Sometimes I don’t find the gambling news that I need to pass on to readers on the New York Times. The big media news outlets seldom cover the inside gambling news or if they do have an article, it’s often hidden somewhere in the business or politics section. This is why following gambling information sites and blogs is important as a gambler, or even a gambling investor.  You need to be sure you’re up on all the inside news.

This week the big breaking news is about Everleaf Poker.  Now Everleaf wasn’t one of the big name poker rooms in the US, but they were a poker room that managed to stay open to US players after the Black Friday Poker Shutdown of April 15, 2011.  That is, they managed to stay open until now.  As of February 10^th, Everleaf Poker shut US players out of their accounts.  We have no news on whether the players will get their money back or how accessing their accounts for withdrawals will be handled by the poker room.

Now, the Everleaf situation may not be a serious as the Full Tilt situation that has left American players out $300 million in money owed by Full Tilt.  But there are worrisome similarities. Everleaf’s problem stem from the fact that it was operating in Washington State, the one state with a law that specifically forbids online poker.  As a result, legal authorities in the state have seized funds from one of the poker room’s payment processors. This has happened to other poker rooms operating in Washington State. Generally, the payment processor agrees to forfeit funds and withdraws from the state and the poker room continues elsewhere. So, we may see Everleaf able to pay back US players after the legal issues are settled with Washington, however, it’s unlikely right now that they’ll be reopening for business in the US. At least not without some proper guidelines and licensing in place to guarantee that their funds will be safe from official seizures.

Players of the poker room will be following the news to find out what happens next.  For those who want to play online poker in the US, we’re currently recommending Bovada Poker and keeping an eye on the current legislative changes that may open the online poker market.

This may be the most common thing that gamblers do wrong. In fact, casinos almost depend on you to do this — chasing that win. Also known as throwing good money after bad.  Or how about “stop while you’re ahead.” Only in this case, it’s usually “stop before you’re even more behind.”

Here’s how it works, you’re playing a game at the casino, let’s say slots. At some point, you win a little money. Oh, not the jackpot or anything, but just enough to think “hey, I can make money off this game.”  The casino wants you to think that. Now, what you don’t say is “oh, look, I’m up $5, I think I’ll cash out and go home.”  I know you don’t say that because even I don’t say that, and I’m a fairly conservative player.  Nah, $5 isn’t enough. We want more.  The casino wants us to want more, that’s why they keep showing us big jackpot numbers.

So, we play some more. And then we’re down $5. And soon even more than that.  So now we’ve gone from “nah, I haven’t won enough yet” to trying to win back what we’ve lost. This is the first step in chasing the win.  Now to a certain extent, you’re always chasing a win in a casino. That’s why we gamble — to win. But here’s where the problem comes in. Say you set a $100 limit for your bankroll when you started playing.  This means when you lose all that money, you stop playing. Simple concept. If you deplete your bankroll, you stop.

But in the course of playing the game, you’ve been up in the money a few times and you know that you could potentially win back that $100 you just lost.  So, it wouldn’t really be like violating the rule of stopping when you lose the bankroll because you’re going to pay the bankroll back.  All you need is to get another $50 to play on… Opps, lost that too, didn’t you?   That’s what happens when you chase the win.

If you find that you chase the win or have trouble maintaining your bankroll limits, please contact www.gamblersanonymous.org. That’s why they’re there.

The US Department of Justice made a decision just before Christmas that the 1961 Wire Act doesn’t apply to online gambling but only to sports betting. So, what does this change of view about a 50 year old wire act change? Everything. Wait, but what about the UIGEA or Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Isn’t that the one we have to change or get rid of?  Well, not if the DOJ just pulled all teeth out of that puppy.

See, the UIGEA doesn’t actually make online gambling illegal. What it says is that where internet gambling is unlawful, the law needs to be enforced. And even then, it focuses on the financial transactions rather than the actual act of playing slots or craps.  So, what made online gambling illegal?  Well, it turns out that perhaps we really don’t have a federal law to do that. See, everything seems to have rested on the 1961 Wire Act which was designed to control sports betting and wiring funds for sports betting. For that to work, you had to consider wiring funds to bet on a football team to be like using a Visa card to make a deposit and play slots.

Wait, they aren’t alike? At least that’s the conclusion the Department of Justice came to. The Wire Act applies to sports. So we don’t seem to have a law for online gambling. Which makes this the perfect opportunity for the states to pass their own online gambling laws. Where will we see them act first? Probably online state lotteries. California has already announced it will look to put that state’s lottery online before it tackles online poker or other efforts.

If you’re a poker player, Google wants you.  Actually, I suspect they just want someone, anyone, to actually use Google+. If you’re like me, you probably have a Google+ account but find that the activity on it just doesn’t measure up to the activity on Facebook. People default to Facebook for social media in the same way that they default to Google instead of Bing for searching. We work with what we’re familiar with even if something else might be better. I don’t even like Facebook. Oh, I like being able to keep up with friends and even coworkers from previous jobs since I don’t see them regularly, but I don’t like the big brother organization behind Facebook.  Would Google be better?

Well, they’re teaming up with bwin.party to find out if they can make some headway into that Facebook market and they plan to do it with online poker. Not poker for real money, at least not yet. But Google seems to have noticed the popularity of Zynga games over on Facebook. Now, many people may be familiar with Zynga as the creators of Farmville, a game that challenges you to plant and harvest virtual crops to move up levels that allow you to plant and harvest even more virtual crops. But Zynga also runs an extremely popular Texas Hold’em game for poker fans. In the US, the Zynga poker game is for virtual coins only, and that’s what Google and bwin.party will be doing with their Aces Hangout Texas Hold’em room.

Will Texas Hold’em lure more players to Google? It just might work. My experience on Facebook leads me to believe it’s not an ingrained pattern for gamblers and that given a better playing environment, those folks could easily defect to a better run poker game. And bwin.party being a real gambling operation just might be able to provide that. I’m hoping they expand their gambling offerings to include games like free online blackjack.

Wecome to online-casinos.vg! This is a haven from the world for online casino players where we’ll help you find the best casinos to play at and discuss what’s happening in the online casino world on a regular basis. In this blog I’ll try to bring you news of interest or information about new bonuses. Or I may just chat about subjects that are of interest to me when it comes to gambling. The blog will be a little less structured than the site because I don’t know what interesting tidbit will come up each week.

Some of you may be new to the idea of playing at an online casino and the thought of gambling online may worry you.  So perhaps the first thing I should do is provide an introduction to online casinos. Now, despite what you may have heard, the world of online casinos is not a completely unregulated Wild West show of sites with no regulations or control. The top online casinos have very strict licensing authorities and regulations in place as well as procedures for dealing with disputes that make sure that the player is treated fairly. The trick for the player is to find these casinos. Now, we’ve made it easy for you by listing the top casinos on the front of our website.

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