There has been a lot of discussion on this subject & its legalities.
Legal or not, we should all remember that gambling is about evaluating risk.
In Nevada & AC, you know the approximate paybacks for each type of game from
Keno to BJ & that there is a 100% chance of being paid.
In online gambling, two additional variables are introduced:
--Are the games programmed to be random? How can you be sure? How do you
evaluate this risk?
--Will you get paid if you win? How can you be sure? How do you evaluate this
risk?
Word of mouth is the normal way most people have of verifying (?) whether or
not something is good or smells fishy but that's what happens in a lot of
Ponzi schemes where the early winners are paid off & they spread the word to
a lot of suckers who also might get paid off. Where this all starts to
collapse is when those payoffs start slowing down & getting behind. What
makes this hard to detect is that inveterate gamblers want to make money
transfers as convenient as possible so they leave their winnings on account &
don't notice the slowdowns.
Yeah there probably are honest online casinos out there. But picking out the
honest ones from the ones who will skip or go out of business is a 1 in 5
shot (remember reading somewhere that 80% are gone after one year - maybe
recent issue of Casino Player).
If you still insist on putting down a bet & trying to beat this logarithmic
progression, then you're a real gambler & should be welcome in any casino.
My real objection to online gambling is the burden it puts on the rest of us.
What burden you say? Money transactions are done by credit card. Often it's
on credit backed up by future income or it's money that cannot afford to be
lost. In either case, it often becomes uncollectible due to:
--Losses
--Casinos not paying off winnings or going out of business
--Duplicate billings by casinos
--Just can't pay
Credit card companies then start to nickel & dime us with fees & up interest
rates to subsidize the losses from these deadbeats.
Some of the credit card companies are no longer accepting charges to known
online casinos. I think this is driven not by whether it's legal or not but
more by the rising volume of "invalid charge" or "disputed charge" claims
from cardholders. In a falling economy, this is just going to get worse.
Frankly, I think online gambling should be legalized but only if you gamble
by depositing real cash & our DAs shouldn't waste any time if people get
burned by offshore fly-by-nighters.
OK, enough soapbox & snake oil debunking. I just had to say something.
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