Online gaming opened to the public at midnight. It seems like it’s only for NJ residents. I’m not sure how they enforce that but I think you need a driver’s license and other verification of residence.
This is probably great for the state and the casinos but I don’t know how it will be for people with gambling problems. For hard core gamblers it’s a non-issue. You can easily get an offshore account and connect through a VPN. Payments are charged to a credit card with no problem. But for less sophisticated gamblers, the ones who are also more likely to lose their shirts, I have to wonder how this will work out.
Its kind of strange how little fanfare there has been. Or really any kind of hype. Hell, I’m even “friends” with the Borgata on Facebook and there was barely any mention.
Seriously though, since in theory at least, this is only supposed to apply to NJ residents, there probably isn’t any reason for there to be any announcement on any national or international forums. But you’re right. It’s a little odd that there wouldn’t be any mention of it at all.
Plus it will be interesting to see just how easy or difficult it is to get around those resident-only restrictions. If I’m right about needing a NJ driver’s license or other id, just using a proxy server or something like that isn’t going to cut it unless you happen to know someone here and use their’s. And I assume that there will be some sort of penalty for people who let their ids be used fraudulently. I’ll try to keep an eye out for related stories.
I just signed up and they gave me $20 without needing to deposit anything, but when I tried to play some blackjack, I got a pop-up telling me they’re having technical issues validating my location and to try again later.
Cool. Thanks for the report. I just heard that they are having problems in some fringe areas like Cherry Hill, Hoboken and other areas close to the border.
Maybe later I’ll log off of my VPN and try to log on to one of the sites. I’m far enough away from NY and PA that it shouldn’t be an issue for me. The problem is that I really rely on my VPN for a lot of stuff and have it set up so that I can’t do much without it so it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Thanks. I was watching the financial news coverage of this yesterday and it looks like the projected revenues for the state will be between $400B and $500B for 2014. I don’t know what the tax rate is on casino profits but I have to imagine that this will be a huge payday for them.
They also mentioned that what makes NJ an especially attractive state for this is the fact that it has a population about 5 times that of Nevada I think. The importance of that is for online poker. Since you need other people in order organize games, a large pool of potential players means more action and more revenue. And even if you only have single digit participation from the population at large, that’s still a lot of people.
Another interesting point was the fact that the one thing you still CAN’T do is sports betting. I forget what the hangup there is but that’s been blocked in the courts for some reason. Christie is trying to get around that and they seem to be optimistic about a workaround but as yet you still can’t do it.
Its against federal law. NJ voted to legalize sports betting but the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 prohibits it at the federal level. There are exceptions for only a couple of states including Neveda and Delaware.
Thanks again. I did a search a found a news story that explains some of the background. Christie seems to be hoping to get that statute ruled unconstitutional.
It really is pretty absurd. I can easily bet on sports if I want to using any variety of offshore gambling sites so this really is stupid. It’s no different than online poker which is a multibillion dollar a year business. It seems like nothing more than a couple of states trying to protect their existing monopolies, which in fact they’ve already lost.
