How to Pick an Online Casino?
Up to a decade ago life was still quite simple for an average gambling lover. Although gambling was still mostly illegal, except for designated areas, the options were still clear. You knew what to expect from a certain casino and where could you find it. All that changed from the moment online gambling became accessible to anyone. It created a somehow awkward situation – as opportunities grew enormously so did the confusion.
How can a simple, everyday gambler decide what is the best place for him to gamble his money. Most online casinos are still too new to enjoy respectable reputation and a gambler can not trust on size or location of the casino. Online casinos are much trickier to understand. Internet design says very little about the quality of the casino or its resources. Also, most online casinos are located in the same areas, where it is legal to operate online gambling enterprises. So what can you do to pick the one good casino for yourself?
Tips for Choosing an Online Casino
Finding and choosing a reputable and honorable online casino is not as hard as it may sound. First of all the online gambling boom spawned thousands, if not millions of online gambling centered sites. These sites make their living out of reviewing casino sites and evaluating their quality. Browse the web as much as you can and try to read as many reviews as you can. Of course pay extra attention to the objectivity of the reviews (you can tell that the review is fair by checking the other reviews and the total sum of casinos reviewed).
A good idea will be also to look for some gambling and casino related chat rooms or forums. There are many online communities of people just like you, who are interested in online casinos. Talk to other people and learn from their experience. Be sure to talk to honest people. Remember that most likely there will be certain flawed in any seemingly perfect apple. So when an online gambling reviewer recommends you of an online casino with too much vigor add a certain doubt to his recommendation. Finally, do not worry – you will find your online casino eventually. It is not like the blackjack table is going anywhere.
Why Online Casinos are a Better Place to Play
Casinos have been offering gaming experiences and perks for gamblers since their beginnings with the 1931 Nevada legislation legalizing gambling in that state. With gambling outlawed in the rest of the nation, Nevada transformed itself into the destination location for gamers, offering fanciful and exotic experiences with extravagant themed casino designs, all with the idea of luring gamers to the tables. With the introduction of online casinos at the end of the twentieth century, however, the entire face of casino gaming underwent a revolution. Suddenly the casino experience is available to every gamer at any time, and the online casinos offer advantages that their traditional counterparts can't match.
Online Casinos Offer More Beneficial Perks and Incentives
Consider, for example, the fact that traditional casinos focus a lot of their resources on the incentives and perks designed to draw gamers to their physical locations to take a seat at the gaming tables. A traditional casino might offer travel discounts, comped suites or limo rides from the airport, free buffet tickets, and alcoholic drinks while the gamers play. Consider the costs expended by these casinos just to get gamers sitting at the table, and you'll realize the resources that would be available to a gaming house—specifically, an online casino—if that house doesn't need to physically transport its clients to a geographic location. Those resources are freed up to offer different sorts of perks to online gamers, such as cashback bonuses, stakes in the casino itself, seats at high rolling tables, higher conversion rates on earned comp points, and other extras. Although a gamer might briefly enjoy the novelty and luxury of a free hotel suite or limo ride, these aren't lasting benefits in the way that online perks can be, and particularly when those bonuses can be directly invested at the gaming table to enhance a gamer's play and winnings. All in all, the VIP and high roller benefits offered to clientele of online casinos are vastly preferable to those generally offered by the traditional brick and mortar casinos, which are by necessity focused on the need to get gamers physically to their locations, leaving very little in the way of additional perks that can be converted into cash or winnings in the gaming itself.
Online Casinos are Universally Accessible
Online gaming has the additional advantage of being accessible at any time and from any location. Rather than concentrating your gaming time into a short period of time when you're able to take time away from work and daily life to gamble at a traditional casino, you can play every day of the year at an online casino if you choose. Your enjoyment of the gaming doesn't need to be limited to a short period of time coinciding with a trip or vacation, and you now have the opportunity to improve your own gaming skills with constant practice.
Accessibility has been enhanced even further by the introduction of smart phone technology, which enables users to access the internet from a pocket sized device and from any location where they can receive a cell signal. Online casinos have capitalized on this capability by introducing downloadable mobile apps for smart phones and mobile devices, making individual casinos or games available with a single touch of a user's touch screen. While it seemed incredible in the 1990s that gamers could participate in games from the convenience and comfort of their home computers, the venue has taken yet another leap with mobile technology. A player doesn't even need to be at home in order to participate in a game, check a casino account balance, reserve a seat at a gaming table, or even (potentially) win a championship. These days a person can win a jackpot over their lunch hour, playing from a mobile phone. Once again, the enjoyment and skill-building that used to be restricted to whatever short period of time a player could spend in the physical environs of a traditional casino can now be expanded into everyday life with the ubiquitous accessibility of online gaming.
Online Casinos Offer Technology-Enhanced Experiences
Every game that you enjoy in a traditional casino can be found in the online counterpart. Whether you're a poker player or a blackjack player, a fan of roulette or craps, an investor in slot machines and progressive jackpots, all of these games are available for your gaming enjoyment in the online casino. Software developers have flocked to the online casino trend to develop fun and exciting interactive versions of games to be enjoyed in the online environment, so although you won't have a show of jousting knights or magicians to accompany your buffet dinner, you'll have the pure gaming experience of enjoying the fun available within the games themselves. The online casino brings your favorite games to your home, or even to the palm of your hand.
