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About Online Casinos

The experience of playing blackjack at an on-line casino is entirely different than playing in an actual one—and whether to patronize on-line casinos is a matter of personal preference. Because there is no regulating authority over on-line gambling (and many of the on-line casinos are off-shore operations), your experience will vary greatly from site to site, and on-line gambling cannot be categorically recommended or discouraged. However, as with all on-line businesses, caveat emptor.

The primary concern when gambling on-line is the reputability of the establishment. Certainly, any of them will take your money when you lose—but rumors abound of sites that refuse to pay when you win. Some will refuse to pay altogether, while others will force any winnings to be held as credit to be lost in future play rather and never actually paid out.

Word of mouth can be helpful in finding a reputable on-line casino, but is only as trustworthy as the source. Anyone who proclaims the trustworthiness of an on-line casino in a chat room or Web site could well be a shill—so unless you know the source, the best advice would be to risk a small amount (with the knowledge you may be cheated), gradually building as your confidence increases.

The same goes for pay-outs: if you're unfamiliar with a site, cash out after winning a small amount to see if a check is mailed promptly, or at all. One word of caution: honest on-line casinos that offer matching or bonus credits may require you to win more than the matched amount, or cycle it through a certain number of hands, before that amount can be claimed as winnings.

Certifications of on-line casinos by accounting firms can be useful in finding a reputable operation, but they shouldn't be trusted entirely. Logos and seals of approval are merely graphics, and can be easily faked or stolen. Also, the certifying authority may certify the soundness of the e-commerce system in accepting credit card information, not its willingness to pay off winners. All things considered, certifications are a good sign, but not an absolute guarantee of reliability.

Another concern for on-line casinos is the software. In the casino game, a lot of attention is paid to the equipment to make sure that the house has not tampered with it, that the decks in the game are complete, and the shoe is as random as possible to ensure fairness of play. On an on-line casino, the only equipment is a software program, which is very easy to rig in favor of the house. While sophisticated auditing software does exist, a sophisticated programmer can defeat it with some effort.

In cases where the software is written to be fair, it seldom duplicates the off-line parameters. Most commonly, each card is randomized with every draw, as it's much more efficient to randomize each card when it is needed rather than hold an entire eight-deck shoe in memory. The net effect is the same as if every card were dealt from a freshly-shuffled deck. Card counting is useless, and clusters do not exist, so there is no chance that the latter half of the shoe will even out the odds.

Finally, it's very easy to exceed your limits when playing at an on-line casino, where the total amount you've lost is often hidden and the only limit is the credit limit on your card. Because on-line blackjack seems like (and is) a video game, it can be difficult to quit when you ought to. Also, because you're playing one-on-one with the computer, the pace of the game is much faster—a few seconds per hand, no pauses between them, so it's not atypical to play as many as 1,800 hands per hour rather than the 50 that are typical in casino play. Even if you play perfect strategy, and reduce the house's edge to half a percent, betting $5 per hand for an hour will leave you with a new loss of $450.00.

There are, however, a few benefits to playing on-line.

Primarily, on-line casinos offer a place to gamble from your own home (or office or anywhere you ahve internet access), saving you the expenses (airfare, restaurant meals, and hotel bill) that would be incurred travelling to a brick-and-mortar establishment. Over time, that alone may make up for the losses, and will usually exceed the amount that you might recoup as "comps" in a brick-and-mortar casino.

It's also a more comfortable environment for the novice player, as casino games can be intimidating (which is why most people stick to the slots). It's much less embarrassing to be corrected by a computer in the privacy of your home than to be reprimanded by a dealer in front of a table of seasoned players.

Finally, as Sartre says, "hell is other people"—even if you're normally a social person, the casino environment tends to bring out the worst in people. Because gambling is considered by many religions to be a vice, folks tend to let go of their other inhibitions as well—and a steady stream of free alcohol does little to encourage this. It's fairly common to be subjected to players who are overbearing, obnoxious, and rude. While the house will sometimes intervene to remind folks to behave themselves, it will also allow people to be as awful as they please if they're losing money.

In the end, it's a matter of personal preference. If you enjoy video games, are willing to invest the time to research a reputable site (or are willing to bear the losses incurred at crooked ones), and are generally bothered by the casino environment and the sordid types that inhabit it, you may find on-line casinos to your liking.

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