We’re all looking for the comfort of the familiar right now. We all want that feeling of settling into a favorite activity, of recreating that feeling of returning to somewhere we know and love, even if we can’t leave the house right now. A huge part of what we love about online gambling is the experience it recreates for us, of stepping onto the casino floor with friends and pitting our wits against the dealers, the odds and that most formidable opponent of all: chance.

There’s a reason why casinos have been around in one form or another for centuries, and even as we move online and away from the red carpeting and blaring noise we find in the old-fashioned buildings, we’re still craving that same experience. As the world has evolved, elements of casinos have changed with it, while others have stayed resolutely the same. Let’s look at how gambling houses have moved with the times over the years.

Way, Way Back

As you’re no doubt aware, gambling has been around for as long as people have. Human beings have always wanted to bet against each other, or on each other for that matter, and games of dice and cards date back to around 2,300 BC. Over the centuries, these games evolved and so did the elements used to play them. Historians have found it hard to pinpoint exactly when the first dice were thrown, for example, but it’s interesting to note that several of the most popular games developed over time as people from different nations travelled and brought their own interpretations of local games home with them.

Poker, for example, has elements of French, Spanish, Italian and British card games but wasn’t played as “poker” until French and American gamblers matched wits in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase. The point is, there have been gambling dens and card rooms for centuries, but the first real casino came along much later.

Venice Gives It A Home

The first casino was built in Venice in 1638, called Il Ridotto. This translates as the retreat, or the private room, in this context and the reason for that name was clear: because there far too many ridotti in Venice and the government wanted to crack down and bring them under their control. These ridotti were private gambling dens, generally in the luxurious apartments of the wealthy, and the Great Council of Venice decided that this activity had gone on unchecked for long enough. No more ridotti, they declared, just one, with a “The” at the front so you know it’s the only one you’re supposed to go to.

They built it in a wing of the Palazzo Dandolo to coincide with the annual spring carnival in anticipation of an explosion of games of chance, and it ended up staying open much longer than that. In theory, Il Ridotto was open to all members of the public but the high stakes of the games on offer meant that only the wealthy could play. It was still popular enough to be closed in 1774 during a period of extreme panic about the morality of Venetian citizens. However, the first casino had been born and countries across the world had taken note.

The Wild West To The Las Vegas Strip

If you’ve ever watched a Western, or played a Red Dead Redemption game for that matter, you’ll know that saloons were the home of gambling in the American west. Owners of these watering holes were always on the lookout for ways to convince paying customers to spend their money at their establishment, and card and dice games were high on the list of most popular attractions. However, there was always a push against it from religious groups and activists worried about the nation’s moral fiber, and more and more legislation was introduced to crack down on gambling across the country. By about 1910, gambling was illegal in the United States. Of course, it didn’t just go away, and in 1931 the state of Nevada legalized gambling as a way of kickstarting some much needed revenue, and the start of construction work on the Hoover Dam meant that there were a lot of new arrivals looking for entertainment.

The first casino in Las Vegas was built in 1941, named El Rancho Vegas, but the arrival of organized crime figure Bugsy Siegel really got the show on the road when he built his casino The Flamingo in 1946. Money was flooding in and more and more casinos started popping up on the strip.

The Move Online

As the internet became a tool that everybody could use in the early 1990s, of course it was only a matter of time before gambling went online. When the Free Trade and Processing Act was passed by Antigua and Bermuda in 1994, licenses could be granted to online casinos and the gambling company Microgaming, based in the Isle of Man, licensed the first software for online gambling that same year.

Intercasino, based in Antigua, was the first official online casino when they launched in 1996 and a flood of other companies followed suit, but they’ve consistently had to find ways around gambling laws. The American Department of Justice cracked down hard on online gambling in the US in 2011, locking down three of the leading sites, but around the world the virtual equivalent of the casino has continued to flourish.

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Mobile Gambling

Gone are the days when you’d have to boot up your chunky PC and listen to the dial-up modem connecting before you could log on to a poker game. Now, advancements in technology mean that you can play in HD online casinos from any mobile device wherever you are. Now, the casino is where you are, whether that’s on a train, in a hotel room, or waiting for the oven to heat up so you can make a start on dinner, and it’s only getting more popular. We still want the same classic casino experience, it’s just the packaging that’s changed.