Tidbits About Gambling

MS Queen Victoria Gambling

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Gambling is betting money or something else of monetary value on a game or event with an indeterminate result with the main intent of winning more money or other material items.

 

Types of Gamblers

 

  • Professional: gambling is the main source of income and the person does it on a regular basis.
  • Casual Social: gambling is a type of entertainment that occurs occasionally.
  • Relief and Escape: significant activity in an individual’s life and it ranked equally important with family and work, but life goes on without being seriously affected.
  • Serious Social: gambling is the primary type of entertainment and the gambler engages regularly in one or more types of gambling.
  • Compulsive: gambling is the only important thing in life, family and work are often ignored and the gambler often engages in illegal activity to support the habit. Compulsive gambling is a disability and these types of gamblers often need professional help.

 

Gambling Statistics

  • Since 1975, the gambling industry has grown ten times as popular in the United States.
  • Approximately 37 states have public lotteries with profits about $17 billion every year.
  • Two-thirds of the U.S. adult population engages in some type of gambling activity every year.
  • In the U.S. there are about 260 casinos on Indian reservations.
  • Profits from gambling in casinos are over $30 billion.
  • Internet gambling has about doubled every year since 1997.
  • Gamblers with annual household incomes below $10,000 are more likely to bet about three times as much on lotteries that people with annual household incomes more than $50,000.
  • About 15 million people have some type of addiction to gambling.

 

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How to Tell If An Online Casino Is Rogue

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In the online gambling world, casinos must go through strict registration and licensing to operate legally. These legit casinos are the safe, secure ones (well, as safe as it gets when you’re putting your money on the line gambling, anyway!), but many people new to the online gambling world don’t know about the other type: rogue casinos.

A rogue online casino is one that is not legit, not licensed, and not registered. Rogue online casinos do not aim to be accepted as a legitonline casino for long — they just want to look like it long enough to scam people out of their money. Rogue online casinos give legit online casinos a bad name; fortunately, there are a few ways to tell if your favorite new online casino is actually rogue.

The things that tip people off to a rogue online casino include:

  1. Customer service quality. Customer service that is unreachable or very slow in sending you responses is a sign of a rogue casino, because legit casinos pride themselves on excellent customer service.
  2. Unfamiliar and untrustworthy casino software. Online casinos, to prevent fixing prices too easily, use software made by separate companies that are highly trusted. This software is certified and reknowned; if a casino doesn’t use it, it’s likely rogue.
  3. No S in the “http://” in the URL during transactions. The S stands for “secure“; when your URL starts with “https://” you know your credit card info is encrypted before being sent anywhere. If there is no S, the connection is not secure, and the casino is likely rogue.

When in doubt, check an online casino listing for casinos voted legit.

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Online Slot Tournaments

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Slot machines are gambling in its purest form. There is no strategy, just pure chance, and the sounds, the flashing lights, the thrill of possible fortune.

These days you don’t even have to leave your couch to enjoy the thrill of a slot machine. So, save your quarters for laundry and check out some websites for online slots. You can just risk virtual money on an online slot machine and the next thing you know you will be repaid with untold riches.

You can start by going online and getting some online casino bonuses. With online casino bonuses you will be saving cash while you are gambling it way. You could even win the jackpot before you even put money down! You never know!

Online slot tournaments are all the rage in online slots. They are a great way to draw traffic to a gambling site. In an online slot tournament, many players register and then sit down at the virtual slot machine at the same time. The players are then competing against each other as well as the machines to win the highest jackpot. Tournaments add the competitive element to slots, combining the thrill of competition with the thrill of gambling.

Come to an online slot tournament and you could leave with a cash jackpot or a number of other prizes. For popular tournaments, be sure to register first. Then, like you would in a regular casino, stay for the other games. Make a night of it!

Online Casino History in a Nutshell

Poker chip with the WSOP logo.

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Online casinos are big — really big. They’re so big that for those who frequent them, it’s practically impossible to imagine a world without the ability to just log on and play some slots or poker from the comfort of your living room. But this was the truth not so long ago…

Here is the history of online casinos in a nutshell:

  • In 1994, the Free Trade and Processing Zone Act went into effect, creating laws online casinos are still operated under today.
  • In 1996 the first-ever online casino was created, offering a mere 18 games. That same year somebody placed the very first cash bet in any online casino in history — quite a milestone!
  • In 1998, people tried to ban online casinos with the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which thankfully turned out to be a big flop.
  • 1999 marked the very first multiplayer online casinos. Before this, everybody had been playing the games by themselves, which was considerably less fun than playing in a group and chatting with each other in text chat rooms on the side.
  • In 2002, a player won over a million dollars in an online casino, making a big splash — this showed that online casinos were no small stuff.
  • In 2003, the World Series of Poker winner was a player who had only ever played in online casinos before. Oh, and a bill is passed to make money transfers from online casinos illegal.
  • In 2004, the online gambling ban was lifted after somebody pointed out that regular casinos aren’t limited by it.
  • Online casinos have been going stronger and stronger ever since 2004 — they’re here to stay!
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Reading a Tell Digitally?

Croupiére de Hod'em Poker

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One of the biggest complaints about playing poker in online casinos for newcomers is how they can’t see the other players, so they can’t read their tells or even judge by their poker faces. For a game that centers so much around putting on a front, it’s a bit amazing that poker has done as well in a digital online format as it has.

The days when you have to choose between physical poker and digital poker based upon tell reading ability or convenience may soon be at an end, though. Several more advanced online casinos are now offering not only the option to play poker itself, but to play it within a virtual 3D computer-generated poker room, complete with digital avatars of the players that are fully customized to match them. Players can choose what angle and zoom distance to view the table at.

Of particular interest, also, is an advanced emote system designed to show an impressive variety of emotions, including nervousness, confidence, thoughtfulness, and aggression, so that you can put forth the emotion you want the other players to think you are feeling and then let them judge whether they are reading an actual tell or just playing to your bluff.

In addition to conveying emotions through expression, your custom avatar in one of these games can show your conversation through body language gestures as you type into the usual chat box to communicate with other players. The 3D avatars are of the more realistic variety to appeal to adults instead of the typical kid-friendly avatar, such as a Nintendo Wii’s Mii.

One of the most popular 3D poker games is PKR.

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How to Spot Online Gambling Addiction

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Gambling is one of those things that can very easily become an addiction if you aren’t careful. There are few things that can give a person a huge rush of excitement and thrill like the possibility of winning a million dollars with a single lottery ticket, or winning the whole jackpot at an online casino with a single click of their computer’s mouse.

If you do a lot of gambling — online casinos, in-person casinos, and yes, even lottery tickets — then you really should stop and examine whether your habit has gone from hobby to addiction.

Signs of online gambling addiction include:

  • An urge to log on and play whenever you have free time (or even when you don’t!)
  • A tendency to spend all of your extra money on your online gambling account (or even to gamble away money you intended touse for something else)
  • Getting less sleep than usual
  • Irritability, mood swings and general depression when you are unable to log on a play your casino games for too long
  • Inability to go for a reasonable period of time (try a week, or a month) without logging onto your online casino games
  • A refusal to admit that there is anything wrong, or that you have any online gambling addiction problem

If you have several or all of the above symptoms, chances are the last is on the list. Before you can help yourself overcome any kind of addiction, you must acknowledge that you have a problem. Once you can say this to yourself, you can take steps to help yourself recover from online gambling addiction, such as joining a support group.

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