Online Gambling legal or not?

The legal situation related to online gambling is murky at best. There are no federal laws explicitly banning activities like online casino games and online poker, although the Federal Wire Act does forbid betting on sports over any kind of telephone-like device. But state laws vary widely. Of course, it is illegal for a company not licensed in the USA to offer gambling to US citizens.

Most offshore online gambling companies just ignore this, assuming that they are too far away to face prosecution. Keep in mind that this means that the companies which are offering the games for real money are the ones breaking the law not the bettors. State laws vary, too. In some states, specific kinds of Internet gambling are explicitly illegal. For example, in the state of Washington, it’s a felony to play poker for money! As far as I know, no one has ever been charged or prosecuted there, though. In a few states, online casino gambling is explicitly legal and regulated. In those states, you have to play at a state-regulated online casino, and playing at a casino which isn’t licensed by the state could cause you to run afoul of the law, too. And in still other states, the laws prohibiting gambling are intentionally broad. They’ll often say something to the effect that using any device for gambling purposes that isn’t specifically mentioned in the laws of the state is illegal. This would presumably include a computer that’s connected to the Internet.

But for practical purposes in the United States, gambling online might as well be legal. Gamblers are almost never charged or prosecuted for placing wagers online. The only exceptions I know of are a couple of causes related to sports betting, and in both of those cases, it’s likely that the sports bettors were facilitating bets for other people. In other words, they were running their gambling like a business, which is always riskier than recreational gambling. The United States authorities seem to treat online gambling the way they do some other vice crimes like prostitution, for example. They focus their enforcement efforts on the business people who are providing the services to the customers rather than trying to arrest the customers themselves. Some other countries have far stricter laws related to online gambling. In the Middle East, it’s illegal to play chess in some countries. You can imagine how the laws of that country relate to blackjack played for money on the Internet. Other more enlightened countries enjoy unlimited access to almost any kind of legal online gambling that they want. England, for example, has a tightly controlled and active gambling industry. A sport betting is a traditional activity that’s promoted heavily there. You can hardly walk a block in London without seeing an advertisement

It means that it’s up to you to determine what level of risk you’re comfortable with. It’s also up to you to make an educated decision about whether or not it’s legal for you to gamble on the Internet from your jurisdiction. My advice is to obey the law where you live. But failing that, at least do some research into the laws and realize that online gambling carries legal risks minimal though they may be when compared to traditional brick and mortar gambling.!!