Online Gambling - and Casino Info

Online gambling rules are simple and once understood, you can begin playing games and betting from the comfort of your own home.  The single most important rule you need to remember is: only gamble what you can afford to lose.

Secondly, to be able to play online you must be at least eighteen years of age.  Apart from these two rules, you will generally find that each gambling site will have its own variations on how you place a bet, how money can be withdrawn, and how much you need to bet in order to receive bonuses etc.  Whilst the format tends to be fairly standardized across different gambling sites it is always worth checking for the specific site you use.

Some gambling sites insist that you download their software, for which the compatibility of your computer is important because it determines the efficiency and speed of the software that is to be downloaded.

If you want to bet or gamble with real money then setting up an account is mandatory and the method of payment may differ according to the casino, site, or country from which you gamble.  Of course, you can also play for free on many sites and you won’t need to set up an account to do this.

There is a wide variety of sign up bonus and first deposit bonus offers available for anyone wanting to join those already making the most of online casinos, and if you really enjoy playing you can sign up to take advantage of as many offers and bonuses as you like!

The gaming industry is constantly expanding and people are more inclined to play online because of the many advantages that the online casino and gambling industry provides.

Online Gambling Institutions not Afraid of UIGEA this time Around

The current situation with the return in force of the UIGEA has had many analysts in the online gambling industry worried about what might come of it. After all, with the return of many of the online gambling institutions to the United States market, the online gambling industry has been exploding to the point where it is now one of the safest places for a person to put their money. Online gambling institutions however may face a repeat of the problems of 2006 in terms of being ejected from the US market if the federal government has anything to say about what transpires.

While some people would look at this as being a repeat of the dreaded 2006, it seems as though the online gambling institutions are not amongst the doomsayers this time around. In 2006 they were at the top of the list of people panicking and indeed many of them were on the verge of bankruptcy because well over 90% of their clients had been based inside the United States of America. In 2008 however the prospect of a second round of UIGEA crackdowns in 2009 does not seem to have the same tone of doom on the online gambling institutions many of which were the ones sounding the alarm in 2006.

“Online gambling has learned its lesson from 2006,” stated a representative for a major online gambling corporation that asked to remain anonymous. “In point of fact it appears as though the federal government thinks it has more teeth than it actually does. After the 2006 shutdown of the online gambling industry in the United States, most of the smart online gambling institutions decided that it was time to start fighting back. They fought back in the only way they knew how to and that was to bring online gambling to the other parts of the world. The result is that the online gambling corporations of the world today that could be affected severely by another round of UIGEA shutdowns are also the same corporations that have diversified their player base and become truly international organizations. Even if they lose their entire US base, there won’t be a single major online gambling company that suffers anywhere near as much as they might have in 2006.”

There is no way to know if the particular feeling inferred by the above quote is widespread across the entire online gambling industry, but if it is then it is quite easy to see that the online gambling institutions of the world no longer have reason to fear the government of the United States. If the government wants to crackdown on companies and force all online gambling to become illegal, the only people they will really be hurting are their own citizens that are interested in playing at various online gambling revenues. Far from being the encourager of free market industries that it has been historically, it appears as though the modern United States government has become irrelevant at least as far as online gambling is concerned

While the enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act that the federal government has put forth recently has not been successful in curbing online gambling in the country, it has had the effect of causing some online gambling operators to voluntarily exit the market. One such operator is Microgaming and when they exited the market last week they took all of their online casinos, online poker rooms and other online gambling facilities with them. The end result is that right now people from the United States are not able to play in any of the Microgaming installations of online gambling and even people with active accounts in good standing have been blocked from playing and had their money returned.

For the average online gambler in the United States, the exit of Microgaming from the US market represents a big blow to online gambling in the country. Microgaming is easily the most reputable online gambling company in the world at the current moment in time and because of that there are many people that are predicting that the UIGEA, rather than helping the fight against predatory online gambling institutions, have done nothing but remove the good ones and leave the bad. Microgaming is one of the few online gambling institutions that have never had any complaints against it in terms of fraud or abuse and this is because they have a strict code of conduct that they force all of their member websites to follow. This in turn results in games that are self-regulated in a way that the government should be regulating them right now and for that reason grateful US patrons in the past have rewarded Microgaming by giving them almost the entire market in the United States.

With Microgaming gone however, many of the online gambling websites that offered fair play in the same way that their offline counterparts did have now gone away from the US market, leaving a lot of untested and probably unfair websites in their wake to pick up the slack. With the fair assumption that people that are involved in online gambling now will continue to be involved in online gambling even with the exit of their favorite online casino, the only conclusion that can be reached is that the aftermath of the implementation of the UIGEA by the federal government has been to create a set of conditions in the US market that have resulted in poorer and less fair online gambling operations taking over a larger amount of the market share. Once again it seems as though poor US policy has made things worse with no chance at all of making them better.

