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So what’s the new site and most of all, is it really legal in Canada? The answer to those questions: www.playnow.com and YES, it is indeed legal for Canadian citizens to enjoy casino games at this site. Caveat Emptor: This is the ONLY site sanctioned by the Canadian government. All other internet casinos, poker rooms, and sportsbooks located elsewhere are still illegal. Deposit options are currently limited, with only Mastercard and Visa being accepted. All the same, this is a momentous step for people in North America who have long patronized online casinos, hoping that eventually either the USA or Canada would legalize online gaming for good. One’s in the bag, and now it’s up to the USA to deliberate more closely about online casinos, sportsbooks, and poker rooms.

With www.playnow.com in action, a few other issues have come to light, especially with respect to social responsibility and gambling. Some opponents cite studies which concluded that online gaming is more addictive than offline gaming, with 10% of players online getting hooked, versus 5% offline in real casinos. It should be noted, however, that this study is older and not necessarily current. Additionally, it was conducted in the UK, which has traditionally had much more open laws in terms of online gaming. The prudent thing for Canada would be to commission its own study, running parallel to the operation of the new online casino.

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Another complaint is that a government sanctioned operation might lull customers into trusting the casino “too much”. In essence, players might feel more comfortable about blowing through their credit card limits knowing that the casino is supported by law, opposed to offshore casinos which typically peg first time casino players to a low velocity limit, in order to keep their credit card processors functioning.

The formal opening of www.playnow.com also came with new higher limit action, allowing players to deposit up to $9,999 a week, an enormous increase above what was initially proposed. Although the average Canadian may not have this kind of money on hand, higher limits do suggest that all but the most well off could easily stretch their credit limits in one week of compulsive gambling. As a result, the government may have to adopt procedures similar to offshore operations to make sure people play responsibly.

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Does this mean offshore operations will go out of business? Well, suffice to say, while there are probably a large number of players lining up to play at www.playnow.com, there are probably an equal or greater number who will continue to patronize existing online casinos. The Canadian government is completely new to online gambling, and it lacks the experience, customer retention programs, and bonus incentives thrown at players by offshore gaming shops. Therefore, the most likely scenario will be a new healthy competition between legal and illegal online casinos, with the legal casinos slowly attracting larger player numbers should the government decide to clamp down on “out-of-town” internet gaming.

Ultimately, Canada concludes that responsible gaming starts with the individual player. The new casino website has plenty of links to problem gambling resources, making it clear that the government wants to operate a fair, transparent, and most importantly safe operation for its citizens. This is essentially a new “tax”, on top of any existing income and sales taxes collected by government. Therefore, the government must be sure to cover its rear end, so that levying new taxes vis a vi online gaming doesn’t take advantage of people.

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The weather has also entombed those with adequate AC inside their houses, and left many at a loss for what to do with their time. One can only watch so many hours of daytime TV before the experience gets stale. That means it’s time to hit the computer and kill time at an online casino without having to leave the comforts of a chilled home.

Traditionally, the summer months in the USA are actually very quiet in terms of online gambling. School is out, people go on vacation, and the warm sunshine beckons many to go outside and enjoy fresh air. What’s more, the NFL, NBA, and NHL are officially out of season. As a result, many online casinos and sportsbooks see a sharp decline in visitors. This time period is known throughout the industry as the “quiet season”. Throw the UIGEA into the mix, and many online casinos are finding it hard to get people through the door, let alone deposit money and play for real cash.

Not anymore. It seems mother nature and global warming have collided to produce something like a an “opposite summer” where people stay in because walking around outside would result in dramatic fluid loss and potentially heatstroke. So now, just for a little while, online casinos are getting a little more action from those that would otherwise be outside.

What are the best online casino sites for cooling down during this hot spell? We’re glad you asked, because that’s a question Jaxcasinos.com can answer quite easily.

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Rushmore Casino was Jaxcasinos.com’s top casino for 2009, and they continue to impress us to this day. Featuring a fantastic selection of RTG casino games, Rushmore teams excellent customer service and carefree deposit options together to provide one of the best online gaming experiences the web has to offer. Top games at Rushmore include blackjack, craps, roulette, and slots. There’s always some thing to do at this website, plus unbeatable summer deposit bonus offers!

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Stay out of the heat and enjoy casino games at Win Palace Casino, a solid RTG online casino that has a strong reputation with high rollers. Win Palace welcomes all USA players and others from around the world, providing a multi-lingual website in 5 different languages. Player favorites include progressive slots, baccarat, and video poker. Better yet, Win Palace has great deposit bonus offers, all of which are geared towards the serious online gambling aficionado. What do you have to lose? Play at Win Palace now!

