History of onlinegambling

[jyde]

Any of you guys (and dolls) know if there are some good ressources/articles etc. on the history of onlinegambling. I mean - who was the really the first? How did they start? What problems did they face and so on.

I remember I once read an article about how Microgaming started - but I can't find it.

[jyde]

bumpibump

[Casinomeister]

You know, I really don't think there are any really good articles. The article about CON was pretty good and talked about the early aspects of the business. The problem is that everyone is so damn secretive. They don't want to talk about the early days

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/arti...515484,00.html

[mary]

Microgaming's The Gaming Club claims to be the oldest online casino, but I don't think it is. Others from that period include Intercasino(Cryptologic), Casino-On-Net, casinos powered by Starnet (World Gaming) and Galaxiworld. Boss Media looked like a strong contender to thrive, I wonder why they didn't.

Early cheapo providers were Gambling Software, Handa Lopez, Iglobal, IQ Ludorum.

There are a couple that never took off even earlier. Of operators, Golden Palace has been around a long time.

Early entrants into the industry had fewer troubles than they do now; and those they had were of their own making, such as being hosted in Canada or the US (Starnet); giving away huge bonuses and then stiffing players (Golden Palace); running rigged software (Handa Lopez, Iglobal); being crooks (Galaxiworld); having crap software; going cheap on credit card security services and getting lots of chargebacks and fraud.

The industry as a whole shot itself in the foot by mistreating the credit card companies--credit cards werre never designed as player *payment* instruments, so the payments were processed as merchant refunds. Which means that the credit card companies were also refunding their fees to players. The gambling sector also had a record fraud rate, which is a lot of work for the credit card companies, to do transactions then rescind them etc.