Stuff You Should Know - How Online Gambling Works

Episode Date: January 8, 2015

Pretty much immediately after the Internet was opened to the world online gambling sites sprang up. Over the last couple decades, U.S. law and online gambling have had an unusual and complicated relationship. Learn the ins and outs of this grey area. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough.

Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry for the third time and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Two ball starts. Yeah, really. Are you a gambler at all? No. I mean not really.

How can you ever? I would lose too much money. But you've like been to a casino and I'm a part of it. Sure. I've gambled before. I've realized pretty quickly that I'm a terrible gambler. Not like I'm an addict or anything like that, just like I never win. Losing money is not fun.

No. No. It isn't. I enjoy, I don't like Vegas at all as you know. But when I've had to go there, I do enjoy a little gaming. But I always just, I'm very disciplined, I set aside a certain amount of money. I'm basically like paying that to have a good time gambling. If I lose it all, then that's what I, because it is enjoyable, I enjoy it.

And I did a little sports gambling at one point in my life and got out of sort of a tight squeeze once and then I was like not doing that again. Did you have your thumbs broken or something? No. I just owed a lot of money going into NFL Sunday and I was like, I can't afford this. So I did something really stupid and I made. So the kidney. Two bets equal to that large amount of money.

Wow. One of them both and broke even and I was like, no more, no more. That was good that you weren't like, okay, I'm on a streak. Man, I was. Let's keep it going. That scared me straight. You know, for this episode, I did a little online gambling, you know, they let you try it out for free or whatever.

Oh, did you? Yeah. Nice. I was down 500 bucks in like four minutes. Well, when it's not, when it's fun money, then like not real money, it's easy to bet a lot. I was just betting like the normal amount. I just, I was playing a roulette called the greedy goblins.

Oh boy, you can. Fast. I would say it was at Bovada. Yeah. Have you heard of Bovada? No. It was the first one that came up when I put it online gambling, but it was a classy site. It was a classy simulated casino.

Pretty waitresses. I mean, well, there were pictures of people. Yeah, sure. You know, no one was actually moving except the 3D goblins. They try to simulate a casino as much as possible, right? A little bit. Like the background of the website was like felt, I think maybe. It was like that, but no, it seemed to be one of the nicer ones.

You could tell that the programmers like really put some thought into it, but the roulette or not the roulette, the slot I was playing. Did I say roulette first? Oh yeah. You're playing slots. I was playing a slot called greedy goblins and it was nice looking, but I lost very quickly. So I was like, forget this. I'm so glad I'm not addicted to online gambling because that would be really rough.

I'm sure. And actually, I mean, they say that online gambling is even possibly more addictive than regular gambling just because of its ubiquity and ease of accessibility. Like not only can you get on the computer at home, now the big push is mobile. Yeah. So you can gamble anytime, anywhere, and if you have a problem, big trouble. Yeah. That's super, super dangerous for some folks.

You can gamble in your warm up pants, in your shirt off, or your city jogger pants. I think some casinos in Vegas, you could do that probably. Maybe at like the golden nugget or one of the old ones where they're like, just give us your money, please. Yeah. We're hurting so bad. Or in all of Atlantic City. Sure.

So you want to talk about the history of online gambling, you know, it hasn't been around forever. No, it hasn't. Everything might be one of the oldest past times, but online gambling is comparatively new. Yeah. In the mid-1990s, Antigua and Barbuda, they passed a law called the Free Trade and Processing Act, which basically paved the way for some of these smaller Caribbean island nations

to get into the gambling business. Well, for that nation specifically. Yeah. To get into the online gambling business, specifically. They created, out of thin air, their own ability to create licenses for online casinos. Yeah. So they became the haven for online casinos. It's a pretty good idea.

It is. And especially considering that there was no such thing as online casinos yet. Like, that's some foresight right there. Yeah. Around the same time, a company called MicroGaming started the first kind of workable software for online gaming, and that came along at just the right time. And Canada, they started opening up some online casinos. And basically, all over the world, they started popping up, I think by 1997, there were more

than 200 online casinos and revenues in the late 90s of up to 830 million a year, which is chump change now. Sure. But back then, you'll notice we did not mention the United States, because there's a lot of legality issues up to today. Yeah. Virtually out of the gate, the United States is like, no, that's illegal. Completely ignore the fact that 40 plus states have state lotteries.

