well as the introduction of other live games such as Blackjack and Bingo.