If you're familiar with the common activities of Las Vegas, and you're familiar
with the Internet, you may be familiar with the marriage, online casinos?
Many people, like myself, were fans of the Vegas lifestyle long ago, and
only recently became aware of the fact that you could actually place bets
on the Internet. I had always assumed there would be too many security problems,
but apparently, whether those problems exist or not, online casinos have
made the mainstream. It wasn't so long ago that you could be easily unaware
of the presence of any online casinos, but recently, due to the copious
amounts of cash they are producing, advertisements are suddenly ubiquitous
across almost every site on the net. Most people can't even check their
web-based email these days without running into an offer from one of the
major Internet casinos.
So what are online
casinos, how are they different from land based casinos? Well it certainly
is a close relative to our old friend land based gambling, as you may
well know there are a lot of games within the casino's walls that are
already digital at heart. Slot machines run from microprocessors, video
poker machines are binary to the core, and many table games have simple
logic, which allows them to easily have software versions of the game
created. What is possible of course, will be exploited. So as the security
of online transactions and privacy caught up with the imagination of the
game makers, the free versions of digital blackjack,
slots, and a million
other games, suddenly gained potential to actually be bet on.
Most online casinos take bets via credit card transactions, or some proxy
service designed specifically for online purchases such as Pay-Pal. The
standard procedure is to download a package from one of these online casinos
and run the software. Within the software there are usually a couple of
options, and you can probably play a selection of the games for free before
you register. At that point you have the option to visit a registration
screen and put in your credit card number, or purchase credits via an
alternate method of payment. If you're connected to the Internet the software
can communicate with the casino server, and approve your credit transaction.
From that point you can choose to gamble for real! The bets you place
are almost exactly the same as the bets you would place at a normal casino
(be sure to read up on the particular online casino's odds and payout
rates, and compare them to standard ones).
The most common question novice
gamblers may have about online casinos once they find out it's all
for real is, how can I win? How can I actually get paid? Well, for the
most part, they mail you a check. Sometimes, if you are using a third
party payment option, your account may be credited digitally.
It looks like online casinos are here to stay, even if the US government
bans it, it will be hard to stop people from placing bets online. Most
of the online casinos in existence today are run as offshore gambling
establishments.
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