No jacket required: Spain's first legal internet betting house opens

The Casino Gran Madrid, a place where men must wear a jacket if they want to come in, or indeed rent one on the door should they be lacking, is now accessible for those dressed in just their pajamas and slippers - as long as they're at home, of course. The first legal online casino in Spain, open for the moment just to gamblers who are registered on municipal rolls in the Madrid region, is offering roulette, blackjack and slot machines.

Those wishing to play need a minimum credit of 10 euros. The user gains access to a virtual room and chooses the table where they would like to play. The navigation program is similar to that used by online poker programs: i.e., it's simple and sober. There are no large fonts here, nor are there ad banners. You bet, and you win or you lose - often in a matter of seconds. It's just as quick as if you were in a real casino.

The Torrelodones casino, to give the Gran Casino de Madrid its other name, has taken three years to get the project off the ground, investing three million euros in the online venture. The games themselves have been approved by an institute from the Politécnica University of Madrid, and to guarantee that the options are true games of chance, millions of simulated bets have been tested. It's all about pure mathematics.

Online gambling has grown year on year in Spain. In fact, in Madrid alone the business is expecting to move around 80 million euros by 2014. Based on these figures, supplied by the casino, the national figure for online betting is expected to reach 317 million. Most virtual casinos began operating around a decade ago, and at the time were pretty much free of regulatory controls. But bit by bit, most countries have put up barriers in an attempt to control the huge amounts of money involved. Spain's new gambling law, which was approved in May, requires companies that open casinos to be based in a European country and to pay taxes of 25 percent on their profits. That way, the tax office can control the profits of the casinos and gamblers themselves - an invisible financial process just a few years ago.

Until now, betting was available via unregulated casinos. Based in other countries, some of them are tax havens, with an absurd fiscal system. The Torrelodones online casino is the first that complies with regional legislation, which is very strict and closely monitored in the case of games of chance.

"The casino operates with the highest amount of professionalism," says José María Paredes, the sales director of the casino. "The math behind the games is the same. Creating all of this has been very laborious, because we have to follow some very strict rules." The Madrid regional tax office granted the casino with authorization on May 17, which happened to coincide with the World Information Society Day, which aims to raise awareness of societal change brought about by the internet.

The casino is hoping to create an online platform for poker, which is the game that currently moves the most money globally. According to a gambling website, at any given moment 60,000 people are online playing poker. But the casino will need a national license to launch such a service.

Young people from all over Spain have created a community based on online poker, and in some cases have managed to amass millions of euros thanks to their talents. It's the most attractive game on the web, and as such the new online casino is in a hurry to get in the game.

While the Casino Gran Madrid was unable to supply user numbers for its first day, they are aiming to have around a hundred games online before the year end.