Online casinos let you play for real money, and most of them let you play for free with fake money, hoping you'll decide to eventually gamble real money. They offer traditional casino games like blackjack, craps, baccarat, roulette, and slot machines. To play with real money, you make a deposit with NETeller, which is kind of like PayPal for online casinos. At most casinos you can either download their special software to play the games, or play the Flash versions right in your web browser. (Bodog has a nice selection of play-in-browser games.)
There are hundreds of online casinos, but almost all of them are based on one of a dozen or so software platforms (e.g., Boss Media, Cryptologic, Microgaming, Playtech, Real Time Gaming, Unified Gaming, and a few others). Most casino software won't run on Macs, but Bodog's play-in-browser games run beautifully under MacOS. There's more on this on our page about playing online with a Mac.
Should I download the software or use the Java/Flash versions?
You'd think that playing "no-download" Java or Flash games right in your browser would be more convenient than downloading a separate program, but there's a catch: With no-download games every time you want to start a new session, or even switch from one game to another, you have to wait for the game to load into your browser. That's slow and annoying. So if you're going to play more than once it's actually quicker to spend a couple of minutes downloading the software. That way you can get into the games quickly every time you want to play. Java/Flash is the better choice only if you want to play just one time.
Are online casinos legal?
As Homer Simpson once said, "That's for the courts to decide." The short answer is that it's a gray area, but that's good for players, because the government doesn't prosecute gray areas. The best explanation we've seen of this was in Casino Player magazine:
The bottom line, as we've been writing since 1997, is that if a U.S. resident wants to gamble online, he or she will be able to, despite any laws that Congress passes to prohibit the activity. It's clear the end user (the player) will not be prosecuted, and since most online gambling companies are located offshore and overseas, many by non-U.S. companies, the action will always be there for U.S. gamblers. [CP, Dec. 2002, p. 48]
Online casinos are located offshore where gambling is legal, so the question is, does your bet take place in the U.S., where you're sitting at your computer, or where the casino's server is located, where it's legal? This question hasn't been answered (legally), which is why players haven't gotten into trouble.
The U.S. government has made moves to restrict online gambling, but thus far their efforts have been directed at the businesses involved and not the players. In the press release for its "60 Minutes" Nov. 20, 2005 program on Internet gambling, CBS said, "U.S. authorities have never prosecuted individual bettors and don't plan to start."
In 2000 the Dept. of Justice prosecuted a U.S. citizen who was running a gambling operation in another country, and in 2003 they advised publishers that accepting ads for online gambling was illegal, which is why those ads no longer appear on bigger sites like Google and Yahoo. (article) In response to this crackdown, the web portal Casino City has filed a lawsuit against the Dept. of Justice in an effort to declare that online gaming ads are not illegal, and the countries of Antigua and Barbuda, which serves as home to many offshore gambling operations, has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization saying that the U.S. has no right to prohibit offshore gambling operations.
Gambling-Law-US.com examines the gambling laws in all the U.S. states, but don't expect black-and-white answers. Ditto for the legal article at the Las Vegas Advisor.
Some states have moved to ban online gambling, and this is an area where change could happen very quickly.
In any event, online gambling is already so common that it's unlikely that U.S. or state governments can do much to stop individuals from doing it. Online casinos are doing a brisk business with U.S. customers for this reason. USA Today reported in Feb. 2005 that 17 million Americans were expected to gamble online in 2005.
Are online casinos honest?
Most casinos don't cheat because they'd make less money that way, because they'd never get any repeat business -- not to mention that getting a bad reputation in this business can easily kill an online operation. There's way more money to be made by dealing an honest game. A casino winds up making less money if it cheats, so cheating is rare.
Of course there are exceptions, like Casino Bar which had a crooked blackjack game. But cheating casinos are the exception and not the rule. In fact, the bigger problem with online casinos is that sometimes they take a long time to pay out a player's winnings -- or in the case of a big win they might try to claim so loophole to avoid paying he player at all. And if this happens to you then you're usually out of luck, since online gaming is largely unregulated and there's no one you can complain to.
Fortunately there's an easy way to avoid getting burned online: Just play at a reputable casino. I recommend Bodog, whose reputation is unmatched in the industry. They've been completely scandal-free and I've never heard of complaints about them by any of my readers.
Most other gambling sites promote a bunch of different casinos, but my philosophy is to just pick the one absolute best casino I could find and promote them exclusively. I personally met with Bodog's casino manager, Brad Romano, and he promised that if anyone who clicks over to Bodog from my site has a problem they can't resolve with Bodog, he'll allow me to try to mediate. In all the time I've recommended Bodog I haven't received even a single complaint from a player, which tells me that I did a pretty good job in picking a good casino.
Remember, I can definitely try to help you if you ever have problems with Bodog, but if you play anywhere else, you're on your own.
Auditing of Log Files
Online casinos know that many potential customers are wary of gambling online, so many of them have contracted with independent accounting or actuary firms to perform monthly reviews of their log files to verify their fairness. The best list we've found of casinos whose files are professionally reviewed is available at WinnerOnline.com. While the fact that a casino's files is reviewed is not a guarantee that the casino is honest, we feel it's still a pretty good indicator.
It used to be that I'd only recommend casinos whose logfiles were audited, but I made an exception for Bodog. Basically, Bodog's reputation is already so good that they don't have to convince most prospective players that they're a legitimate outfit. Having logfiles audited is expensive, and Bodog probably feels, with good reason, that auditing would be a waste of money since their reputation is already well established.
Avoiding spam
Online gambling is big business, and many casinos think nothing of selling your email address to other casinos. There are two ways to protect yourself here: The first is to simply pick a casino that doesn't sell you out to spammers. (Obviously Bodog doesn't share your address or I wouldn't have recommended them.) The other is to open a separate email account for your online gaming. If you start getting flooded with spam, just switch to another new account. This way your primary email account never gets spammed.
CasinoMeister has a page about fighting casino spam.
How do I deposit money into an online casino?
This is important! Most players should use NETeller. Most U.S. banks won't allow credit cards to be used to buy chips at an online casino. PayPal also disallowed casino transactions when they were bought by eBay. The preferred solution is to use NETeller, which operates in a similar way to PayPal: You transfer money into Neteller from your bank or by credit card, and then you use your NETeller balance to pay for things elsewhere, such as chips at an online casino. There are other methods of getting money into a casino but they're either expensive or slow. NETeller is usually the best way to go. Believe us, we tried five credit cards and another online payment system unsuccessfully before we tried NETeller, and everything went smoothly then. We've had good experiences with NETeller for over three years now.