Sure. You can't gamble online. And actually, I read an article where Antigua sued or filed a complaint against the United States with the World Trade Organization. The WTO sided with Antigua. Oh, really? And they granted Antigua like $120 million worth of freedom to distribute American intellectual property without paying any royalties, because America closed down its population to Antigua's

online casinos. Right. And Antigua said, you guys are violating treaties we have. Interesting. The WTO actually sided with and levied sanctions against the U.S., sided with Antigua, levied sanctions against the U.S., which is mind boggling. Yeah. That probably doesn't happen a lot.

Yeah. In the early 2000s, you could all of a sudden, thanks to a company called Betfair, wage your peer-to-peer bets on sports. A lot of this early stuff was sports wagering. And then online poker, of course, in the late 90s really started to catch on in the late 90s and early 2000s, a company called PokerSpot and PartyPoker and PokerStars. They all have silly names. But they really hit on it big when they allowed you to qualify online for these real World

Series of Poker tournaments. Right. And one guy, Chris Moneymaker, actually won the World Series of Poker in 2003 after having qualified online. And then everyone was like, whoa, that's a big deal. Because I think he ended up having to pay in like 40 bucks to qualify for the World Series of Poker. Yeah.

And he didn't have to travel to Vegas or Atlantic City or wherever else. You can go to Gamble. Yeah. And that's the way it was going too. And everybody was really up on poker, especially PartyPoker and PokerStars. And the U.S. ended up cracking down on it. Which we'll talk about a little more in detail coming up soon. But let's talk about just online gambling and how it's different.

Because it seems, well, there's some pretty obvious distinctions. Sure. Like, one, do you have to travel to Atlantic City or Las Vegas or your local Indian reservation? Yeah. And sit there and gamble in person. That's, I mean, you might say, well, yes, obviously, if you're gambling online, you can do it at home. There's a big difference.

So a lot of nuances in between those two, that obvious difference between the two. Sure. One of them is you can play a lot faster without all the chit chat and all the decision making of the little old lady next to you at the blackjack table. Yeah. And I read an article with a guy named John Gugliano or Gagliano, I mean. He's a New Jersey professional poker player. Oh, John the Googs, Gugliano?

I think it was like Googs 33 or Gags 33, something like that, seriously. Anyway, he plays up to 1,000 hands an hour. Wow. He plays... Of what, blackjack? No, poker. Oh, poker. He's a pro poker player.

He plays maybe 100 hands an hour per table, and he plays up to about 10 tables at a time. I was about to say he's got to be playing more than one. Oh, yeah. So he's playing like 1,000 hands an hour, and he says in real life he can play maybe 25 tops if he's really working, and a lot of it is the chitchat, the dealer, and not being able to physically play 10 hands at a time. But see, that's the experience I enjoy about gambling, is being at the table and chitchatting and having a couple of free scotches.

It's like a good social fun, social like a craps table, a lot of fun to stand around. So yes, I think that's what makes Gags 33 a professional poker player, you know? Yeah. He's in it for the money. He doesn't care about all that stuff. And probably to win, too. So yeah, it's a lot quicker. You can win and lose money at the drop of a hat.

And like you said, they try to dress it up and make it look and feel like a real casino. Other than that, though, it's a lot of the same games, like pretty much any game you can play in a real casino you can find online from lotteries and Kino to roulette and all that stuff. So Avada had more than 150 different games. Really? Yeah. A lot of them were slots, but they did have all the regular stuff, too.

And tons of different poker. And then like you said, sports betting. And then there's a subsection of sports betting, entertainment betting, the way like you can bet on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the Oscars, apparently spelling bees. Yeah, sure. Competitive eating contests. Reality TV.

Yeah, I didn't get because reality TV is not actually like unscripted. Yeah. Like you could easily find out from a producer what happened on a show that was shot five months before. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. It's not like it's live, you know, or who's going to get the rose or whatever. Well, I think those episodes are live a lot of times. They've got to be.

Like the American Idol finale or the Survivor finale a lot of times, or Big Brother. But I just assume all those are extraordinarily rigged one way or another in that anybody connected well enough could find out and make some big money, which I would guess that the people laying odds, the bookers, no, the bookies, yeah, the bookies, they would know well enough to stay away from that kind of stuff because it could be rigged, but sports is never rigged. Is that where you're being facetious? Of course, sports is rigged a lot of times. Really?

Yeah. You kidding me? Boxing is like Mickey Rourke's boxing fight. No, boxing is notoriously historically fraught with boxers taking dives. Okay. I thought you meant like Monday Night Football or something like that. No, I mean, NFL is a pretty good track record, but most of the pro sports have had one major betting throwing game scandal in there at some point.

