Following several months of rigorous product testing by the Pennsylvanian Gaming Control Board (PGCB), three of the Keystone State’s licensed casino operators have recently begun offering their online gaming products to the state’s residents. Pennsylvania will now be finally joining the small list of states where online casino-style gaming is fully legalized and regulated.
Penn National’s Hollywood Casino was the first to launch – it went live on Monday morning for a three-day testing phase with the oversight of the state gaming control board. During the testing phase, online gaming services on the site were only available for a specific duration each day with full operation set to precede after the gaming regulator gives the casinos the green light.
Next to launch was Parx Casino which went live just a little over a couple of hours after Hollywood Casino. With the launch of its online casino offering, Parx Casino became the first site in Pennsylvania to offer an online casino and an online sportsbook. The online casinos launched with a decent number of amazing online casino games and the number is expected to grow even further in the not so distant future. In fact, the online gaming platform will even be offering live dealer options for blackjack, roulette, and baccarat among others.
SugarHouse Online Casino launched two days later (on Wednesday 17) and its online gaming app went live alongside SugarHouse Sportsbook, which was also one of the sportsbooks to go live in the state. As expected, the online casino offers all of the best features expected of any online gaming operator. These include an outstanding range of games, a decent number of payment options as well as compatibility with a wide range of devices.
What About Online Poker?
One of the most notable things about the Keystone State’s online casino launches is the lack of online poker. As it turns out, this is still in the works for the seven online casinos that will be launching in the state and it is bound to go live very soon. It has been speculated that the reason for the delay of poker was the geofencing that would have limited poker pools to within the state’s borders.
Also noticeable was the fact that the players were only able to play against computers during the test phase. This is apparently because peer-to-peer gaming is much harder to implement and therefore the online gaming platforms plan to launch it later, perhaps once they Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB) gives them the green light to officially fully launch their operations. This is, of course, on condition that they pass the gaming regulator’s tests.