How a dentistry student's trip to Monte Carlo spawned a new gambling giant

Aaron Shaked had little knowledge of gambling back in the mid-1990s when he attended a dentistry conference. Had the event taken place anywhere other than Monte Carlo, that might still be the case – and what has become one of the giants of global gambling would never have existed.

Instead the Israeli dental student's experience of Monte Carlo's famous casinos sparked an idea. He recognised the huge potential of a virtual equivalent in an age when companies all over the world were jumping on the burgeoning digital bandwagon with the broader dot-com boom, a stock market bubble caused by major investment in internet-based businesses.

Shaked enlisted his brother Avi and, notebooks in hand, they visited a casino in Eilat on the south coast of Israel to study the mechanics of the games. In 1997, they mortgaged their homes and founded Virtual Holdings Limited with Ron and Shay Ben-Yitzhak, software experts who played a key role in designing their products.