Yeah. I don't think it happens all the time, but yeah, like the Black Sox was baseball. Man, that was a good movie. Eight men out. Yeah, and I think, yeah, you'll hear about every once in a while like an NCAA basketball team will come out years later, be like, we threw all those games. Oh, yeah, didn't, who was it that played Billy Jean King, the man who played Billy Jean King?

Oh, Bobby Riggs. No. Who? Well, what guy was it? A tennis player? Yeah, very famous men's tennis player. I think it was Bobby Riggs. It wasn't Bobby Riggs.

Anyway, he came out within the last couple of years and said that he threw the match. Oh, please. Which is kind of like, it wasn't Jimmy Conner. Maybe it was Jimmy Conner. Safe face. Yeah, but like four decades later. Yeah. Which is weird.

Deathbed saving face. I think he's still walking around. So we're going to talk more about online gambling and gaming and the distinction between the two right after this. You know, Josh, back in the old days, let me tell you a story. If you wanted a website, you had to learn how to code, you had to learn how to design websites. You had to be really super smart until a very cool company called Squarespace came along.

That's right. They simplified things. They did. And Chuck, even better than simplifying things, they're now progressing even further. This has just rolled out the redesigned Squarespace 7 interface, and it makes the whole shebang even easier and even cooler. Yeah. They have a partnership now with Getty Images.

They have new templates. They have cover pages. They have an integration with Google Apps. It is really awesome. Beautiful designs. And you know how awesome their customer support is, 24-7. Right. They haven't done away with all the great stuff that made Squarespace great to begin with.

They kept it and expanded upon it. So you've got that 24-7 support via live chat and email, and at only $8 a month, you can get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for one year. That's right. They have responsive designs, too, man. Your website's going to scale and look great on any device. And if you want to make some money, they even offer commerce platforms. So you can have your own online store, basically.

And if you want to test it out, you can start with a trial with no credit card required. Start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code STUFF to get 10% off your first purchase. And when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure you use our offer code STUFF, and it will get you 10% off your first purchase. Plus, it'll show your support for us. That's right.

So thanks Squarespace for supporting stuff you should know, and thank you listeners for supporting Squarespace. Yep. Squarespace. Start here. Go anywhere. All right, so you mentioned that you tried it out for fun. Yeah.

And that is... Research. Yeah. That is one way, though, that they can get you hooked, you know, is to say that you don't have to pay any money. Did you have to do anything? Did you have to sign up? No.

No, there's a way you can download the Casino software, which seems like a really bad idea to me. Yeah. Like, do you want to download the software from a Russian site? No. I don't. But I will play it for free in my web browser, which is what I did. Was it really Russian software?

No, this was Latvian, but I imagine there's plenty of Russian casinos out there. Some of the other differences, though, besides being able to play for fun and get you hooked, is they will offer different odds a lot of times, sports-wise, than you can get in a real casino. So, the Grabster says that this isn't, oh, I'm sorry, you're saying that the odds are better. I'm just saying different, like, sports odds can be different. Right.

Usually, they're better for you, because the overhead's lower. Right. Because they don't have to, you know, pay as much money. Exactly. They don't have to give out the free scotches, because there's nobody to physically sit there and drink the scotch. Yeah. Buy your own scotch.

You're at home. At home. You get different odds, and then a lot of times, the games themselves will have different kinds of payouts that you can get in casinos, but you're also going to have to pay the Vig, as they call it, in order to get your money. And this is a whole different thing we have to talk about at some point, too, but you're going to be paying percentages, like, 10 to 15 percent sometimes, just to get your money. And that's not the same as in Vegas.

No, it's definitely not. And one of the reasons why you have to pay that, and that's on top of the Vig, like you said, right? That's just basically, that's like, okay, here, give us our house money, just for letting you play. And then here's your transaction fee. And then, yeah, but that's when you're trying to withdraw stuff from your online account. And the reason that they do this, and that the rates are so steep, is because they know

that you're an American player, and you're not supposed to be playing. Technically, that is correct. But historically, that has been very difficult to prosecute, because you're in your house playing a casino in Amsterdam online. So what are they going to do unless they're spying on people? Exactly. What are they going to do? Go after the operators of these online gaming sites that are located overseas?

Actually, yes. Yeah. That's exactly what they did, this article. Black Friday. Yeah, this article on how stuff works was written before Black Friday. So it almost, even though it's a grabster article, it's naive, because it was before this Black Friday happened on September 20, 2011, where the feds basically rated the top three and then some other ones, but definitely the top three online poker sites.

