Gambling Rules—Transparency is Better Online!
So is it necessarily true that the casino with the ‘best gambling rules’ necessarily gives the best payout to the itinerant gambler? Not necessarily. One has to understand a good deal of the esoteric rules of gambling in order to know whether or not one is getting a good deal in comparison to others. Let’s take an example: with blackjack there are lots of rules, which can have a subtle or not so subtle effect on the overall odds of the game for the players and for the casino. How many decks do they use? Must the house hit on a 16 but stick on a seventeen? Must the house split eights? Each of these fairly innocuous-sounding rules can make a big difference on one’s odds. If one doesn’t like the rules in the ‘real’ world, what can he or she do? Unless the gamer is in Las Vegas, there are few choices, few other casinos nearby that can offer better rules.
The online gambling rules are much more transparent, because the online gambling universe is a good deal more competitive. Let’s say that you want to play blackjack online right now—you have a choice of hundreds of sites! If one of those sites tries to put in place gambling rules that are out-of-market, the others will pounce on them and they’ll lose business. Gambling online rules are therefore fairly standard and well understood amongst the competitors and the players. If they weren’t that way, the online casinos would quickly lose credibility and customers. Gambling rules are therefore a good deal more transparent amongst the online casinos than in the real world.
What is the main contributor to this better transparency? Competition is certainly the biggest contributor—and not just for gambling. Witness the tools that are used for online auctions, such as those at eBay or Amazon—they are scrupulously honest because they know that the blogsphere will shoot them down if they’re not playing fair.