There are online gambling advocacy groups however that have stepped forward and are now interested in making up for the slack left by Microgaming. These groups have put forward a number of online gambling institutions that are reasonably reputable and fair and still operate inside the United States. They won’t replace Microgaming, but they will at least allow US patrons to avoid potential problem spots online.

Ireland’s Online Gambling Hopes and the United States Connection

At a time when many countries in the world are closing their doors to online casinos (the United States and Argentina come to mind as two large countries that are currently taking or have taken in the past actions to ban online gambling), there are still some countries out there that would like a chance at seeing what they can do with this particular source of gaming revenue. The country of Ireland is one such country and all indications appear to be that the country is going to take one giant step to the left in its political outlook through two actions they are planning to take regarding online gambling.

The first is not an action for online gambling actually, but there is a very important indirect relationship involved. This action involves the nationalization of all casinos within the borders of the country and subsequent regulation of the casinos so that they conform to government standards. At the same time the government is going to be doing this, it also appears as though the government of Ireland is warming up to the idea of drawing online gambling operations to their shores. If the plan is successful, it could see many of the world’s biggest online gambling operations, now situated in areas of the world such as South America, jump ship and move to the shores of a country whose reputation is much larger in the world stage.

According to most analysts within the industry, the main push behind both of these moves is coming from an organization known as The Gaming and Leisure Association of Ireland. This association jump-started both campaigns through circulating a petition and then presenting that petition to the government. The regulations and legislation that will be coming out of the Irish legislature appear to be very blatantly aimed at making Ireland the next major base of operations for online gambling operations. According to the cost-benefit analysis of the situation that was done by the academics involved in this particular operation, a successful endeavor would create at least 10,000 new jobs in Ireland while at the same time generating the government an additional $68 million in annual revenue. At a time when the world’s economy is about as uncertain as it has been in a generation, such a move could bring about a stabilizing influence at least insofar as the government is concerned.

While this is all happening in Ireland, people in the United States are watching with interest. There are even some politicians in the country that are taking a closer look despite having signed onto the bill passed in 2006 that effectively ended all online gambling in the country. With the United States in terrible economic shape, it appears as though the positive economic impact of the legalization of online gambling is starting to be seriously considered once again. It would not be the first time that monetary concerns caused politicians to flip flop in the country and for that reason the whole world seems to be watching Ireland to see how the experiment unfolds.

Democratic Representative Barney Frank is the head of the House Committee on Financial Services and this is the committee that is responsible for making some headway into repealing the 2006 ban on online gambling that was passed back when the Republicans were still in power. This ban was one of the most unpopular things they ever did and Frank’s attempts to repeal the bill have been very popular not just amongst online gambling lobbyists, but also amongst the general public many of whom actually do play online poker and do other online gambling activities.

The original bill known as the Payments Systems Protection Act was blocked by Republicans on the committee, preventing Frank from moving through on his goal and forcing him to create a new version of the PSPA that passed by a margin of 30-19 in the committee when it was voted upon.

According to Frank, this particular piece of legislation did not prove to be everything he wanted. He still has a stated goal of wanting to repeal the UIGEA and with the support he has from the public on that particular issue, it is probably something that could be on the chopping block before the next President assumes office.

The new PSPA is not something that cuts to the heart of the UIGEA in the direct sense, but it does a very good job of coming at it from the flank and causing the UIGEA some serious problems in the long run. For example, the PSPA requires agencies of the federal government to create very clear definitions of what constitutes an illegal online gambling activity. In other words, the UIGEA did not define exactly what unlawful internet gambling was and for that reason the PSPA forces that definition on the regulatory agencies before any of the measures stipulated in the UIGEA can be utilized.

The bill will not only require federal agencies to create a clear distinction between what constitutes a legal online gambling activity and an illegal online gambling activity, but it will also force them into providing examples of illegal online gambling activities. These examples will then be combined with the new definitions in order to figure out which online gambling activities are off limits in the United States, allowing lawmakers to legislate against those gambling activities rather than against financial institutions.

With this type of specific wording in place, the blanket authority given to the federal government by the UIGEA has been rescinded. The UIGEA allowed federal officials to go after payment processors, credit card companies and financial institutions for funding online gambling websites. This of course led to many infamous raids such as the one on NETeller’s head office in the United States and it in turn led to the marginalization for a period of time of all dissenting voices. That period of time is over however and many former online gamblers in the US are looking forward to returning to one of their favorite activities.