Live casino is not really a substitute for actual casino play

Online casinos, although great fun can never be a substitute for going to an actual casino but the problem in Ireland is that there aren’t any to go to so the nearest alternative is the live casino option which seems to be available at every online casino these days but this is only a partial replacement. One of the most enjoyable things about going to an actual casino is that it is not all about gambling. Generally there is food and drink available which makes it a night out (most people go to casinos in the evening despite the fact that they are usually open in the afternoon as well) but possibly part of the fun is also watching other people. Unfortunately this part of the entertainment is not present at the live casino option of online casinos. You can of course have as much food and drink as you like playing from your own home but you cannot see what other players are doing even though they might be playing at the same table at the same time. The one advantage of the live casino option is that there is a dealer to whom you can chat which some folk like to do and there will always be discussion about whether having sight of cards being dealt or the roulette wheel being spun gives a better chance of winning than at the regular online casino where a random number generator is used.

Random number generators have been around for a long time and have various uses, one of which is online casinos. They are really nothing more than a computer program that produces random numbers which can then be related to anything including cards. In roulette it is easy as the programmer puts in the parameters of 37 numbers (0 to 36) but for cards the parameters are 52 which then have to be allocated to specific cards. This is all very simplistically expressed but the idea is right. Good online casinos such as any of those listed at the casinos.ie site have their RNGs audited on a regular basis to make sure that they are producing random results which is actually as much in the interest of the casino as the player. Online casinos like random results as the players cannot follow a pattern and the online casino always has an edge to every game anyway. A good roulette wheel or a properly shuffled deck of cards produce just as random results as the computer version. The edge which the casino has at all casino games is sometimes referred to as the house edge and is simply the margin between deposits and payments. Casino house edges for some casino games are very small indeed and others are larger. For example online casinos often publish statistics about payout percentages for casino slots. For online casinos this is often in the 97 to 98% range. For slot machines at other establishments it can be as low as 70% so the online casino is definitely a better bet. What this means effectively is that if you put €100 into the machine you could expect €97 to €98 to be paid out on average. Obviously this is an average over millions of spins on the machine so the chances are that in any session you will win or lose far more.

The house edge for online casino roulette comes from the fact that there are 37 number s on the wheel (38 in American roulette) but the payout for a single number win is 35:1. In other words, if a group of players put a chip on every number on the roulette table they would be staking 37 chips and one of the group will win 35 chips plus their original stake of one chip making 36 chips. The others will all lose and the house makes a profit of one chip. In reality the house could win far more or indeed lose heavily on any individual spin but over time this will be the result. Blackjack is one of the casino games with the smallest of house edges and in fact you might wonder what the house edge is in Blackjack considering that either the dealer hand or your own hand has an equal chance of being higher and in the event of a tie your stake is returned. The answer lies in the fact that the player always plays first and if they bust they lose regardless of what happens or might have happened to the dealer afterwards. The dealer has an equal chance of busting as the player and indeed that often happens but if the player busts first they lose.  All Irish Casino actually states that the payout percentage for roulette is over 97%, that for Punto Banco is over 98% and for Blackjack is 99.3% when following the perfect strategy.

The live casino option at online casinos has much the same house edge as the online casino itself but of course there are no casino slots available at the live casino. Possibly the major drawback of the live casino option is the fact that there are no casino slots available as well as other popular casino games such as Craps. The whole idea of live casino is to replace the random number generator with a dealer so for casino games that require no dealer there cannot be a substitute. In the experience of casinos.ie there are in fact very few players who play the live casino compared to the normal online casino although the reason is not known. Minimum stakes can sometimes be a little higher at the live casino but for most players they are not high enough to present a problem and they are still often much lower than you will find at a land based casino so that is unlikely to be a reason. Live casino often offers a bonus for first time players even if that player already has an account with the casino so it must be worth trying out.