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Online Gambling
is part of a mini-series concerning
Online Gambling.
Mini-Series Articles:
Related Topics
As if you didn’t need yet another way to have your money skillfully and quickly removed from your bank account by stupid internet shenanigans, online gambling offers you an exciting way to rapidly drain whatever rent or bill money you have in a manner that is both numbing and painful at the same time. Like IRL gaming, online gambling is wagering or betting money on an scam event that is fixed. Typical “fixed” events can be Poker, Horse Racing, Slot Machines, who is going to play the halftime show at the Super Bowl, and virtually any other incident where the “House” is sure to beat your pants off.
History
—Gambling Advocate | ||
While gambling was moderately popular in the pre-internet days, the companies that owned casinos always had to deal with pesky inconveniences like legality, greasing politicians, paying off police, bribing gaming commission officials, and figuring out how to get inside sealed slot machines to “tighten” them up to the point where only one person in seven hundred million would win. Then, sometime in the mid 1990s some smart guy named Todd Mummert came up with the idea and the programming behind IRC poker and at that moment, the revolution began. By moving gambling online, casinos managed to solve all of those pesky old problems. Now, more than a decade later, the online gambling industry boasts annual revenue that approaches 8 billion dollars, most of which is being extracted from your grandmother’s savings account, proving that online gaming is indeed, SRS BSNS.
Online Casinos
Online casinos sprang up and became popular the second some computer engineer finished jacking off to BBS porn. Because porn can only keep a person interested for about 47 seconds, something else was needed to keep people using their home computers and the answer to that problem was online gambling.
It is not surprising that the internet's success and the success of gambling both went crazy at about the same time, both industries are interested in ripping off as many people in the most painless way as possible. By mingling the technology of the internet with the know-how of casino cheats this was accomplished in literally no time. Now the average netizen can play any number of games in the privacy of their own homes, in their greasy underwear, without worrying about the neighbors finding out about their little “problem”. But how to go about becoming an internet casino gamer?
There are several online casinos to choose from. Owing to the insane popularity of this phenomena, one merely needs to type “company picnic 1996” into any search engine and they will be returned with thousands of online casino results. When a person finally decides on an online casino to gamble at, they sign up and enter their credit card number, ensuring that Satan himself owns their soul and their email inbox for all eternity. Once sign up is complete, the gambler is now ready to choose what games they wish to play.
Types of Games
If it can be bet on, there is probably a game about it that probably also has over 9000 variations. Gambling games (games of chance) range from cards, dice, and roulette all the way up to more interesting games such as tortoise races and Cock Fighting. The only unifying theme that seems to follow all gambling is the fact that the more complicated it is and the more money the House can win on it, the more popular the game is. A perfect example of this would be Baccarat, a game that involves betting on cards, the rings of Saturn, what particular day, month, and time of day it is, and the maiden name of the dealer’s next door neighbor’s great aunt. Seriously, people will bet on anything.
Because most games become uninteresting after a few minutes, gaming companies need to constantly update and improve their games. Improvement in this case means adding new rules, adding more rake (rake is a house percentage), and adding higher table entry fees while just renaming the same old tedious and lackluster games new and more whimsical titles that are guaranteed to lure in more chumps. New games are always given the spotlight, especially when they require no skill and can still attract the most jaded of suckers. But for the purposes of simplicity and straightforwardness, this article will only deal with the old standbys, and the most popular forms of online gambling.
Poker
- For full coverage please see Online Poker.
Poker is any card game where cards are used to determine high or low. Since there are more variations of poker than there are hairs in Amy Winehouse’s armpits, you can bet that most people are confused when they step up to the table. This is a good thing if you have experience with online poker, but a bad thing for about 99% of the rest of the internet because most people are noobs when it comes to playing games of chance online. Couple this with the fact that gambling is addictive behavior and most dingbats don’t know when to quit and you have the perfect storm where online casinos can cash in like ambulance chasing lawyers in a hospital parking lot. Online poker has several very popular variations, most notably, Texas Hold’em. Texas Hold’em is a game embraced by NASCAR dads, red neck wannabes, and Hollywood stars like Laura Prepon, Jason Alexander, and Brad Pitt…just when you thought Texas Hold’em couldn’t be a game full of more douchebaggery, Hollywood comes along and fixes that for you.
Online Sports Betting
- For full coverage please see Online Sports Betting.
Back in the good old days, you called your bookie when you wanted to put 3 large down on the Giants. Today it isn’t much different, instead of using a payphone, you use computer and your cable connection. Instead of calling a bookie, you connect to any one of a number of online sites. And instead of getting your kneecaps broken when you lose miserably, they will ruin your credit rating and take your house away from you. People who bet on sporting events online can bet on any major sport and some sports that you have never heard of…like Hockey.
