Live casino games streamed from a real casino - is this the answer?

23 July 2009, Staff writer

Casinos and the internet have had a happy marriage for some time now.  The industry has grown exponentially since the first operators started taking bets online in the mid 90's and depending on which reports you believe, it now enjoys revenues in the order of $10 to $15 billion annually. 

But it's also an industry that has found the need to constantly appease the skeptics on the issues of probity and the randomness of game outcomes.  The internet is after all a medium of smoke and mirrors in many respects, providing the opportunity for unscrupulous operators to set up seemingly legitimate casino sites.

The legitimate, large brand casinos have gone to great lengths to introduce measures that prove, or at least go a long way to providing compelling evidence that their games are fair.  The introduction of historical return to player rate audits by independent third parties is an example of one of the initiatives introduced by some online casinos to this end.

But beyond game fairness, the holy grail of online gambling that most casinos are chasing is an offering that replicates as closely as possible a real bricks and mortar casino experience...deliverable remotely to players PC's of course.  Live streaming of an actual game deal - real cards, real dealer, real table - offering players an element of reality to an otherwise virtual medium, is arguably a step in right direction (aside from issues with web connection speeds and web-cast quality). 

After live deal casinos started to gain some player traction, one software developer came up with the bright idea of taking the concept a step further and streaming vision from actual casinos rather than purpose built dealer studios, which had been the norm.  The logic is sound...what better way to replicate a real casino experience than to actually deliver that real casino remotely to the player.

A handful of casinos now stream 'bet-able' vision of blackjack, baccarat and roulette games from Ireland's Fitzwilliam Card Club and Casino ( eg Lucky Live Casino - Read Review I Visit ) and it's interesting to compare this offering to studio based dealer streams. 

The first thing that becomes readily apparent when you open the games is that they don't exactly give you the feeling of being transported into the casino.  The vision looks a little more like something you would see from a roof mounted security camera than a camera placed at the game table designed to provide a perspective you would get if sitting at the actual table.  And I guess this is understandable - no doubt the casino doesn't want clunky camera's taking up seat space at its tables and requires that they are as unobtrusive as possible.  Nor would it want bright studio lights shining on the dealer and table at the expense of their normal casino ambience - a fact that leads to vision quality being more granular and less clear than that offered by the purpose built studio streams.  And given the dealer is busy tending to the players in the casino, any interaction with remote players is difficult.

On the upside you will be playing a game conducted by a 'bricks and mortar' casino croupier.  You will also have the novelty of being able to watch other players inside the casino playing the game you are playing on your PC.  And in time, the above issues will no doubt be ironed out by either current or new operators.  After all, if the techies can put a man on the moon I'm sure they can sort out live streaming from real casinos.

But as things currently stand, I would have to say that, ironically, purpose built dealer studios actually offer a remote casino gambling experience closer to the real thing than vision streamed from the real thing.
 

Vision from the Fitzwilliam Card Club and Casino - as viewed at Lucky Live Casino