Indian law on online gaming and betting is not taking chances. The “games of skill” are accepted and legal while “games of chance” are deemed illegal and strictly prohibited. Games of skill require a certain amount of expertise and intellectual investment, meaning outcomes are not controlled by chance. The skill gaming buzz keeps getting louder, with a massive number of fans following popular games like horse racing and fantasy sports.
Games of Mere Skill
“Games of mere skill” refers to games whose outcomes or results predominantly depend on more excellent knowledge, experience, dexterity, abilities, and qualities of the player. In this kind of game, chance plays a small role in affecting the results. The major online game of skill prevalent in India will be discussed in this section.
Rummy
One popular game is Rummy, a card game involving the simple concept of collecting three or more similar cards of the same suit called melds. To excel in this game, the skill of memorizing and remembering discarded cards during meld build up is critical. Mentally noting useful cards among discarded cards might be the difference you need to win the game.
Rummy is probably the fastest growing game out of all skill games. You can find many rummy sites in India such as Adda53, Deccan Rummy and Ace2Three.
Teen Patti
Another popular card game is the old Teen Patti, and this gambling card game is played among 3 to 6 players. Each player is dealt 3 cards out of a 52-card deck excluding pokers with an entry boot amount staked. The last player with the highest hand wins the game.
As Teen Patti is growing in popularity amongst young Indians there are many sites to play Teen Patti online. Anyone can play, no matter where in India you live and there are many live versions of teen patti. The live versions include game has different live versions according to some winning conditions, and they include Best-of-four, Muflis, Low wild, Community, and Draw.
Fantasy Sports
Fantasy sport is a game played online which involves creating personalized virtual teams of a professional sport. The drafted players in fantasy sports perform equivalent to their real-life performance. Points are awarded for players’ performance in fantasy games, and this is totaled, and teams are ranked based on these points per contest.
Horse Racing
Horse racing is another sport termed as a game of skill, Indian breed horses’ race in popular events and racecourses around India.
There are many sites already focusing solely on horse racing in India. For example, RaceBets, offers more than 250,000 horse races and many of them are in India.
Growing Trends
Skill gaming is more significant than a wagering activity in India; a whole new ecosystem is being formed. Venture capitalists are investing millions of dollars in Indian startups leveraging augmented and virtual reality to enhance the skill gaming experience. With a worth of $500 million, skill gaming is leveling up with industries like e-commerce space.
For the Indian youth, this is a whole field to have a steady career path with job roles like data analytics, UI/UX, software developer being in constant demand. Fortune 500 companies are also getting in on the train by moving shop to India to have a piece of the skill gaming industry pie.
Understand the Indian Skill-gamer
Skill gamers in India are well-educated individuals, who are predominantly young males in the age bracket of 20-44. Most engage in skill gaming as a form of stress relief and also to enhance human social interactions. Mainly, mobile phones are preferred for gaming because of the flexibility it offers on the go.