While all online gambling deals with playing odds of some sort or another, odds play a larger role in the actual betting involved in sports gambling. When a player sits down to a blackjack table, the odds are there, but they are not openly discussed by the average player. With online sports book, odds are laid out for every bet with only a tiny percentage of bets being even odds. What this means is that because most sports games are pretty easy to figure out, online bookies need a twist to lure a bettor in. by adding twists such as point spread, over under, limits, Juice, and money line betting, online bookies are sure to clean up by further complicating an normal sporting event.
Bingo
- For full coverage please see Online Bingo.
Bingo in real life is a game played by fat housewives. Once bingo moved online, not much changed, it is still played by bored, fat, Frito-eating housebeasts who have nothing better to do other than clean out their hard working husband’s bank accounts before divorcing them, becoming a cougar, hitting the gym and finding some younger guy with a bigger bank account.
Online Bingo, the game, is played in a similar fashion to IRL bingo and the rules are pretty much the same; a person attempts to “fill” a line on a bingo card by matching the called numbers. Once a line is filled, some dipshit will stand up and yell “BINGO!” at the top of their lungs because they won a mini-refrigerator and thirty-seven dollars.
Some of the major differences between online bingo and IRL bingo are that you don’t see your grandmother in the back of the room, smoking an endless chain of Benson and Hedges menthols. You also don’t get to smell the interesting smells of the modern day bingo hall, but then again, that might not be a bad thing. One last difference is the “auto-daub” feature that most online bingo games have. The auto-daub will mark all numbers called as they are called and collect winnings as (or if) they occur. What this means is that you can buy 100 bingo cards, turn on auto-daub, and leave to go play tennis with your pal Kyle instead of having to sit in front of a computer monitor all day. Some players swear that auto-daub is similar, but superior to eBay in every way.
Blackjack
- For full coverage please see Online Blackjack.
Blackjack, or 21, is a very old game where a player vies against the “House” in an attempt to get a larger total of cards up to, but not going over a total of 21. Some examples of how a person could manage to get 21 would be:
- A natural black jack of a black suited jack (spades or clubs) and a black suited ace.
- A ten card and an ace.
- A three of spades, a five of clubs, a six of diamonds, a two of spades, a four of hearts, and an ace of clubs.
- The rare 21 card. For more information please see here.
Blackjack is by far and away the most popular and largest money maker for IRL casinos, but for some odd reason it has not become as popular or lucrative online like it does in cities like Las Vegas. One reason is because card counters cannot be busted from the safety of their homes owing to the fact that facial recognition software does not work on the anonymous and faceless internet. The other reason is the plain fact that computers and Blackjack just don’t mix...
Roulette
IRL Roulette is the hardest game of all to win not to be mistaken for Fap Roulette. Casinos routinely rig and magnetize tables to affect the outcome of most games. If you think that because the game is now online it is much safer and free from cheating in the house’s favor, you are more retarded than Rootbrian. Just think of it: now they take ALL natural force out of the equation and you are only left with what they tell you the outcome is. Only a person about to commit suicide and leave his earthly remains behind should ever attempt to play roulette. Still, in the interest of this article, a brief gloss over of the rules of the game are needed.
Roulette consists of a table with a wheel on it. on that wheel are a series of 36 numbers that are either backed by black or red. There are also two other numbers, 0 and 00, that are backed by green. A tall skinny guy called a croupier (so named because he constantly coughs due to a bad case of the Croup) will then spin a metal ball around a magnetized track. At first the ball will spin as if it is free of any outside influence until finally it will land (via gravity…haha) in one of the pockets that denote the numbers discussed above. Players will bet on what number, group of numbers, color, or odd or even will win. Most of the time the metallic ball will land on any of those variables, but if the House sees that somebody is a sucker or if somebody starts winning too much, the ball will land on the green 0 or 00 number, meaning that 99.9% of everybody playing will lose.
Craps
- For full coverage please see Online Craps.
Another game where the rules are so complicated, you might as well just take your money out to the back yard, pile it up on the Weber grill, douse it in lighter fluid, and set it on fire. Many players of this game think that the origin of the name “Craps” comes from the French word for “frog” because of the way the dice hop around the table, but the real origin of the word comes from the plain old English version of the word for shit, which is what most players scream while they are having their money fleeced from themselves.
Online players have several types of Craps to choose from, they can lose their money playing against the “Bank” (or the “House”), or they can lose their money playing against other Crap shooters who are really just computer scripts that are set to rip off players as fast as they can.
The basic rules of Craps are very simple, somebody rolls a set of dice then some other person takes your money. Online, most of this occurs in a matter of seconds and players will find that they can lose several thousand dollars in a matter of minutes.
