Do Online Casinos Have Player’s Clubs?

Just about every casino that you go to locally or on a trip to places like Las Vegas or Atlantic City has a player’s or VIP club of some sort. You usually earn points and / or comps for all of your play. This is an excellent marketing vehicle for the casinos because they track your play and can offer special perks in order to get you to play more. They see who their biggest players are and try to figure out how to get them to visit more often. Many online casinos also have these types of clubs, but they are not as widespread as they are in land based casinos. Some online casinos that have them automatically put all of their players in the club but at many of them you have to request membership. The best thing to do is see if the online casino where you are going to play has a club and find out how to sign up before making a deposit. If you don’t see any information, contact the support team at the casino. Are Online Casinos Legal? This is the question that seems to get the most attention from new players. I believe this is because of many of the inaccuracies and outright lies that get spread around by the press. Of course there are places in the world where online gambling is illegal, but most of the places where the popular media says it is actually don’t have specific laws against online gambling. The United States is a perfect example. You’ll often find information that says online gambling is illegal in the United States. The fact is that there is no federal law against online gambling. There is a federal law dealing with banking institutions transferring money to and from online gambling establishments, but that law doesn’t even bother defining what online gambling is. The real answer to the question is too involved to answer on a single page. Plus the laws do change, which would make a page including laws around the world inaccurate soon after it was published. Of course you are responsible for figuring out if you can play online legally so you should research the specific laws where you live. WHAT YOU NEED TO LOOK OUT FOR: If anyone in your country has actually been charged or sentenced for gambling online Using the United States as an example again, I am not aware of anyone who has been charged with a crime for gambling online. There have been a few people charged with taking bets on the phone, but there is a specific law against that and it has nothing to do with playing at an online casino. LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I’m not a legal expert and you can’t use any of this information as legal advice, but I feel safe playing online as long as no one has been charged with a crime for doing so in my country. Can I Count Cards at Online Blackjack? Most blackjack players have at least heard that it is possible to get an edge against the casino if you learn how to count cards. Of course learning how to count cards takes a great deal of work, so most players don’t even try to do it. But then they find out about playing blackjack online and realize it would be much easier to count while playing online or even find a program that would do it for them. While it’s been mathematically proven that you can gain an advantage against the house by counting cards and varying the size of your wagers in live blackjack play, it won’t do you any good to count while playing online. The cards are basically shuffled after every hand by the online software. In live play the casino doesn’t shuffle after every hand because it takes too much time, but in the online game it happens instantly so there are no lost hands. As a side note, there are some land based casinos that are now using continuous shuffle machines for their blackjack games, but it still isn’t a widespread practice.