Casino game designers knew from the mid-1970s that if there was a platform that could help interlock a global community of casino bettors across a secure grid, meaning they could play casino games from home, the potential profit margins were incalculable.
Technology has helped to add a whole new list of possibilities to the gambling industry. While the slot gaming world could claim that it has witnessed more substantial change than the poker industry has over the last 30 years due to technology – it’s fair to say that they both now have dozens of spin-offs and idea implementations that nobody would’ve thought possible before the internet. Today’s focus is on the world of poker, though, and how it has managed to harness the miraculous developments by gaming innovators to turn the industry into a 21st-century success story
The Rise Of Video Poker
There’s not much point in sitting around and discussing land-based poker because that was only the first step in a sector that now has dozens of spin-offs and variants. If we explore the first real innovation in poker, though, video poker, it shows the early embers of how those in the poker world were looking to find ideas beyond the limitations of the land-based game.
Projecting poker onto a video screen in a casino removes the need for a whole host of factors specific to poker as a casino game, ranging from bluffing to psychological taunts and verbal jibes. Video poker removed the need for any of this, but for some, this is the essence of the game. It focussed entirely on the quality of the hand, allowing those poker purists to cut out the noise that would often come with a land-based game and enjoy an undiluted version that relied solely on strategy.
Although other poker variations have emerged since the successful rollout of video poker machines in the 1970s, they still have a firm place in the casino gaming world today. Hundreds of video poker providers are active today, such as those at www.ignitioncasino.eu/casino/video-poker.
Ultimately, the rise of video poker highlighted a strong, consistent audience for those looking to play a new idea engrained in the latest technology. It also showed that the appetite and audience were there for companies to continue investigating what other poker innovations could command such a large, fresh audience.
Online Poker
If video poker laid the foundations for poker innovation, then online poker was the house built on top of it. Although video poker addressed many initial issues that traditional poker players had, they still had questions about the technology in the game and how it would adapt and overcome the many physical elements being removed. The same questions were raised when online poker started to gain traction in the mid-1990s.
Granted, this was entirely different from video poker as it removed the need to go to a casino. It was one of the first advances in a casino game that actively drew people away from the casino floor. Business analysts and casino gaming experts were split on how this would work.
Engraining market-leading industry security standards, such as 128-bit SSL encryption, helped to initially sell the idea that online poker was a viable and safe way to play online.
Since then, it has ensured that casinos can keep their platforms and customer data highly secure, with 128-bit used by some of the world’s leading banks and financial institutions.
However, they must adapt to the recent changes, including the rise of quantum computing, which offers a different security threat – but that’s a question online platforms will answer in due course.
With the exponential rise in internet speed and the wide availability of smartphones that can handle this monumental increase in bandwidth, all of the stars aligned for online poker companies to leverage this technology, and the runway was cleared for online poker to become the force it is today. Mobile trends weren’t just a fad either; they continue to spearhead several changes, with mobile marketing a multi-billion dollar industry in its own right.
Final Thoughts
Like several other online casino games, online poker used technology to usher in a new medium of playing that enhanced the end-user experience. Technology was the beating heart of what made these changes so viable and attractive. Still, ultimately, the increase in convenience brought the flood of new customers into online poker.
It was a gamble for online poker game designers to invest so much money in developing this technology, especially from the mid-1990s until the early 2000s, when the landscape of online casino gaming was utterly different.
There was still skepticism about the viability of online gaming. Far fewer people had access to online technology, which was slower and more expensive, and the idea of entering sensitive information online wasn’t as widespread as it is now. Without SSL encryption, the enormous advances in smartphones and bandwidth capability, and other technological changes that have sprouted from these pioneering moves, the gambling industry and online poker would not look anything like they do today.
