By Samantha Williams

One thing you are not going to get when you walk through the doors of a live casino – is a bunch of free chips, thrust into your sticky little, spend-thrifty paws. Play at no deposit casinos online and they can’t give you enough free chips, and we are not talking about the deep-fried kind, the sort that comes with battered fish! We are talking casino chips here and these are worth real money. Virtually every virtual casino hands a certain amount to every new member, as they take their first tentative steps through the doors.

For example, 888casino.com; they are one of the best no deposit casinos. They let you try before you buy, but not every online casino does this. What all other sites do, do however, is, give you free casino chips when you make a first deposit. There are definitely industry standards when it comes to handing out free chips. The absolute minimum is 100% and this is on varying amounts. There is a pattern we see which generally works hand-in-hand with brand faith, and the biggest brands never hand out the biggest bonuses. There is a very good reason for this, and it pays for the online casino player to catch onto the reason early.

Here is the thing about giving free bonuses at online casinos – they offer these as incentives, and every incentive comes at a price. In the case of bonuses, the price is wagering requirements. Wagering requirements are a multiple of the first deposit plus the bonus. This is the very reason why the best brands keep bonuses low. It enables the player to take advantage of the offer without getting their knickers in a knot. One can understand why a players knickers would get in a knot, when they aren’t able to make a withdrawal or cash in their bonuses until they have spent a million pounds/dollars first. OK, so, maybe not a million, but we are talking big bucks.

Look at this for an example – a casino offers a small bonus of up to maximum of £50 in a 100% cash match to welcome the new member. Their wagering requirements are 20 x deposit + bonus to clear funds/winnings from the account in the case of a withdrawal. This means if the player deposits £50 and receives a £50 bonus, they have to wager a total of £50 + £50 = £100 x 20 = £2 000 to clear their funds. When we look at it from this point of view, those free chips might start to lose their free appeal.

It is for this reason we always maintain, that when it comes to making first deposits at online casinos, biggest is never best. To coin a phrase – if it looks too good to be true – it very definitely generally is. We have seen anything like up to 50 or even 100 x wagering requirements on maximum deposits of anything up to thousands of pound/dollars. With numbers like this – we are talking really big bucks!

By Samantha Williams

In 2006, the United States Government passed a law we now call UIGEA. This is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act, and short of actually making online gambling in this country clearly illegal, it totally confuses matters. The Act is tagged onto an obscure Wire Act – dated 1961? – which is relevant to the transfer of funds over the airwaves or something. It essentially makes things really difficult regarding credit card payments and also e-wallet transactions.

Financial institutions are penalized severely for allowing online gambling transactions to take place. Then a swoop on the four major US online poker sites took place on the 15th April 2011, this was the ultimate death knell for most online gambling in the US. There are very few site who wish to go to the trouble to offer games to US players any longer, and even BODOG has pulled out of the US industry as of the end of this year.

Any US online casinos still left operating are taking a very big chance – who knows when they might not also have their domains seized. It is drastically unfair, against World free trade principles, and completely paradoxical that the United States of America considers itself to be a government whose people are living in “the land of the free”. To all intents and purposes online gambling laws in this country are to protect people from themselves, or to be completely brutal – from their own stupidity. Honestly it is all just about money, and about this government wanting ‘total’ control.

Back in the 1930′s Ayn Rand said “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force”, and UIGEA is only one example of this type of control.

While the rest of the civilized world has realized online gambling is here to stay, the US Government is being manipulated by money, or should I say – their lack of ability to manipulate this industry’s money. But let me get off my soap box.

Suffice it to say that US online casinos don’t have it good as far as free trade is concerned. Online payment processing companies are struggling to find more loop-holes and the DoJ is closing in on all big operators. Any US player wanting to gamble online is then also now taking a risk. When a mainstream industry is made illegal in this way, there are always bootleggers out there trying to make a fast buck. This means no regulation, and no recourse for any US online gamer who is willing to take even more of a risk. Sadly even online casino listings which promote US sites, are – in good conscience – dropping long-time clients as fast as hot-cakes. Essentially folks, if you gamble online in the US, you are taking a really big chance.