Ten things you must know about pokie machines, online casinos


1. The world’s first online casino with slot machines was an India-facing site opened by Internet Casinos Inc. (ICI) in 1994. This outlet hosted 18 pokie machines.

2. The origin of slot machines? Poker! In 19th-century America, a gaming contraption which featured five rotating wheels, each of which held a standard 52-card deck of playing cards (sometimes with a face card or two removed to make the highest-ranking hands more difficult to land), was quite popular. The establishment hosting the machine – typically a saloon – would pay prizes based on the poker hand spun by the player.

3. By far the market leaders, i.e. the biggest companies, in online slot game production are Microgaming and Playtech. Since these firms are publicly traded, however, both prohibit America-based casino-goers from playing their pokie machines due to the so-called Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. (See no. 7 below.)

4. In the UK, perhaps the country in which internet gambling is most popular, about 4% of citizens play online at least once a year for a 12% piece of the sector pie. In twelve months spanning 2010 to 2011, regulated online gambling generated £660.74 million (approximately Aus. $1.05 billion/€827.8 million)

5. There is absolutely, positively no system whatsoever for pokies, whether land-based or online. Well worth a remention, just in case anyone out there is still suffering from this delusion.

6. Penny slots aren’t *quite* penny slots. Many on line pokie machines are billed as “penny slots,” from which an unsuspecting player might infer that one spin equals a cost of 1¢. Perhaps, but that 1¢ will actually cover just one payline. On the other hand, few would complain about a cost of, say, 25¢ per spin.

7. Technically the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) does not actually prevent individuals from playing slot machines, poker, bingo, sportsbook, etc., online. What the act instead makes illegal is the transfer of funds to and from suspected online casino/gambling websites through America-based banks/financial institutions. This in fact therefore calls upon the banks to play law enforcer, a situation that surely many US citizens would be more than slightly uncomfortable with after the hashing of the world economy by these same powerbrokers.

8. Also, the UIGEA is part of a wider law known as the SAFE Port Act, a set of laws designed as counter-terrorism measures back in 2004; this would seem to imply that the US government believes players of on line pokies a menace to be guarded against.

9. The biggest progressive jackpot of all-time is still held by player “Georgios M.,” who hit for €6.3 million (app. £5.03 million/Aus. $8.015 million) on Microgaming’s Mega Moolah pokie machine.

10. You can play online pokies for free right here at PokieMonster.com.


Do you know how much online gambling generates for the UK? When the first internet casino opened? What America’s UIGEA law actually prohibits? What the form of the slot machine’s predecessor was? See above for answers to these questions amid other factoids on pokies and the gaming industry in general.
PokieMonster tells you what you need to know about pokies online. Pokies machines – Facts and information on online pokie playing