The set-up

Building, operating, and hosting an online Live Casino is a costly exercise, one of the main barriers to scam artists looking to make a quick buck. Unlike basic video-based games, online Live Casinos need extensive software, hardware, and human operations to function.

This is easily seen in how an online Live casino is set up.

Online Live Casinos need dedicated and specialised hardware and software programmes, they need viable space (think movie studio type spaces) for the tables and equipment, they need cameras and camera operators, they need dealers and pit bosses, and they need control rooms.

The online Live Dealer studio

The studio is a space set up to look exactly like a real life, bricks-and-mortar casino floor. There are numerous tables and all the related equipment needed to run games like blackjack, roulette, poker, baccarat, and sic bo, for example. Some studios are even dedicated to offering game show style games like Monopoly, Spin and Win, or Deal or No deal.

The beauty of these studios is in their adaptability – they can be designed to look like anything, just like a Hollywood movie set (although the majority are dressed to look like the very opulent casinos).

The studio also incorporates a very important area called the Control Room.

The Control Room

The Control Room is where the directors (and sometimes some of the pit bosses) sit. The director choreographs all the action that takes place in the studio, things like camera angles and dealer placements and so on, and oversees what is happening at each table.

The director has access to a bank of monitors that shows who is playing, what chatter is happening, whether there are any problems, and the actions of the dealers. Pit bosses also keep an eye on the games as they happen.

The cameras

High-definition and high-quality cameras and camera operators are placed around the studio to capture and record the games. Camera crews focus on individual tables and each table has a number of cameras at any given time to make sure that different angles can be captured to bring an immersive, engaging, and interactive feel to the game.

The Game Control Unit

Probably one of the most critical aspects of the online Live Casino – even though it’s only the size of a shoebox – is the Game Control Unit or GCU. This dedicated piece of hardware processes and encrypts all the footage and action from the games

This digitising of the gameplay allows the player to see what is going on in real time, allows the director and pit bosses to keep an eye on proceedings, and makes the online Live Casino games possible by recognising and processing the tech aspects of the games, like the Optical Character Recognition.

Optical Character Recognition

OCR (no, not the Online Casino Review OCR, the Optical Character Recognition OCR) is software that allows the system to recognise things like what cards are being displayed. It works just like those darn cameras that catch your car license plate when you get a speeding fine.

It’s one of the reasons why the cards at an online Live Casino look so weird. No, you’re not having an acid flashback. Yes, they are quite a bit bigger than normal playing cards. Yes, the values are dominant on the card faces. Why? So that it’s easier for the OCR to pick up and evaluate.

The equipment

The equipment (the tables, the wheels, the cloths, the cards) are all exactly like those in a land-based casino and operate exactly the same way ­– apart from the oversized cards and the sensors in the roulette wheels that tell the OCR and the GCU where the ball has landed.

One of the coolest aspects of online Live Casinos is the merging of the physical and the virtual. Not only are the games played on real equipment the software makes it incredibly quick to calculate hands and spins. Beyond that, and an indication of where the online casino could push the entertainment industry, are games like Live Monopoly. If you haven’t seen this amazing and immersive casino game, do yourself a favour and fine an online casino that offers it. The combination of live Win and Spin and boardgame with amazing graphics and animation is incredible.

The dealers

The dealers are a huge part of the Live Casino allure – especially at the high-end online casinos. These are professionally trained, expert dealers and croupiers. And they look the part. Slick skills and perfectly presented from their attitudes to their outfits to their hairstyles – they would not look out of place at a Monte Carlo casino.