In 1769 a group of underwriters walked out of Edward Lloyd’s coffee house to get away from what Lloyd’s own history calls “a growing reputation for gambling on ‘speculative’ lines of risk”. Five years later, the Life Assurance Act 1774 described life policies taken out without an insurable interest as “a mischievous kind of gaming”. Insurance spent a long time drawing that line. The market that grew out of the coffee house, established in the 1600s, now writes cover for everything from cargo ships to satellites, yet plenty of people who can explain a loss ratio in their sleep would struggle to say what separates baccarat from blackjack.
Online casinos are a much younger business, and Betway dates back only to 2006. The range of games they carry has also widened well beyond the card table, and the seven below are all available to British players at the time of writing, from the oldest table games to hybrids that only exist on a screen.
1. Slots
Online slots work on the same basic idea as the mechanical machines they grew out of: symbols land on reels, and wins depend on how they line up, either along fixed paylines or across “ways” that count matches on neighbouring reels. Themes, bonus rounds and free spins vary enormously from one game to the next, and two slots that look alike can pay out on quite different schedules.
2. Roulette
European roulette uses a wheel with 37 pockets, numbered 0 to 36. Players bet on where the ball will land, either on “inside” bets covering a single number or a small group, or on “outside” bets such as red or black, odd or even, or a dozen. A single number pays 35 to 1, while the outside bets pay less but come in more often.
3. Blackjack
Blackjack is a contest against the dealer rather than other players. Each side tries to get nearer 21 than the other without going past it, and players can hit, stand, double down or split pairs. It’s also the one table where “insurance” is offered: when the dealer shows an ace, players can bet that the dealer has blackjack, at 2 to 1. Because players make real choices on every hand, how a hand is played affects the result more than at most casino tables.
4. Baccarat
Baccarat is simpler than its reputation. Two hands, Player and Banker, are dealt, and the one closer to nine wins. Tens and court cards count as zero, and only the last digit of a total counts, so a hand of 7 and 6 is worth 3. A winning Banker bet usually has a 5% commission deducted, because the Banker hand wins slightly more often under the drawing rules. There’s also a Tie bet, which pays much more than either hand but comes up far less often.
5. Casino Poker
Casino poker variants, Casino Hold’em among them, put the player against the dealer’s hand rather than against other people at the table. There’s no bluffing anyone out of a pot. The player decides whether to continue after seeing some of the cards, and the hand is settled against the dealer’s under a fixed pay table.
6. Slingo
Slingo is a hybrid of slots and bingo, a New Jersey invention from the mid-1990s. A 5×5 number grid sits above a single row of reels, and each spin marks off any matching numbers on the grid. The aim is to complete lines of five before the spins run out, so a round runs much longer than a single slot spin.
7. Instant Win Games
Instant win games are digital versions of the lottery scratchcard, which first went on sale in Massachusetts in 1974. Unlike a slot, there are no reels, paylines or bonus rounds to follow: each play is a single reveal, whether that means scratching a panel, picking a box or dropping a ball down a board.
Reading the Rules Before the Theme
Each of these formats works on different rules, payouts and house edges, and many come in several versions. The rules screen for any game sets out exactly how it pays, which is the closest thing a casino has to a policy wording.
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