Betrage.com

Betrage.com will be a complete portal for all your gambling needs. We will have guides, news and site reviews for online poker, online casino, online bingo and online sportsbetting. Everything you have ever wanted will be here.

Below you can read our article on the history of online gambling. We have made this to pinpoint all the important events up until now. We hope you will like it here once this portal is launched, feel free to check back soon!

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Betrage.com history of online gambling

Microgaming launched the first gambling software in 1994. Although it proved hugely popular with internet gamblers, the first online casino didn’t open for business until 3 years later. Online casinos were mostly online versions of their offline counterparts, although it would have been impossible to guess this by looking at them.

The internet was still viewed as an untested and slightly seedy place, a product to be delivered in ‘discreet brown paper packaging’ and there were plenty of casino owners who didn’t want to be associated with their online ventures.

Wanting to stay anonymous didn’t stop many casinos from setting up operations in online gambling. Not only did the web provide a customer base limited only by internet access, but jurisdiction issues meant the internet gambling industry was operating in an almost completely unregulated environment. The gold rush was on.

Online poker was the first arm of the industry to take off. Online poker and online blackjack were the pioneer games of true internet gambling, as opposed to automated games of chance. Because they both involve developing a psychological advantage over opponents, online poker and blackjack attracted new players for very different reasons. One group was attracted to the anonymous nature of gambling online (online gambling was the first time women had been drawn in large numbers to the industry) for reasons of personal safety. Another group was also drawn by the appeal of anonymity but these were professional gamblers who were looking for new challenges. Not being able to see your opponents face in a game of psychology was about as challenging as it gets. IRC poker (a free chat-version of online poker) was quickly superseded by cash games. Accounts were set up whereby players would load cash into their online ‘bank’ and gamble with it. European players could play directly from their credit cards.

The infamous dot com crash of 2000 to 2002 had little or no effect on online gambling. This is no surprise; the media, entertainment, pornography and gambling industries have always boomed in times of social and economic instability as consumers use escapist pastimes to relieve a little daily stress. When Baron Rothschild said that “The best time to make money is when there’s blood in the streets” he may as well have been talking about online gambling. There were huge losses but also huge gains as gamblers with nerves of steel and talent to match raked in a fortune from online gambling.

Significant Moments in Online Gambling

1994 Microgaming launches first online gambling software.
1995 First attempts at secure transactions in online gambling (by CryptoLogic). Also this year,
1995 Gambling Times recognises the potential involved in internet gambling and launches an informational portal.
1996 InterCasino launches. InterCasino is touted as the first ‘real money’ online casino
1999 The first serious attempt at legislating online gambling is proposed in the United States. 1999 Australia, the country with the highest per capita rate of online gambling, launches Lasseters the first online gambling site run under Government license.
1999 Boss Media releases the first software that allows multi-player online gambling tables.
2000 The Australian Government tries to freeze the number of licenses issued to new online gambling sites. Lasseters’ license remains effective, giving it a monopoly on Australian-based gambling sites. Other Australian operations move offshore.
2000 Another proposed ban of online gambling fails in the US
2001 A payout of US$414,119 to a single online slot gambler is recorded.
2002 Another proposed bill banning internet gambling. Using the Wire Act that was primarily designed to prevent phone betting, the bill wins the support it needs to be put to the House.
2002 Online gambling spend tops US$ 4.5 billion
2002 First ever online casino jackpot won from the Captain Cooks Casino. The payout is US$1,594,649.
2003 After only ever playing online poker, Chris Moneymaker walks away with US$2.5 million in the 2003 World Series of Poker.
2003 Playtech launches video poker.
2005 A new record is set for a progressive online jackpot when a single online gambler takes a payout of US$1.97 million.
2006 The Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is passed in the United States. Reputable online gambling sites stop accepting American players, forcing online gambling back into the deregulated days of old.
2007 Worldwide online gambling revenue conservatively estimated at over US$15 billion