Gambling has been an extremely popular form of entertainment for thousands of years since people begin betting whilst playing card games etc. Gambling entered the online industry in the mid 1990's and has since grown rapidly to become a huge part of online gaming. Around 20 million gamblers now enjoy betting online in the many different games available.

Microgaming are one of the oldest software providers for online gambling games and are known for inventing the one of the first online casinos accepting bets over the internet. InterCasino were also there creating an online casino processing real money wagers. This all happened in 1994 around the same time that the Free Trade and Processing Zone Act was passed by the Antigua-Barbuda government. This enabled licences to be given to online companies looking to open up casinos on the internet. Online casino's evolved over the next few years to provide more features and different games to users, including the multiplayer games introduced by Boss Media in 1999.

Internet poker was slower to reach the online markets than slot machines and the first online poker games didn't hit the internet until 1998 with Planet Poker. However they didn't hold the market for long as Party Poker opened in 2001 and took over the industry.

It wasn't until 2002 that online casino owners realised the popularity that the games were drawing in, profit figures has quadrupled from 3 years before to reach $4.5 billion. There was another event in 2002 as it was the first time that an online gambler had won over a million dollars, in total winning $1.59 million while playing on a progressive slot machine.

Microgaming and Boss Media are still around today as some of the biggest players creating online casino software. We have reviewed the top casino software developers for you to read and find out the specific details about each company. As the leading website for online gambling information we advise to only play games created by our casino leaders to avoid playing games that aren't trustworthy.