A side benefit of online casinos is the ability to play in private and removed from the distractions of other players, spectators, entertainers, dealers, or traditional casino noise and environment. Perhaps you prefer to focus and concentrate on your game, or perhaps you've always found the "circus" atmosphere of a traditional casino to be irritating rather than adding to your fun. Either way, the online casino limits its entertainment arena to the games themselves, and you can enjoy the games without the frivolous and annoying external distractions of a traditional casino.
Online Casinos Enable You to Hone Your Gaming Skills
Previous to the last decade and a half, serious gaming was limited to those very few people who could afford to spend substantial amounts of time at physical and geographic locations where gaming was legal. Most people didn't have the opportunity to practice their games anywhere near their own homes. A poker player or gamer of any type would have to finance a trip to one of those locations, and take the time from work and daily life to do so. This necessarily limited the scope of players who would be able to contend competitively in the venues of their games of choice; only people who could afford the time and travel could even have a chance to position themselves in these competitive venues.
Enter the introduction of the online venue for gaming, and the launch of the venue accessible to absolutely everyone. Suddenly, every gamer with an internet connection could participate in the games of their choice, playing frequently enough to hone and improve their skills, and channelling their own resources into the gaming itself, rather than the travel required to reach the gaming table. The competitive gaming world cracked wide open with the introduction of internet casinos, providing not only accessibility to those who couldn't travel to the physical gaming venues, but also financial accessibility to the games themselves. Online casinos sometimes have a lower threshold for achieving VIP or high roller status, enabling players of somewhat more limited means to make the most of their play when they do it in the online environment. VIP perks at online casinos generally include advantages that help the gamers make the most of their money at the table itself, offering cash deposits or bonuses, higher conversion rates on earned comp points, and similar benefits which can be translated directly into increased productivity at the gaming table.
You Can Launch a Serious Gaming Bid from an Online Casino
Given the accessibility of online gaming, a player can practice continually rather than limiting their play to those occasions when they're able to travel to a casino's physical location. A poker player, for example, can stay in practice with daily play, honing their skills in the online environment playing against skilled opponents from around the world. If anyone had doubts about the efficacy of the online poker tables as a venue for perfecting a game and gaining entrance into the elite circles of players, those skeptical beliefs were thoroughly dashed with the huge splash made in 2003 by a player who won the World Poker Championship with a history of almost exclusive online play.
These days you can participate in online gaming not only from the convenience of home, but from absolutely anywhere with the introduction of smart phones and mobile devices that access the internet. Players can download specialized apps for their favorite online casino or favorite online games, and they can play and practice from any place at all, so long as they're getting a cell phone signal. Online gamers might be playing from their office desk at lunch hour, from a commuting vehicle, at an airport gate, from a child's soccer game, or anyplace else where they can carry their phone. The accessibility of the online casinos allow gamers to integrate their gaming with their everyday lives, continuing to hone their skills and put themselves in the running for wins, money earning, and even gaming fame without sacrificing their family lives or existing jobs. Until recently, a gamer that had thoughts of making a living at gaming would have had to leave behind their other jobs and relocate to a location like Las Vegas if they intended to play with daily frequency. No longer is that the case, since today's gamer can enjoy the services of an online casino without sacrificing a current job or changing a living location.
Money Management Services Facilitate Transactions at Online Casinos
If you've ever experienced the inconvenience of running for the ATM when you're in the middle of a gaming streak, you'll appreciate the ease and convenience of handling your money at online casinos. Technological security developers have extended a number of money management services which enable gamers to move their funds quickly and securely among their online casino accounts. Services like Neteller, Click2Pay, and an abundance of others provide more security than a player can be assured of with the direct use of a credit card, and are specifically tailored for use at online casinos.
These services employ encryption technology and other security measures to protect a player's funds, while simultaneously protecting the player's personal information by avoiding the direct use of bank account numbers or credit card information at the casinos themselves. For players who prize their privacy, these services provide the added advantage of separating individual gaming transactions from appearance on credit card or bank statements. A player has complete access to their financial information, however, with the ability to check a balance or view transactions online at any time, or even with a handheld mobile device like a smart phone. All things considered, it's considerably easier to move money among online gaming tables, or even different online casinos, than carting around cash or chips or exposing credit card information at traditional brick and mortar casinos.
The Bottom Line is Better at Online Casinos
For some gamers, the bottom line is the last word, so it's worth noting that online casinos pay out a significantly higher level of winnings to its players. Free of all the overhead costs of traditional casinos (building maintenance and upkeep, property taxes, housekeeping, staffing and human resources, customer service personnel, provision of food and drink, lodging expenses, and so on), online casinos are purely in the business of facilitating gaming. Audit reports of online casinos show that they average a payout in the neighborhood of 97% at their online gaming tables. That's a lot of money going into the pockets of players, and if you take your play seriously, you are the one who stands to benefit!
Add to these great statistics the fact that you can play multiple games simultaneously, and online gaming can become a seriously lucrative practice. Playing several different hands of poker in separate computer windows, or maintaining a streak on more than one progressive jackpot, for example, a gamer can multiply their wins and their earnings by essentially being in several (virtual) places at once. It's a feat you couldn't pull off in a traditional casino, and it's just one of the many reasons why online players excel.