Monday, April 21, 2008

Temptation at Your Doorstep: Internet Gambling.

Can you imagine being able to place a bet with just a press of a button? Can you imagine playing and betting as long as you want?

Can you imagine gambling from the comfort of your own home?

We know for a fact that gambling is risky business, and unrestrained gambling is just asking for trouble. Compulsive gamblers already have a hard time restraining themselves from the call of casinos and bookies, and now Internet gambling just takes the ante a step further.

With Internet gambling, you don’t need hard cash. Everything that is online is so easy to access. Play Baccarat, Blackjack, Craps, Keno, Roulette or Slots. Play all day, all night.

Before the 1990s, gamblers who wanted to place a casino or sports type bet in the United States basically had two choices: they could travel to a legitimate brick-and-mortar gaming establishment or place an illegal wager through a bookie. However, with the emergence of the Internet in the mid-1990s, a new form of gambling appeared; Internet gambling through gaming casinos and sports wagering. Internet gambling can take place on any electronic device that offers Internet access anywhere on the globe.

Internet gambling makes payment options for gambling individuals easy. They can just choose from several types of payment options other than credit cards. These include:

VISA and MasterCard cards: These cards are tied directly to the cardholder’s bank account. Funds for all transactions are deducted directly from the cardholder’s bank account, but cardholders can make credit card-type transactions that do not require a personal identification number.

Private-label debit cards: These cards are similar to check cards above but are issued by private companies rather than credit card associations.

On-line payment providers: These companies send and receive funds electronically for such uses as on-line auctions and purchases.

Wire transfers: Some Internet gambling sites promote this method of payment, which allows Internet gambling customers to wire money directly from a bank account to the site.

“E-cash” or digital cash: It is a digital representation of real money that can be placed on a computer hard drive, smart card and other devices with memory. It can be purchased from an authorized provider.

Internet gambling sites also offer money orders; traveler’s checks; bank drafts; cashier’s, certified, and personal checks; and a number of other electronic banking systems or processors as payment options. With Internet gambling’s easy payment options, even a non-gambler would be tempted to try.

Statistics also show that Internet gambling has nearly doubled every year since 1997 – in 2001 it exceeded $2 billion. It also boasts 110 sport-related Internet gambling sites.

According to the American Psychological Association, Internet gambling could be just as addictive as alcohol and drugs.

This is a confession from quoted from The Gambling Problem Talking Point website:

”... I am addicted to online poker, not to mention soccer betting and casinos whenever I am in the vicinity of one.

For the longest time I thought I had the beast under control. Thought I was smater than the pack, and shrewd enough to beat the pack. Considered my betting to be more of an investment than anything else.

How much hav I lost gambling? I am afraid to tally.

Has it ruined my life? Almost ... I guess being from a wealthy family, it helped me to cover the tracks not to mention the losses.

But enough is enough and I would like to kick the habit alltogether.

I am sorry if I sound a little cocky or arrogant ... I have a problem. And even now am half hearted to completely agree that I do have one.

Will I continue to gamble? I am not sure. I would like to stop, but it is just so easy with the Internet and all.

I guess if I was in NZ, I could join a group onj a regular basis and get some help in person. But in Malaysia, how do I do that?

From reading some of the posts here, I share all the common symptoms.

It is a disease, and can destroy the best of people, not to mention families and loved ones a like.

What can I do? How can I help myself...”

Internet gambling is a very slippery slope. It can ruin your life and the life of your loved ones. So the next time Internet gambling knocks on your door, think twice.

Friday, April 18, 2008

AN OVERVIEW OF ONLINE GAMBLING

Just like any commercial market today, gambling also took its chance of having to saturate a broader area of gaming through the Internet.
Nowadays, there are as many online gambling games as there are gambling games. Every kind of gambling game has their online counter parts in the Web. From poker to sports betting, every gambling activity seems to be online.
Most proponents of online gambling assert that online gambling is just as safe as gambling in known casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Just like the usual casino, online casinos are also required to have their licenses and permits before engaging into online gambling.
By doing so, online casinos are systematically regulated and audited by professional firms. All online casinos use the secure e-cash facilities, in cooperation with the credit card companies, so that the customers are being protected from unauthorized use of credit cards or from cases of identity theft.
Generally, online gambling in an online casino will entice new players by requiring them to deposit an amount by offering bonuses. An online casino that will offer you a free $100 for a $50 deposit is a good example. In this manner, more people believe that online gambling offers better chances than real-life gambling. However, this poses more risk in getting addicted to the game.
For people who want to play online gambling, deposits can be made through credit cards, fire pay, or 900 pay. Fire pay works like an ordinary online debit card. Normally, the player places money into the account and can be spent to any online merchants. Funds can be deposited through wire transfers. 900 pay, on the other hand, is another way of depositing money by calling a 900 number and the amount that is to be deposited is charged to the player's phone bill.
What's more, online casinos are further classified into two groups based on their interface. Online casinos could either be web-based or download-based.
Web-based casinos are forms of online gambling wherein users may directly play online casino games without having to load any software to the local computer. Online gambling is mainly presented in the browser plugins like Macromedia Flash, Shockwave, or Java.
On the other hand, download-based online casinos are the most common online gambling sites in the Web. Here, online gambling users have to download certain software in order to play the casino games. And because it has pre-downloaded software, it is faster to initiate casino games on it compared to web-based casinos.
All the same, and due to the basic nature of online gambling, any transactions with it are vulnerable to fraud. There are online gambling known as rogue casinos wherein these sites refuse to pay the customers or contains a cheating software.
Plus, there are other ways of frauds in online gambling. Most of these cases are player-based. Players who want to cheat usually uses Adobe Photoshop or a comparable tool to maneuver the graphics of a slot machine screenshot in order to deceive the casino into thinking that the player just hit a jackpot.
Whatever forms of deception, it is evident that frauds are more likely to happen in online gambling. And if in any case, players get to be addicted in playing online gambling, they must remember that their obsession did not happen by mistake.
Online gambling is a highly interactive game, meaning whatever choices players make are based on their own prerogatives. So, however enticing online gambling can be it is a must that players must know their own dispositions so as not to be deceived.

