Wherever Mankind Goes - Gambling Will Follow:

The History of Online Casinos
Mankind has wagered on games of chance throughout recorded history. Some of our earliest archaeological digs have uncovered artifacts related to this activity. Gambling with its origins lost in the mists of time, far predates civilization itself. As human kind coalesced into city states gaming followed and matured.

The word Casino originates from the Italian, relates to the term "closed house". The earliest brick and mortar Casinos came into existence probably in or around Venice in the year of 1630, by the nineteen hundreds thousands of gaming houses had spread through much of the known world. With the coming of the age of the Internet much gambling activity has moved to this new frontier of human interaction.

In the mid 1990s the first of the online gaming houses to consider themselves a "Casino" were founded. Internet Casinos, Inc opened its virtual doors with 18 online games of chance. Located in the Turks and Caicos Islands, this early online Casino set high standards for honesty and customer service. Odds at this and many of the online Casinos to come were significantly better then most real world Casinos, partly because of the reduced operating expenses of existing online. As with the original Casinos the practice of online gaming spread rapidly across the world. The offerings of these online ventures, began as a mimic of conventional casinos but soon spread out to offer gaming opportunities found no where else. Betting can take place on sports or current events in addition to conventional games of chance. This combined with the fact that betting can take place from the secure privacy of ones own home. Early on, the United States government in some strange moralistic fever attempted to thwart this movement towards online gaming. Most online casinos are located offshore in countries that do not bend to the indiscriminate will of whatever administration happens to be in power.

Today according to leading gambling magazines there are well over 450 full fledged online gaming houses where you can play all sorts of games including poker and a whole virtual industry built around them. Revenues are reported to be in excess of 50 Billion dollars a year and growing rapidly. The future of online gaming appears to be assured. Where ever mankind goes Gambling will surely follow.