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Want to get rich? Don’t want to go outside and mow the lawn in this steamy weather? That’s understandable: time to play casino games at Rich Casino, one of the flagship brands of the Top Game software brand. Although Rich Casino’s game selection is slightly smaller than the average RTG casino, you’ll still find a wealth of speedy casino games at your fingertips. Gone are the days of slow graphics and excessive game load times. If there’s one thing Top Game is good at, it’s providing a fast, action packed gaming experience that doesn’t waste your time. Stop by Rich Casino today.

That’s it for now. Stay out of the heat and drink plenty of water. Take care of any physically demanding tasks in the morning and evening hours, when the sun isn’t as strong as midday. One final tidbit: the record temperature in New York City for the past 10 years was 101, set in 2001. Just yesterday, that record was shattered, with the mercury rising to 103 degrees. Take it easy and take a rain check on the beach for a couple days. Instead, have some indoor, cool weather fun at online casinos.

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Has UIGEA actually stemmed the flow of USA players flocking to online casinos? In our opinion, it has slightly affected traffic, but not to the extent lawmakers intended. There are still many offshore credit card processing agencies that can sneak transactions through, and the minute one goes down there is almost always another that pops up in its place. For the most part, it’s business as usual for online casinos, even with the beginning of summer in the USA, a time that usually means slower business.

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So who is actually in the USA online casinos market still? The major software providers with multiple casinos cater to the USA include Real Time Gaming, Top Game, Rival Gaming, and Vegas Technologies. There are also a few smaller proprietary gaming software companies that operate on a much smaller scale, with no more than one or two casino brands. For the most part, USA law enforcement tolerates these companies, hoping that financial pressures from the UIGEA and banks will eventually put them out of business.

If you’re from Europe, however, things are still the status quo. Big name software provider Microgaming is still the top dog in the show, offering well over 100 casino games. Additionally, many Microgaming casinos accept a wide variety of European banking alternatives, in addition to standard credit card and bank transfer transactions. Companies like Microgaming have successfully reinvented themselves in Europe, after formally leaving the USA market a few years ago - that is, until now.

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Earlier this month, Jaxcasinos.com received email from two major Microgaming operations, Belle Rock Gaming and Casino Rewards, ostensibly announcing the re-entry of Microgaming into the USA facing online casino market, through what was described as a “different platform with equivalent games to the standard Microgaming software offerings”. Many of the finer details are still in the works, including whether or not players who had accounts before Microgaming’s exodus from the USA will be moved over and re-opened. Also, this potentially has a big impact on long standing online casinos affiliates that had USA players blocked from their affiliate stats: now, these dormant player accounts might once again produce income for affiliates that have stuck it out over the past five years.

Essentially, Microgaming’s USA “clone” (as we call it) is creeping in through the back door, hoping to partake in the lucrative USA online gaming market; while not necessarily operating under their prestigious brand name that remains highly regarded and most importantly fully legal in Europe. The actual name of this cloned platform is not officially known at this time, although a few industry insiders have been advised that it is due to launch “very soon”.

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What does this mean for USA casino customers and other USA facing online casinos? Well, they’ve got some new, serious competition for business. Microgaming is easily the world’s gold standard for gaming software, offering enormous progressive slots jackpots, a plethora of table games, and tons of other amusements that most smaller software brands can not afford to maintain. Furthermore, both casino players and affiliate webmasters trust Microgaming infinitely, holding the company in high regard. Payout percentages are closely monitored by third party auditing firms, and individual casino brands are fully vetted and constantly monitored by Microgaming in order to keep a high level of quality and integrity. In other words, players are treated very well and don’t get gypped, while affiliate webmasters can count on regular payments and outstanding support services.

So do the other USA software brands stand a chance? Yes, at least for now. There’s one other 900 lb gorilla lurking in the room, and that’s land based casino companies chomping at the bit to get involved in USA online gaming. It’s well known that Harrah’s, the world’s largest casino group, is all but ready to begin providing customers with online casino gaming alternatives and poker, and is simply waiting for the UIGEA to be repealed along with other regulatory measures. Even though Microgaming and its USA “cloned” platform would represent a huge market share, there’s almost no doubt that high rolling companies like Harrah’s could destroy some gaming software companies overnight, storming into the USA market with billion dollar marketing budgets, top class software, and the trust of millions of players.

What remains to be seen is how Microgaming will negotiate the UIGEA and launch its new platform at the same time. Will they once again provide USA customers with the BEST online gaming experience, much like they did before 2005? The answer is likely a strong “YES”, and that means other companies better watch out even if USA law still remains prohibitive to offshore online casino companies.

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Click Here for WikiPedia’s “Online Casino” page, which currently ranks in Google’s top 10 results for keyword “online casinos”.

