Live Casinos
According to Wikipedia, live casinos are online casino in which “popular casino games such as roulette and blackjack are dealt by real dealers in casino studios, in an attempt to convey more of the atmosphere of a physical casino. Player actions (including chat) such as ‘hit’ in the game of blackjack may be transmitted to the dealer; in some online casinos more than one player may ’sit’ at a particular ’seat’ on the table, and in this case there is no interactivity between player and dealer, the question of which player(s) requested the extra card that the dealer dealt and which chose to ’stand’ will be handled by the software.”
This field in online gambling is fairly new, and rapidly growing due to both massive advertising on behalf of the major live casino sites, as well as average broadband connection speeds increasing worldwide. While it may be obvious why players would want to see the dealer when playing blackjack, which explains why live blackjack has been very successful, the popularity of live roulette is somewhat of an enigma. True, watching the wheel spin and the balls fall into place makes the game feel more realistic, but then again, it is not the same as watching a real realer in action, responding to players decisions in real time.
Nonetheless, both of these platforms have had stellar success in a very short period of time since they were first introduced, and we can only hope online casinos come out with more and more platforms of live games.