Why?

Well as it happens, Riga is fast becoming the epicenter of the online gambling industry’s push to bring live dealer games to European players.

Evolution who?

This all started a couple of years ago, when a then unknown niche casino platform developer named Evolution Gaming built a dealer studio there, with a view to streaming games with European dealers to the online gambling world. Until then, video streamed casino games were largely confined to Asian based dealer studios served to Asian players – and there the format continues to enjoy considerable and growing market support.

Owing largely to the quality of their platform, Evolution managed to sign up a couple of big name operators back in 2008. Not wanting to miss out on having the slickest new product on the market, other operators were keen to jump on board also, and soon the trickle of licensee sign-ups turned into a torrent.  A who’s who of the online online gambling world now serves Evolution’s games to their respective customers. Blue Square, William Hill, Ladbrokes, Unibet, 888.com, Bwin, GalaCoral, Paddy Power, PartyGaming, Victor Chandler. These are all companies that count their registered player bases in the millions.

It was no surprise to anyone watching these developments, when Evolution announced in early 2009 that they had to double the floor space in their Riga dealer studio to cope with demand for their live games.

Playtech joins the party

Watching all this with interest was online casino software power house Playtech.  They had been already operating a successful Asian based dealer studio streaming blackjack, roulette, baccarat and sicbo to their licensee casinos.  Not wanting to miss out on the European party they decided to launch a new dealer studio with European dealers, and their location choice…Riga, Latvia.

So now, in terms of access to a registered player base, you have arguably the 2 most significant online live dealer studios in the world both located in the picture post card city of Riga.

About Riga

First a quick geography lesson…Riga sits on a Baltic Sea bay on the East coast of Latvia (green).  It’s Latvia’s capital and  from all reports and pics, a very beautiful city whose center has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site.  About 700,000 Latvians call Riga home.   And least 200 of those 700,000 deal blackjack, roulette and baccarat in front of web cameras that are streamed to players around the world 24/7.  And if those 200 are at all representative of the rest of the population, I (young red-blooded male) am moving to Riga in the not too distant future.

A typical Riga dealer from a game recorded at Unibet…

To be fair, some of these ‘smaller, rag tag’ casinos aren’t that small.  Some are among the industry’s pioneers, operating without incident since the late 1990′s (eg English Harbour).  But the fact remains, when it comes to choosing an online casino, US players face a far more limited selection as regards both quantity and quality than players from most of the rest of the world.

And while choice is limited where online casinos generally are concerned, turning to live dealer casinos, that choice narrows to practically non-existent.

An unfortunate reality for US players is that most casinos that live dealer games happen to be amongst the larger, European licensed brands that withdrew from the US market back in 2006.  Both Microgaming and Playtech, the industry’s 2 largest software developers who are leading the charge into live dealer platform development do not allow their licensee casinos to accept US players.  And the likes of William Hill, Ladbrokes, Bwin, bet365, Unibet, PartyGaming, Expekt, 888.com, Blue Square…etc etc – the biggest online gambling names, who have all added live dealers to their product offering in the last couple of years, all do not accept US players.

The live casino landscape is a very baron one indeed if you live in the United States.  And this will probably remain the case until such time as (if at all) UIGEA is repealed and replaced with a regulatory regime that allows the likes of Harrahs et al to go online.

It’s baron but its not totally bare.

One casino that has live dealers and will accept US players is Betphoenix.  They offer blackjack, baccarat and roulette and accept UseMyWallet (one of the few virtual wallet services available to US players).  And the games are very playable.  Of course the downside is, they are licensed and based in Costa Rica.  Which isn’t to say they are unscrupulous (the word in the forums is they’re trustworthy operators), but it is to say that if they were you would have little recourse if you had some issue with them.

Live Blackjack at Betphoenix…

Live roulette at Betphoenix…

We intend to fill this site with a whole bunch of useful insights about the developing industry of live casino gambling.  What are live dealer casinos?  In the simple terms, think of them as a cross between online casinos and traditional bricks an mortar casinos…the games are dealt by real dealers using real gaming equipment (cards, dice, balls etc), yet you can play them remotely on your computer.  The vision of the game deal is streamed live from a dealer studio to players’ PC along with a, accompanying bet interface enabling participation in the game.

No doubt developed to overcome player doubts over the true randomness of RNG (Random Number Generator) online casino games, they have become particularly popular in Asia and are now gaining traction in Europe and the Americas.  The last 12 months in particular have seen an accelerated rate of adoption of live games by all the major European online gambling operators – names like William Hill, Bwin, Blue Square, Unibet, Expekt, bet365 and the like.

Is this format the future of online casino gambling?  It’s probably too early to make any bold statements like this. But it is a new evolution in internet gambling offering elements of realism that RNG games simply cannot compete with.  While online casinos (RNG) have been taking bets since the mid 1990′s, the first live dealer casinos only started operating around 2005. It’s an industry still very much in its infancy but one that seems to be taking significant strides in both the quality and availability offerings.

Please enjoy our coming posts and feel free to comment.

regards

LDG