Monday, August 6, 2007

Online Casino Merchant Accounts for Legit Poker Rooms

Online casinos, unlike Bellagio and Caesar's Palace, need to acquire casino merchant accounts offshore. Why? Because they will find it difficult to operate and handle all those credit card transactions without the help of a reliable payment gateway. Bellagio employs thousands of workers while an online casino may be manned only by a few staff. As long as it has an efficient high risk credit card processing infrastructure, it can easily match the profit that land based casinos like Bellagio can make. Not including the profit on hotel and attractions, of course.

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Josh played poker last night and won a few hundred bucks. For some reason, some so-called high rollers gave him a big break, thinking he was some poker noob. But although he only played the game for fun and extra money, he'd been in loved with Texas Holdem for years. He would bring me to small tournaments where he finds them. Yes, even in the towns I barely know. He's been going to Vegas and has enjoyed playing table games even before we met. He also couldn't count the number of encounters he had with some famous players, and some pretty Vietnamese card sharks.

I wasn't completely convinced that poker is better than Black Jack till I learned to play it myself. I was amazed at Black Jack when I read about the MIT guys. Card counting, shuffle tracking, and all kinds of legal "cheating" -- name it and they've done it. In poker, I guess you can only bring your wife, let her sit next to you, then teach her the art of distracting your opponents. You can do nothing of these when playing poker online, obviously. My fiance and I used to waste hundreds of dollars punching video poker buttons on slot machines on landbased casinos. Now, if he had more time in his hand, he would play poker at online cardrooms too.


Bellagio vs. Online Casinos

So despite the insanity going on about online poker these days, we still preferred going to Bellagio several times a year. The place is obviously more fantastic than what you see on the computer screen. Moreover, it is being owned and operated by MGM. The fact that you don't have to deal with credit card payments can be such a relief. Playing online subjects you to possible fraud and credit card hacking. You also never know if you're playing in a legit online casino that lets you cash out your chips as you win. The funny thing about this situation is that online casinos suspect players to be cheating using bots and conspiratorial playing. Online poker players, on the other hand, suspect that online casinos won't pay their winnings and charge them (players) of cheating even if they won their hands clean.


more: Casino Merchant Accounts

Do Poker Rooms Need a Casino Merchant Account?

A casino merchant account can be easily obtained for most start up online casinos and poker rooms. You can explore the possibilities explained in the article "Insider Tricks to Successful Merchant Application". Because it is start up, there is no history of fraud or chargebacks that might have been incurred. And because it is handled in an offshore territory, there are lots of advantages on taxation rules and flexibility on banking choices. An online casino that doesn't have a high risk merchant account offshore will eventually apply for one as soon as it starts transacting high volume payments.

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