New Jersey Legalizes Online Gambling

schwit1 writes "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill Tuesday legalizing Internet gambling. While the bill only allows Atlantic City casino companies to take online bets, the WSJ believes that those casinos will partner with overseas companies that provide services for online gambling, potentially opening up a bigger market. Furthermore, the bill (PDF) will allow bettors from other states to gamble online, so long as regulators determine that the activity isn't prohibited by any federal or state laws. They included setting a 10-year trial period for online betting, and raising the taxes on the Atlantic City casinos' online winnings from 10 to 15 percent. New Jersey became the third state in the nation to legalize gambling over the Internet. Nevada and Delaware have passed laws legalizing Internet betting, which also is going on offshore, untaxed and unregulated."

Comments

remember sim city?

[crutchy]

in sim city (i think 2000 or something) enacting the "legalize gambling" ordinance was usually a sign that you were running out of money

Re:remember sim city?

[Chrisq]

It ain't gambling unless the odds of winning or losing and equal

From the point of view of the UK gambling commission your definition is completely the wrong way round. Things like workplace sweepstakes and lotteries can be run without registering as gambling as long asall the money collected is paid out in prises, i.e. the organiser cannot make a profit.

Re:remember sim city?

[Anonymous Coward]

This definition is so bad that I am compelled to respond.

What you've described is a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is where each participant expects neither to win nor to lose in the long run, effectively making the game pointless to play from a monetary perspective. An example of such a game would be tossing a fair coin where you win and lose the same amount when your side either comes up or doesn't.

What you've said, therefore, is that gambling only occurs in games where nobody wins or loses anything. Think about how absurd that sounds for just a moment. Open up street view and check out Vegas if you like, and tell me where all the money for those huge casinos came from - certainly not from zero-sum games. By your definition then, gambling never happens in a casino.

I think you were trying to say "games in which the casino has a vested interest in the outcome are stacked in the casino's favor and so shouldn't be considered gambling but simply losing", but in a really clever way that makes it sound as though you have some deep insight nobody else has. Unfortunately, you've completely screwed it up.

You may have been referring to games such as Poker, which is a zero-sum game (if we count the rake as a player), and which the casino has no vested interest in the outcome, as "gambling". While Poker certainly is gambling, it is only zero-sum if we observe the game as a whole. Each individual player within the game will have their own expected values for playing - that is, from an individual player's perspective, the game will not be zero-sum. Each player is either a winning or losing player in each game they sit, and the "odds of winning" between each player are certainly not equal.

If nothing else, these gambling discussions ably demonstrate exactly why Vegas looks so shiny. Most people are convinced they understand how it works and most of them are wrong.

Re:I always thought online gambling was dumb...

[Bigby]

I agree. However, online gambling with Atlantic City will fall under a gaming regulation organization. That doesn't mean it will be a fair, as in free from fraud. But at least there are measures and penalties with teeth if there is fraud. There is a major disincentive for an Atlantic City casino to not monitor their own online gambling applications.

That said, I would never gamble online outside of results that are determined outside the computer...like sports betting. In a casino, I never gamble with machines. Even then, I am subject to potential fraud. But in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, I am not worried about fraud on table games. The game is in their favor and with the penalties of try to make it MORE in their favor are just not worth it to them.