Have you heard of the term “casino pokies?” Chances are that if you do not live in Australia, you have no idea what casino pokies are. The term originated in Australia and never quite spread to the rest of the world. But that's okay. Everyone knows about the games that are called casino pokies. Casino pokies are just the Australian slang for playing online slot machines at the online casino. And they have the same huge variety of online slot machines in Australia as they do in the rest of the world.

What are casino pokies? Well, way back then, there was a game in a lot of pubs where you pulled a lever that caused playing cards inside a machine to swirl around and then come to rest. When they stopped, three or five cards would be displayed prominently. If the cards matched, you won. Since playing cards were used, the game became known as poker machine games. But poker machine games is a bit tough to say, especially if you have been having a good time and enjoying a few pints. So poker machine games became online pokies or casino pokies for short. At least that's what happened in Australia where Australians love to use slang expressions and abbreviations for just about everything. (How else did a barbeque become a barby?)

Today, they may still use the term casino pokies to describe these games, but they have little resemblance to the original games. Online pokies come in thousands of varieties. You have traditional games where you click a mouse and hope to see identical images line up on a pay line. Then you have super sophisticated casino pokies where there are hundreds of ways to win and the games are loaded with special features like bonus games and free spins. What are the images? Forget the old fashioned poker playing cards, the sky is the limit depending on the theme of the game. For example, in Thunderstruck 2, the images are characters from Norse mythology such as Thor and Valkyrie, the ravishingly hot escort of brave warriors. No, these are not exactly poker machine games; but you can still call them casino pokies.

Compared to the original games, modern online pokies are fast, sophisticated, and much more entertaining. But what they do share in common is the idea that if you are lucky, you can win real money when you play. That's the reason people first started going to the pubs to play pokies. Now, you can play hundreds of games from wherever you want. Either play casino pokies live on the internet, or download them to your computer or mobile device to play wherever and whenever you want.