The increasing growth of online gambling industry surpasses all the expectations when compared with land-based casinos and betting places. From the times when Internet Casinos, Inc., the first virtual online casino started operations back in 1995 until nowadays, not only the effects of online wagering on the established land-based industry came up, but also the need of broadening gambling laws and regulations.
Most of the online casino companies are located outside of the United States to avoid government prosecution because the United States Federal Appeals Courts has ruled about the Federal Wire Act prohibiting electronic transmission of information for sports betting across state lines, but there is no a specific law prohibiting gambling of any other kind. In fact, several states rule in favor of land-based gambling but having specific laws against online gambling of any kind.
While the internet has no frontiers, gambling seems to be ruled by physical country delimiters-boundaries. Gambling is legal and regulated in Caribbean Nations and most European countries, such as Malta and the United Kingdom from where wide arrays of online casinos operate.
However, in America, law says that owning an online casino or gambling related business without getting a UFA88Cambodia license first may result as an illegal act, but if any individual would be willing to get one, however there are no states nationwide that are currently granting online gaming licenses, and regulations vary from state to state.
Government of Antigua and Barbuda, which licenses Internet gambling entities, sent a complaint to the World Trade Organization regarding the U.S. government's actions forbidding online casinos and gambling activities. They won the preliminary ruling but later the Word Trade Organization's appealed and partially reversed such ruling in April 2005.
The appeals panel decision allows state laws prohibiting gambling in Massachusetts, Louisiana, Utah and South Dakota, but ruled that the United States may be violating global trade rules as well, coming as the result of the American laws regulating horse-racing bets because equitably to foreign and domestic online betting companies is not applied.
With this panorama, online casinos await ruling; decision full of ambiguities as the global gambling online regulations. The Caribbean panel held that several online gambling restrictions imposed under American regulations have been inconsistent related to the trade services agreement with the body's GATS.
The economics of online casinos are amazing in comparison with land-based casinos costing up to $300 million to build, while online the cost can be as little as $1.5 million, but US Federal Laws insist to say that gambling is "risking anything of value for a profit whose return is to any degree contingent on chance".
On the other hand, traditional casinos may employ thousands of individuals, while an online casino is easily operated by less than 20 and not necessarily located in the same place, causing an economic impact due to the loss of jobs; so many people believe the regulation benefits the national workforce.
Except for the gambling sponsored by the state, including riverboat gaming, horse racing and lotteries, an online casino is forbidden all over the United States.
A lot has been written about the honesty of land-based slot machines. An excellent article by Steve Bourie is titled, "Are Slot Machines Honest?" and originally appeared in the 1999 American Casino Guide. (It can be found online by searching for the title in Google or Yahoo!.) Physical, land-based slot machines have a lot of "variations" (being polite) than can deceive the player. Of course, they are all illegal and do not happen. But read the article, closely.
On the other hand, online casino slots use an electronic "random number generator" or RNG, operating inside a very large computer program that manages the game graphics, the player accounts of those who join the game, the statistics of every hand played, and much more. The random number generator is hard-coded software instructions that do not change. There is no "sense switch" (see the Bourie article) that can be flipped to give players worse odds. Regarding control parameters, each use of the RNG is the same as the last use, and will be the same as the next use. The numbers will come out randomly, but the pattern of randomness never changes. This is a true advantage of software-based online casino slots.
Land-based slot machines can also have payout percentages as low as 83%, which is not true with online casino slots. In online gaming, each machine has the same winning percentage as the other machines. You can see the payout percentages for many online gaming sites, and you will see that it rarely drops below 95% - that is, the house makes a 5% profit, on the average. In fact, most casinos can document that their payout percentages are in the 97% - 98% range. This means that you can spend an hour, gamble your $100 stake about 3 times, and on the average it will cost you $7.50. But players don't gamble to be average: the true reward is the high-paying win. And the high-paying win is balanced, of course, by a number of players who lose and finance that win.
So are online casino slots fair? Yes, they clearly are. The software that operates the games is tested regularly by independent testing laboratories (look for logos at the bottom of the casino website), and no game is individually controllable to be biased. That is a far cry from the situation with land-based slot machines, appropriately called "one-armed bandits".
Players get better odds, they get absolute consistency across all games - but no one can guarantee a win every time. That's just the nature of gambling, and that's part of the thrill.
So the next time you want to play a slot machine, even if there's a land-based casino right next door, you are better advised to go to your computer and play the online casino slots. They are a far better bet.