One Vision - Why OCR is a game changer for online gambling

During the pandemic, the world saw a huge surge in gamblers going online and, in 2022, it seems that many of these people are in no rush to flock back to their favourite casinos and betting shops. Around 24% of adults visit online gambling sites every month and, this increase in popularity has seen the technology of these sites advance in leaps and bounds. It doesn’t seem so long ago that radio frequency identification (RFID) was the new big thing for online gaming but, the advent of OCR has now made the use of RFID almost obsolete.

What is OCR ?

Optical Character Recognition essentially converts scanned images of machine printed text into machine coded text. Initially used for online content such as e-books and documents, OCR analyses sequenced lines and curves in order to very closely match characters which form words. This allows for the fast editing, analysing and publishing of information with almost 100% accuracy.
How is OCR used in online gaming ?

OCR is proving to be a particularly useful tool in the world of online casinos where live dealers are employed. As you might imagine, this is basically the act of using real live croupiers on an online platform in order to make the experience more authentic for players. OCR uses specialist cameras in order to monitor the casino or gaming room and to collate and analyse raw game data, cards, suits and symbols. The technology is then able to cross reference this information with a rapid lookup database which then displays the relevant results on the screen. For the player, this means a much faster and more streamlined gaming experience and, for the croupier, a more natural way of working which more precisely matches the way they would do their job in a real life casino. Many dealers are fans of the technology due to the fact that it is an automated process which, in essence, plays the part of an independent observer which does not get in the way of or distract from the actual game.

There are a number of benefits to using OCR with live dealer online casinos and, the two most prominent of these are:

The cover-up - OCR is a sophisticated technology and can allow users to play online, even when cards need to be covered up.

On the cards - With OCR, there is no need for special cards with embedded microchips to be used.

Conclusion

Online casinos allow customers to enjoy the real life casino experience, nice poker game, colorful slots and exciting roulette from the comfort of their own home and, technology such as OCR helps to make the experience more authentic than ever before. In a post pandemic world, we’ve all got used to the convenience and cost savings of online shopping and entertainment and, as such, we expect to see further advances in online gambling technology within the next 12 months.