Casino Games Vs Poker

We have features a number of articles in 2017 on the debate of popularity of poker against casino games as well as the well known debate around whether both are considered gambling. This article won't go over old ground. I think there will always be a grey line and the fact that poker has arguably more skill than any casino game only muddies the water further.

Personally i feel that there will always be a significant market for all the popular casino games such as Roulette, Blackjack, Craps and Casino Video Slots, to name a few. There will also be a market for poker, although i do expect the game will evolve over time. Then reason for this is that both sets of games are incredibly addictive and fun at the same time.

This popularity is backed up by the steady increase of gross gaming yield since 2001. In 2001 this was 220 Billion. By 2010 this had climbed to 385 Billion dollars, 430 Billion dollars by 2015 and is expected to reach 495 Billion by 2019.

Popularity of Casino Games

The popularity of casino games is undisputed. It's massive. In 2106 Amaya Inc (now Stars Group), parent company to the world's largest poker room PokerStars saw a 5% decline up to the final quarter results. Announced with their Q4 results, they had more than 108.1 million customer registrations at the close of the quarter and received revenues that were 6% higher than what was generated during the same quarter one year prior.

This change in fortunes was largely thanks to a move into the casino and sports book markets, which were attributable for over 25% of their revenue. What was more, the move into the casino market was fuelled by the fact that 30-40% of online poker players were playing casino games.

Differences between Casino Games and Poker

 From a player perspective, there are many differences depending on which games you are playing. Blackjack has some skill involved as there are user decisions that need to be made before a player either wins or loses the hand. 

Games like roulette or craps are largely down to luck and are the more traditional gambling games. Here it's a total punt as to whether you win or not and other than making a choice what to bet on, there isn't much in the way of user decisions - which is why it's seen as more of a gamble.

Poker is not the same. By comparison, the number of user decisions in poker are huge. Not only in how to play in terms of bet or not bet. How much to bet. Which players are weak. Who should you avoid. The decisions are endless. The top poker pros are the guys that process all the available information and make the best decisions. Can they still lose? Well yeah - that's the beauty of poker. Anyone can win on any given day. Is it still a gamble? Well yes, but the players making the best decisions will get more favourable results. Why? As they are playing against better odds than someone who doesn't grasp the context.

Poker results aren't judged over a given day for this very reason. Every poker player or casino player will see variance. Sometimes they should win and don't. Other times they shouldn't win but do.

The rise of Video Poker

Video poker is a newer concept. This jump was very similar to the introduction of online poker. Moving away from the more traditional spot machines came the virtual games along with their virtual reels and bigger payouts. The payouts can very often be significantly bigger as there can be more winning permutations that can be displayed on the graphical interface. It is very common for the display to use 5 reels rather than the traditional 3, for this reason.

Further to this, as players can select the number of lines they want to play (at a different price of course), this gives players greater chance of winning on any particular play.

Video poker did however add a certain element that most slot machines failed to deliver on - the element of skill. The introduction of user actions to sway the outcome of the game was seen as win for players. Some games, such as Jacks or Better can pay back 99.5% on what they call optimal play. Some games actually return 100%, which might seem strange.

The reason for this is that when they factor in the mistakes that are made (it's not reasonable to assume optimum play will occur all the time), there is a 4-5% uplift, which makes the game highly profitable.

A look at 2018 and On..

So where do we think 2018 will head? It's clear that the levels of regulation are going to be stepped up as we move into 2018. There are already a great deal of changes afoot and there is more to come.

What is clear is that the future is mobile. Mobile usage surpassed desktop in 2014 and the two have continued to get further apart. A few years ago Google penalised websites that were not mobile friendly and dropped them lower down the rankings. It's clear that this isn't a short lived trend.

As such we would expect online poker and online casino games to continue to get more and more popular, perhaps only held back by regulations which we see introduced in the coming years.