Once in a while, however, you might see an oddball search result, such as a Wikipedia entry for “online casino” or “blackjack”. These results don’t really help the avid gambler, since Wikipedia.org tends to serve as a reference guide for various subjects, opposed to an actual casino review site. As a result, when you’re searching for the perfect place to play roulette, your search results might have a couple Wikipedia entries for “roulette history” or even “types of roulette”. Such results are certainly informative, but are generally very out of place.

So, why does Wikipedia.org show up in the first place?

Search engines rely heavily on the reputation of a website when they score it for use in search results. Additionally, search engines like Google tend to score websites that have links from authoritative websites higher than sites that do not. A final factor to consider is the relative “competitiveness” of the search results, ie. how many other sites are competing to get placed under a certain keyword; and the value of being placed on page one. If you can place a website on Google’s first page for a major gambling related search like “online casino”, you stand to make a lot of money. The allure of quick cash and internet riches draws nearly any competent (or incompetent) web marketer in to create a website, if not hundreds, in order to harness the power of gambling web traffic.

Wikipedia is highly regarded by Google as a vast repository of information. Many consider Wikipedia equivalent to the multi-volume printed encyclopedias that families used to keep in their libraries before the dawn of the internet. Therefore, any given Wikipedia page is generally filled with useful information, and has links from hundreds (if not thousands) of websites citing it as a reference. It’s easy to see that such pages garner more trust and higher search scores than smaller websites that either have unreliable information, or engage in shadowy search engine marketing tactics. Google inherently trusts Wikipedia more than any other website, and this means that Wikipedia pages will land in all sorts of search results, whether or not they are relevant to the actual web user’s needs.

Another factor to consider is search engine spam. As a general rule, higher profit margin industries attract a higher volume of search engine spammers, and the online gambling vertical is no exception to this rule. Quite often, sketchy marketing companies will abuse guestbooks, blogs, and web forums as sources of links in order to get their website placed highly in Google results. Two things result from this phenomenon: 1) The website that engages in illicit marketing practices eventually gets banned (removed) from Google, and 2) Webmasters who are the victims of search engine spam get mad.

What does this madness produce? Aside from the usual hue and cry at major online marketing websites, individual webmasters look to get even with the spammers that gummed up their sites. This leads us to another way in which Wikipedia captures higher search scores for gaming related searches: disgruntled webmasters, bloggers, or forum owners will link to a gambling oriented Wikipedia entry out of spite in order to push regular online casino sites off the first page of Google’s results. The theory is simple: post enough links to “neutral” gaming pages that do not produce revenue for their owners, and eventually these pages will make their way up the ranks and land in the top 10 for major gambling related searches. Then, instead of seeing casino review sites, you get useless Wikipedia pages bolstered by pissed off webmasters that were the victims of spam attacks.

So, the next time you do a very general Google search for online gambling, such as “online casino”, “play blackjack”, or “sports betting”, scan through the results carefully, because you will almost certainly see a Wikipedia page listed. Google makes no apologies for posting Wikipedia pages higher than even the most reputable of casino review sites, simply because outside of gaming, Wikipedia, as a whole, is much more valuable to the internet than some johnny-come-lately casino review website.

Our advice: just ignore the Wikipedia page (unless you’re searching for reference information), and visit www.jaxcasinos.com for the best online casinos the web has to offer!

According to a British firm, H2 Gambling Capital, legalized online gambling could create up to 32,000 jobs, plus an estimated $57.5 Billion in additional tax revenues over a 5 year period. No, we didn’t make a typo: that’s $57.5 billion in cold hard cash that is desperately needed by the USA government, already troubled with a staggering budget deficit. For more on the H2 Gambling Capital Article - Click Here.

In fact, online gaming does have a few friends in high places. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and Chair of the House Banking Committee, is currently one of the most outspoken proponents of legalized online gambling. His bill, HR2267, is an attempt to craft new legislation that would literally open the floodgates in terms of new jobs and high technology industry. Meanwhile, fellow congressman Jim McDermott is putting together a complementary bill that would allow the government to tax online gaming, thereby creating the $50 billion or so in new income estimated by the H2 Capital Group.

The question is, what kind of coalition would be needed in order to get such legislation moving, and most importantly, ultimately made into law? From our perspective, the most important constituency for a push towards legalized gambling would be President Obama and other Executive Branch officials. Per the Constitution, the President must sign any and all new legislation into law, and it stands to reason that starting with Obama and working backwards towards the legislative arm of the government might be the way to go. Once the Administration is on board, the real battleground would be in the Congress.