Slot Machines
Online slot machine games are the single most popular thing on the internet with the exception of porn. Playing slots online is a lot like rubbernecking a car wreck on the side of the highway. You see it, you know it is terrible, yet you cannot look away. Online slots players are in the same boat. They see that they are getting ripped off, they know they are getting ripped off, yet they still manage to sneak into their roommate’s bed room and steal the slumbering person’s credit card…and get ripped off again.
IRL, slot machines are called one armed bandits…what makes you think that they are going to be any different online? Since the invention of the credit card, putting coins into slot machines has become a thing of the past, and now with the popularity of the internet, actually going to a casino to play slots is as dead as Heath Ledger. To play online slots, on only has to find an online site that will take their debit card, sign up, and start pulling the online lever. This all is the simple part, once the tumblers start rolling, the hard part kicks in. Players can bet on any line, diagonals, or all of the lines and diagonals all at once. Of course the more bets you make, the more money is extracted from your account, but you don’t care, the cherries, bells, and big fat 7’s are colorful and pretty. The only drawback that online slot machine playing has is the fact that you don’t get to feel the soul-jarring thump that pulling a one armed bandit’s lever…you just get to feel the cold, sticky sweat collect on your mouse hand.
Other Types of Online Gambling
Players are also given the chance to play in several different ways besides just joining up on a gambling website. There are games that do not require an internet connection and there are games that will actually let you sit down next to real life players at a gambling table, pitting your skills and luck against people who are where gambling is legal, and thus are probably seedy cheats and thieves.
Downloadable Gaming
Players who wish to play games without being online can download games and play them on their computers. First they must find or buy a game and then load the game onto their computer. This sort of gaming is called “just for fun” gaming as no real money is actually made or lost. This “just for fun” gaming can be an exciting and entertaining experience until the user realizes that they have downloaded and installed malware that harvests their banking information without their knowledge.
Live Gambling
Imagine sitting in your comfy home playing games at a real table in the French Riviera amongst the rich and famous. Now imagine having to sit next to a television monitor where some poor riff-raff dipshit is grinning at you through a three day beard and crooked teeth while you sit at that same French Riviera table. This is the magic of live gambling, where you the unwashed masses can act like the tools and snobs who crawl the streets of Cote d'Azur. The games and the swindles are still the same, you just get to feel a bit better about yourself because of the company you are pissing off while you lose your money to them.
Legality
If you live in the United States and spend any sort of time online, chances are you are probably doing something illegal anyways, why bother worrying about it now? Over the last ten years, laws have flip flopped concerning the issue of online gambling. One day you are allowed to do it, the next day Google is pulling down all of their links to gambling sites and if the feds catch you gambling, you are going to jail. None of this really matters though, considering the huge sum of torrenting, hacking, and other illegal activities that go on every day, they just do not have the manpower to enforce the laws that they have on the books. Lawmakers will keep online gambling illegal as long as they haven’t figured out a way to tax it…once they do, you will be able to sit down at a virtual table and lose your money to some 13 year old kid who has managed to hack the gambling server.
Bonuses and Other Fraud
Bonuses are an attempt made by casinos to gather in new players. If you sign up with a casino, typically they will give you a bonus amount of money to play along with the money you have tied up in your retirement fund. As is normal with casinos, bonuses are really just a sham and are only money out of thin air. Once you join up, you cannot just cash out and you cannot quit playing until you have made a pre-determined number of bets. This pre-determined number usually is just enough bets to bankrupt your full account and kick you from the game.
As with any other online activity that involves money, people abuse bonuses. Some enterprising people have managed to stick it to casinos and steal money from them, but this is a tiny percentage of the actual bonus scam that is going on. Casinos routinely delay or flat out refuse to pay out once the requirements are met by the players. This should not shock anybody, they are casinos!
A very enterprising way that some users will employ to get money from casinos is to use their cracked photo editing software to make a fake screenshot of a slot machine win…and then they will complain to the online casino that they were not paid out their winnings. Oddly, as the number of cracked copies of Photoshop went up, the number of payouts from casinos dropped. Users who attempt to try this way of getting their money back are typically banned from casino sites.
Can I make any money from this?
Video
and how much you suck at poker, it isn't at the top of the page...it goes right here.
See Also
- A whole different kind of Internet Gambling
- Addict
- Gambling
- Pwnt
- Vegas
- Native Americans
- Russian Roulette
- The Game
- Gambling linked to child abuse.
- Fap Roulette
| Featured article June 20, 2009 | ||
| Preceded by I am disappoint |
Online Gambling | Succeeded by Joseph Fritzl |
