Virtual Sports are electronic games that generate visual feedback on a display device. Inspired by real sports these games originated from fantasy sports that were drawn using paper and pencil. The use of computers has transformed these fantasy sports from being mostly played by a group of friends or acquaintances in a local community to potentially being anonymously played from around the world. The first time Virtual Sports were used on a computer was in 1961, in an early form of fantasy baseball coded for an

IBM 1620 The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive scientific computer. After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970. Modified versions of the 1620 were used as ...

computer by

John Burgeson John W. Burgeson (19 August 1931 – 12 September 2016) was an IBM engineer who created the first computer baseball simulation game in 1961 on an IBM 1620 Computer in Akron, Ohio. Burgeson's invention was accepted and officially recognized by the ...

. It allowed two teams to play one another using random number generation and player statistics to determine a game's outcome, including a play-by-play description. The game was coded for a computer with only 20 KB in computer memory and was entirely self-contained. Modern computers with motion capture technologies can produce more complex sports animations. The term ''virtual sports'' is often used to describe software simulations of sports used for betting purposes. Some betting house and

racino A racino is a combined race track and casino. In some cases, the gambling is limited to slot machines, but many locations are beginning to include Casino game#Table games, table games such as blackjack, poker, and roulette. In 2003, Joe Bob Br ...

s use this kind of software because clients use to bet more than with the normal sports.

References

{{reflist Games and sports introduced in 1961 Sports video games