iGaming Wiki

A game aggregator connects casino operators to many game studios through one integration, handling game delivery, wallet calls and reporting.

Baccarat is a card game in which players bet on whether the Player or Banker hand finishes closer to nine. Fixed drawing rules decide everything after the bet.

Bingo is a numbers game in which players mark numbers on a ticket as they are called, winning by completing a line, pattern or full house first.

Black Friday, 15 April 2011: the US Department of Justice seized the domains of the biggest online poker sites serving Americans and indicted their founders.

Blackjack, or 21, is a card game in which players try to beat the dealer by finishing closer to 21 without going over.

A bonus buy lets a player pay a fixed multiple of their bet — often 50x to 100x — to enter a slot's bonus round immediately instead of waiting to trigger it.

Caribbean Stud Poker is a five-card stud game played against the dealer, with an optional progressive jackpot side bet for the rarest hands.

Casino Hold'em is a house-banked version of Texas Hold'em in which each player plays one hand against the dealer rather than against other players.

Casino streaming is the live broadcasting of slot and casino play on Twitch, Kick and YouTube, a marketing channel that grew fast and drew regulatory limits.

Craps is a dice game in which players bet on the outcome of rolls of two dice. Its Pass Line and Odds bets are among the best value in the casino.

Crash games are fast, simple casino games in which a multiplier rises from 1x until it randomly crashes; players win by cashing out before the crash.

Crypto casinos take deposits and pay winnings in cryptocurrency. They grew from Bitcoin dice sites in 2012 into a segment with its own games and trust model.

Dragon Tiger is a two-card game in which players bet on whether the Dragon or Tiger position gets the higher card. One card each decides the round.

European roulette uses a wheel with a single zero and 37 pockets, giving a house edge of 2.70% against 5.26% for the double-zero American wheel.

Geo-location and geo-fencing are the checks that confirm where a player physically is, so an operator only accepts bets from jurisdictions where it is licensed.

Gross gaming revenue (GGR) is the total amount players stake minus the winnings paid back to them — the operator's revenue before bonuses, taxes and costs.

Hit frequency is the percentage of game rounds that produce any win at all, regardless of size — for example 25% means one spin in four pays something.

Hold percentage is the share of total stakes an operator actually keeps over a period: GGR divided by turnover, the realised counterpart of house edge.

House edge is the casino's built-in mathematical advantage on a game: the percentage of each bet it expects to keep, such as 2.7% on European roulette.

HTML5 is the browser technology that replaced Flash as the standard for building casino games, letting one game run on desktop and mobile without a plug-in.

InterCasino, launched in 1996 under an Antiguan licence, is widely cited as the first online casino to accept a real-money wager.

Keno is a lottery-style game in which players pick numbers from 1 to 80 and are paid by a paytable according to how many of the 20 drawn numbers they match.

KYC is how an operator verifies a player's identity, age and address around sign-up, as gambling licences and anti-money-laundering rules require.

Lifetime value (LTV) is the total net revenue a player is expected to generate over their whole relationship with an operator. It sets acquisition budgets.

A live dealer game is a casino table game run by a human dealer in a studio and streamed to players in real time, with bets placed through a digital interface.

Microgaming, founded on the Isle of Man in 1994, was one of the first online casino software companies and built the Mega Moolah progressive jackpot network.

Net gaming revenue (NGR) is GGR minus bonuses, gaming taxes and agreed fees such as payment costs — the figure affiliates and many partners are paid on.

Pai Gow Poker is a table game in which players split seven cards into a five-card and a two-card hand, and must beat both of the dealer's hands to win.

The 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Murphy v. NCAA struck down PASPA, the federal ban on sports betting, letting each US state legalise and license it.

A progressive jackpot is a prize that grows with every bet on a game or network of games, fed by a small slice of each stake, until one player wins it.

Provably fair is a cryptographic method, common in crypto casinos, that lets players verify after each round that the outcome was fixed before they bet.

Revenue share pays an affiliate or partner a percentage of the net revenue from the players they refer, for as long as those players stay active.

An RNG (random number generator) is the certified software that decides every outcome in an online casino game, producing results nobody can predict or alter.

Roulette is a wheel game in which players bet on the pocket a ball will land in, choosing from single numbers, groups, colours and other outside bets.

RTP (return to player) is the share of all money wagered on a game that it pays back to players over the long run, expressed as a percentage such as 96%.

Sic Bo is a Chinese dice game played with three dice, with bets on totals, specific numbers and combinations, from 1:1 Big and Small to high-paying triples.

The Free Trade & Processing Act of 1994 let Antigua and Barbuda license online gambling businesses, creating the first legal home for internet casinos.

The poker boom began in 2003 when amateur Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker after qualifying online, sending millions of players to internet poker.

Macau grew from a single-operator casino enclave into the world's largest gambling market after its 2002 liberalisation, overtaking the Las Vegas Strip by 2006.

Three Card Poker is a table game played against the dealer with three-card hands, combining an Ante/Play game with the separate Pair Plus bet.

Turnover, or handle, is the total value of all bets placed over a period, before any winnings are paid out — the measure of betting volume, not revenue.

UIGEA (2006) barred US banks and payment firms from processing payments for illegal online gambling, forcing most listed operators out of the US market.

Video poker is a machine game based on five-card draw, paid from a paytable. Correct play decides the return, which is above 99% on some full-pay games.

Volatility, or variance, is how a game spreads its wins at a given RTP: low volatility pays small amounts often, high volatility pays rarely but large.

A wagering requirement is how many times a bonus must be bet before winnings from it can be withdrawn, expressed as a multiplier such as 30x.

A white label casino is a ready-made online casino run on a provider's platform and licence, which the operator brands and markets as its own.