Sports Gambling Basics

Combine two of man's greatest interests and you've got something called "sports gambling." What could be more ingenious? Imagine a group of men cheering over their favorite team, and almost always, bets are placed along with the racket. Think about it. With every sport there are always certain highlighted games everyone's talking about; something that, according to sports buffs, will "Change the course of history." In order to get some of the action, spectators usually attempt to guess who will win in the upcoming games. This all turns into a friendly little "game" called sports gambling.
It might sound addicting, but sports gambling is really just for fun and a way to bond with your friends. You can bet a little amount of money and still have a good time. Sports gambling makes the outcome of a game more meaningful and the whole duration of the game more thrilling and exciting. Here are some basics to get you started on sports gambling.
To place a bet, all you have to do is go to a sportsbook, which is a place that accepts sports bets. In the United States, there are four states where you can do sports gambling legally, but illegally, you can do it anywhere so long as you can find a bookie AND you are of legal age (over 21). Many of the sports you can bet on are professional and college football and basketball, professional baseball, professional hockey, and horse and dog racing. You can bet on anything that involves sports, really, after all, it is sports gambling. You can bet on the overall combined score of a game, on what round will the opponent be knocked out, and even whether a coin toss in a game lands heads or tails. All you have to do is place your bet depending on the statistical odds (chances of winning/losing).
In sports gambling, bookies rely on statistics to help you decide which team you think will win. There is such a thing called a "spread," which is a point advantage given to a weaker team that is expected to loseby X number of points. This is the odds maker's way of making even bets possible for a Sports Book. For example, if a person may bet on a team that is expected to lose, and still win the bet so long as the team loses by a given number of points.
You might be asked to bet a few notches higher than the money you may actually win. This is really just the bookie's way of making money.
In sports gambling, there are different kinds of bets. There are straight bets, parlays, teasers, and over/unders. In sports gambling the most common type of bet is the straight bet, where all you have to do is to pick the team which you think will lose or win. Over/under bets are wagers on the combined number of points scored in the game by both teams. Parlays are combined bets on several games. Teasers are similar to parlays, but you can add or subtract points from the spread to make your bets stronger. This is just to show you that sports gambling can be made more interesting and challenging by the bets that you place.
There you go - the basics of sports gambling. Why don't you give it a try, and have a lot of fun in the process. Just remember not to get too carried away and spend your entire 401K plan on a whim. You just might end up regretting it for life.

The World of Virtual Gambling

First there was virtual reality and now there is virtual gambling. It seems like the world is slipping into a world where everything is virtual and possible. Nevertheless, virtual gambling has proven to be one of the most favorite past time of people, regardless of class and gender.
The concept of gambling is not a new and modern term in the world. In fact, gambling has long existed for almost 2,000 years. Of course the things at stake back then were not money. Just like the other industries, gambling also underwent a lot of changes and now, in the world of computers, virtual gambling seems to be its latest form. Let’s clarify first the term “virtual”. Virtual is often defined as something that is almost real but nevertheless an illusion but this is not the case for virtual gambling. This is because virtual gambling and the players here are real and also the stakes are real thus the normal classification of virtual does not apply in this case. Virtual in virtual gambling just represents the term “online” or “internet”. It means that instead of the traditional gambling wherein a person would go to casinos or even Las Vegas to gamble, people could now enjoy gambling to their hearts content care of virtual gambling in the comfort of their own homes.
There are so many choices in the world of virtual gambling and a person could actually have a headache in just making a choice of which type of virtual gambling would they indulge in the moment. A person could literary have different types of virtual gambling everyday! Traditional games in gambling are available in virtual gambling. These include casino games, pokers, roulette, slots, card games, blackjack, and the like. There are so many choices in the market and I bet that you won’t have a hard time finding one. The only problem that a person could have is finding the perfect one for them and also in choosing that “one”.
Aside from the traditional games in virtual gambling, new and innovative forms of gambling are also available online. These include reality TV shows, world cups, Saturday matches and the weather. It seems like everything could be in the virtual gambling world as long as there is someone to bet and of course, the money at stake.
Virtual gambling is also considered a safe and fun environment for gambling because it is very hard to cheat online. The mysterious façade of the entire player adds to the allure and temptation of virtual gambling. There are also free virtual gambling sites and there are also sites which require you to pay. The best way to know which virtual gambling site appeals to you is to try it. After all, trying would eventually mean learning. Customizing is one of the best features of virtual gambling because it makes sure that the players and its customers are satisfied with the gambling service and features offered in virtual gambling.
No longer would people have to stay late in casinos just to gamble because people nowadays are opting to stay late in front of their monitors. Virtual gambling just proves that gambling has certainly joined in the industrialized world of today. For people that have gambling in their bloods, virtual gambling is a very convenient, easy, and varied option for them.