Many have been leaning on both the House and Senate financial committees for new ideas that could make the government money; and it stands to reason that members of these committees would be open to considering legalized online gaming. It’s likely that Frank could get the initial legislation written, through his committee, and onto the floor of the House without too many issues. Once out of committee, however, Frank and other leaders would have to make a lot of phone calls to get fellow Democrats on board, not to mention a few moderate Republicans who are pro-business, but also pro-Federal government.

Given the current makeup of the Senate and House, it wouldn’t be hard to move online gambling legislation through. The devil is in the details, however, and the most important detail would be the timing of such legislation. If the Democrats have a rough time in November 2010 during the mid-term elections, pro online gambling groups might find it more difficult to get new lawmakers on board, especially if those new lawmakers are hard and fast Republicans, championing family values and laissez faire economic policies. Moreover, Frank would have to maintain his seat in the House and not get bounced out by a conservative backlash in Massachusetts, which isn’t a remote possibility given the fact that Republican Scott Brown landed Ted Kennedy’s old senate seat.

In sum total, it’s hard to turn away the thought of $57.5 Billion in new revenues. This money is sorely needed, to say the least. The trick would be garnering support from the public and President Obama, and making it a priority to pass new online gaming law as soon as possible. That means it would most certainly have to move up “The List” of possible new revenue streams in short order.

If and when HR2267 is passed, the online gaming industry would be a new Goliath, with the likes of many land based casino operations jumping into the market right away. As a result, offshore casinos would either have to adapt or die, since it would be tough for even the savviest of non-USA online gambling operations to compete against behemoths like Harrah’s, Wynn Resorts, or Foxwoods.

In the meantime, if you believe legalized online gaming is good idea, drop your Congressperson a line. Every little bit helps, and politicians almost ALWAYS want to do what their constituents want in order to get elected again.

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It’s a well known fact that Americans love to gamble online. Profits from USA based players soar into the billions of dollars each year, despite the fact that most government agencies regard online gambling in the USA as illegal. All the same, people still flock to online gambling sites, both sport and casino, regardless of murky USA law. As a result, many offshore gaming operations have built substantial businesses taking “somewhat” illegal bets from USA players. The gaming company owners dodge legal issues by forming shell companies, using offshore banking, or incorporating in places where online gaming is legal like Malta, Costa Rica, Cyprus, or Antigua.

What would happen if the USA legalized online gaming? Would taxing these offshore operations and/or regulating them encourage more people to gamble online? The short answer is “yes”. It stands to reason that there are many American gamblers who would love to begin gambling online, but have avoided doing so because of legality issues. A sudden influx of new “legal” USA online gamblers would almost certainly strengthen the internet gaming market, perhaps adding billions of dollars in additional annual revenues.

The long answer is a bit more complicated. There is a 900 pound gorilla lurking in the room, and that’s the land based casino industry. If the USA legalized online gaming, many top companies and businessmen like Steve Wynn, Harrah’s, the Kerzner company, and a host of others would pounce on the opportunity to break into a fresh market. Any backlash from such a development would land squarely on offshore gaming companies that can’t afford to compete with big land based gaming companies. In effect, legalizing USA online gambling would almost certainly squeeze out “Mom and Pop” offshore online gambling businesses, leaving only those that have substantial budgets and customer bases.

This might actually be a good thing if you look at the big picture. USA customers would feel much more comfortable gambling at websites created by well established USA gaming companies; and any bad apples in the offshore gaming bunch would disappear. Further, players could enjoy some new levels of certainty in terms of payment processing, customer service, and payouts. Instead of waiting 2 weeks for a jackpot payout from an offshore gaming operation, land based casino companies sporting new websites could pay players almost immediately. Slowly but surely, the reservoir of eager gamblers that once fed offshore gaming enterprise would dry out in favor of USA companies whose reputation and legality are not a matter of question.

To take it a step further, the government would make more money, there would be new employment opportunities, and players that were once vulnerable to shady offshore gaming operators would have some legal protection under any sort of new online gaming legislation. The industry itself would lose its current “Wild West” identity and slowly move towards a stable corporate image. It’s a virtual Win-Win for all parties, except for offshore gaming companies that are too small, too crooked, or unwilling to hand over taxes to the USA government.

So if online casinos and sportsbooks were legalized in the USA, would you start/continue placing bets online? The answer, yet again, is a near certain “yes”. In reality, no one in the USA cares about some sketchy casino operation somewhere in the Caribbean dying. Gamblers will always find a way to gamble. Most importantly, a favorable legal climate that opens the door to land based gaming operations would only have a few insignificant casualties: offshore casino/sportsbook operations that can’t make the grade. For once, it might be truly “safe” to gamble online, and that would be a good thing for almost everyone.

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