Multi-player casino games are a bit of a puzzle for most newcomers to the online scene. What are they? How do they work? What’s the point? All these questions and others have come across my desk so now’s the time to tell all. A multi-player game is an online game where more than one player can participate at a time and there are multiple online platforms such as judi online offering online multiplayer casino games awell. We’re all familiar with the good old Me vs The Dealer model that the vast majority of online casino games follow: you buy your chips, belly up to the game of your choice, place your bet and away you go. Nice and simple, and that’s the truth. The reason that most casino games are designed this way is that it is nice and simple, for the software designers and for the casino managers. And that’s where we begin… The Past

Let’s set the stage a bit. Online casino games are software — programs running in the background that let us play a game. That software has to come from somewhere and the place it comes from is software designers and software, marketing people. Casino software — the stuff that we play and hope to make pay — is one small fragment of the humungous software industry at large, and as such it follows some of the basic truths of that industry. Software is expensive and error-prone and difficult to maintain so the industry has One Golden Rule. It’s called KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The short version of the long story is that the simpler it is, the less expensive it is to develop and the easier it is to maintain. Simple economics. Of course, the KISS rule is good for the software designers and their bosses, but it doesn’t always serve the user — or player as the case may be. As software users we want everything and we want it now. So what’s all this got to do with casino play? It’s simple, the Player vs Dealer model of online casino gameplay is relatively simple, easy to maintain, and easy to manage.

But it isn’t always what we, the players, want. Why, for example, are there so very, very few online 7-Card Stud games out there? Because 7-Card Stud against the dealer is a bore. It’s playing against other players that makes it interesting. With a few good players at the table, it’s easy to keep the table full. Why? Because many casino games are social games, games where you want to play with, or against, someone else. And that is what a multi-player game is: other players can join your game so that you’re all playing at the same virtual table. It’s harder to design a multi-player game, much harder to make them bug-free, and they’re more difficult to manage. So, up until recently, nobody really paid a whole lot of attention to the game player’s requests for multi-player Roulette or Blackjack or Texas Hold’Em or what have you. But the market will get what the market demands and that brings us to… The Present

Multi-player games are arriving as you read this. The demand is there and the software folks have finally caught up. The bigger, more established online sites have recently, or soon will, launch multi-player versions of the more popular games: Roulette, Blackjack, Texas Hold’Em, 7-Card Stud, and so on. You’ll see them coming slowly, almost tentatively, but they are coming. These games are run across the Net because the Net is the pipeline through which the player’s information travels back and forth to the other players. It’s like a conference call where you get to have a lot more fun. Everyone sees the same thing, knows what the other players are doing and gets to see the results at pretty much the same time. And while all this is happening, the house — that is, the casino site — is making sure it all happens safely and securely. It’s really quite an accomplishment when you think of it: everyone playing the same game, seeing the same table, while they sit in their homes. They could be living in the same city, but the chances are that they’re not even in the same country. Players from across the globe meeting online to play a hand of Poker or wager on the Roulette wheel. It’s something that we’ve imagined, but it’s happening now. And it most certainly is going to get a lot bigger. The Future

Today we can play multi-player games where the cards or wheel or dice are seen by all the players. Add a webcam and now you can see each other. Add voice capabilities and you can hear the other players make their bets and call for their cards. It’s all possible and none of it is too far away. The push-in all things computer-related is always toward the extended simulation of the real thing, and online casino play is no different. So, in the none-to-distant future, you’ll be seeing all of this and more: multi-player Craps tables, Baccarat matches, and on and on. As the demands of the online casino world expand, the Web will advance to accommodate. And what the Web can accommodate, the software designers will simply have to deliver. It sounds a bit hokey, but imagine it and it will come.