And shut them down. Yeah. Poker stars, full tilt poker, and absolute poker. And apparently there were a bunch of, some say, hinky allegations and arrests. Well, yeah, they used Interpol to go arrest the people in other countries for breaking U.S. law. And some U.S. That's as shady as a kid.

Yeah. A lot of U.S. lawmakers had big problems with that, even though they attached a bunch of other charges like money laundering and fraud, I'm sure there were some legit illegalities as well, but yeah, it was a pretty interesting sting operation to say the least. So there's this thing called the Wire Wager Act, I believe, from 1961. And it said you can't use any kind of communications device, basically, in the U.S. for betting. And the courts interpreted it in various ways as the Internet came along, and some courts decided like, yeah, this includes the Internet.

Other courts are like, no, this is too old and too vague to really include the Internet. So the feds were kind of like making noises about making prosecutions and stuff based on this. And when they kept running up against the fact that it was too old, they came up with a new law in 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act. And this one had teeth. The reason this one had teeth is because it didn't go after the online gambling people. They went after the third-party processors, the payment processors.

Yeah, and what good is gambling if you can't get your money when you're finished? So all of a sudden, Visa, PayPal, all the banks are like, wait, we could be prosecuted for processing this payment. So we're not going to do it, which left these online gambling sites basically just completely without Americans. Exactly. Because like you said, nobody who wants to gamble online wants to do it for nothing. Right.

That's the whole point, you know, is to try to win some money, right? So that was 2006. That's when Party Poker and Poker Stars and all those guys either shut down or they moved overseas. So those were actually American companies, but they moved to the Isle of Man, they moved to Ireland, and there was one in Costa Rica, full tilt, I think was in Costa Rica. And so the feds were like, okay, we did our job, everything's cool, and these guys figured out loopholes.

Of course. And so in 2011, when they rated on Black Friday, the guy who actually ended up in real trouble was this dude who served as the payment processor for the three biggest online poker sites in the world. So not the gambler, not the casino. It was the guy who, and it wasn't a company. It was a guy. Yeah.

And the reason he got in trouble is because he started, he made all these phony businesses up to get banks to process payments. So the banks wouldn't think that they were doing any kind of illegal activity. He's money laundering. Right. So he laundered money. So he did get in big trouble and so did the top three sites until that same year, all of a sudden, this crazy war on online gambling was totally reversed by the Obama administration.

Within the Obama administration, it's not like this was the Bush administration aggressively prosecuting people for it. This was the Obama administration, and then all of a sudden, the Department of Justice came up with a new opinion and said, you know what? We don't think the Wirewager Act applies to this anymore, and we don't think that people should be prosecuted for online gambling if the states allow it. Yeah. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't one of the big reasons behind this, like,

we need to start regulating this fast and get out in front of it or else it's going to be a huge mess. Yes. It's going to be a huge mess. It could be a huge boon for states for taxes. And Gravster mentions in this article that people tended to gravitate toward sites that had a.NL domain or a.AU domain because they knew that Australia and the Netherlands heavily regulate this kind of stuff.

Right. They're legit. And so online casinos that operate out of those countries have to tow the line, which means that if you win, you're going to get paid. So they provided a model that, like, yes, if this is legal and regulated, people will come to it and you can actually manage it pretty well. Yeah. In other words, I don't have to set up an offshore bank account or send money orders

to some shady third-party internet site. Exactly. That may or may not pay you. Exactly. I actually, last year, I was the commissioner of my fantasy football league and we all throw in $20. It's no big deal. It's like $12 of us, you know.

Just to make it a little more interesting at the end of the year, you win the money. And I said, just pay me through PayPal, and a few people said, you know, when you go to make the payment, it's like writing a check, you put what it's for, and they're like fantasy football payment, and PayPal flagged it and wouldn't allow it through. And I didn't even know at the time that was against the law, I was like, really? And so I, you know, had them either send me money or just say, don't put what it's for done. Right, exactly.

For woodworking. Because apparently, apparently. Anything but fantasy football. Yeah, apparently that made me, I guess, an illegal bookie. Yeah, they could have gotten you on Rico, probably. Nice. So we're going to talk about legal online gambling and all that kind of stuff right after this.

Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand-new tell-all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about.

For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day.

Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. That's a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so today, my friend, uh, it is a state issue, as you said, right, still technically federally illegal. It's so weird when this country, it's always amazes me like this is illegal in the United

States, but it's legal in the state. If they say it's okay, sports, sports betting is still very much illegal online sports betting that the justice department said it's very clear that this law was originally written this law that we've been aggressively prosecuting for, for 40 years, 50 years was actually really just pertain to sports betting because that's chance. Is that correct? Is that why that's not necessarily why because like roulette is chance and you can do that now in some states.

So it's it's strictly because the law said sports, okay, it was written in the law. But fantasy football now, one of the big new trends are these day play sites. Yeah. For fantasy football. What is it called? Uh, one is called draft Kings, but there's a name for the whole thing. It's not fantasy football. It's like, um, league draft or something like that.

They call it daily fantasy sports. Okay. In this article, that's a little more generic than I was thinking. Yeah, but there's one called draft Kings and there's another one and I hear these all the time on sports radio, the ads forum, uh, fan duel.com where you can draft the team in a day and, uh, have your team, you know, play that weekend's football games and then cash out that weekend as well. Yeah.

Um, and so it's not the same thing as like just your ESPN fantasy football league where it's just a season long thing for fun or maybe a little bit of money thrown in a pool. This is weekly and depending on the sport, it could be daily. Exactly. Um, and all the sports, like they allow that though, cause I don't think that's considered skill somehow. So fantasy football is currently considered skill and is allowed, I believe. Which is hysterical.

This daily fantasy thing is apparently considered a little more gambling, I guess. Yeah. So it's, it's in a little more of a gray area, even though everybody's just kind of currently ignoring it, but all of the articles for some reason Forbes is like really, really into online gambling and it's been doing a lot of coverage of it over the years. Yeah. Um, and so from reading these Forbes articles, the way that they track anything is where the money's going.

And they talked about, um, how these daily fantasy foot like fan duel are attracting like tons of venture capital right now. Oh, I'm sure. There's just tens of millions of dollars being thrown at these tiny little startups that just allow you to do like daily or weekly fantasy sports drafts. Um, and that suggests that everybody on the street wall street thinks that, um, there's going to be either a federal law that allows it or this federal ruling from 2011, 2012 that says it's cool, just leave it up to the state is going to lead to basically state

across the country, state laws that regulate and allow this kind of stuff. So it seems to be if you follow the money, the tide is turning and online gambling is going to be where it's at. Yeah. I mean, right now you said gray area earlier, there's a lot of gray area, um, all over the country and all the states because like you said, some states will like, let you play the lottery. Some states will let you go to an OTB, uh, and bet on racehorses or bet on racehorses

at home online. Right. Um, some let you bet on reality TV online and some don't. Some, there are now three states that think Delaware, New Jersey and Nevada that have full fledged, uh, online poker, online gambling. And I think Nevada is actually running out of Nevada, right? So Nevada, as far as I know, hilariously only offers online poker. Okay.

They don't have a lottery either. Did you know that? What? Yeah. They probably don't need one. I guess not. Yeah. That's probably what it is.

But what, but you could always need more money. Sure. You know, especially if you're Nevada, you're like, give me more money. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, they don't have it. So I think that you're right though, that Nevada has opened up playing to people outside of their state, outside of the country. Yeah.

But originally there were only allowing people in Nevada to play, but I think isn't the website owned and run in that state as well. It's not like an out of the country deal. Yes. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Um, and that's the way New Jersey's is too.

So there's this whole secondary, um, uh, industry that's grown up around state sanctioned online gambling, which is geolocation services. Yeah. Which tracks where you, the computer user or online gambler are located. So they're watching you. Yeah, well, and if your computer comes up as outside of the state of New Jersey, you'll be blocked from playing. If you come up as inside of New Jersey, you can play New Jersey, which has a complete,

um, suite of online gambling available. And they, I guess Chris Christie said there, it was going to be a billion dollar industry in its first year, or there's going to be a billion dollars in tax revenue and it came to be like a 10th of that. So it's not quite as, um, it's not catching on like wildfire like they thought, but supposedly the casinos that are still standing in Atlantic city are still standing because those are the ones that went to the trouble of setting up online gambling sites. Well, that brings us to a good point.

There are a lot of brick and mortar casino owners, notably, um, what's his name, Sheldon? Yeah. Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn. Yeah. He's some of the biggest fat cats casino owners in Vegas and of course they feel threatened. Even if they think Adelson's big quote was click your mouse, lose your house and he's saying, we're going to lose half a million jobs, uh, and people are going to stop coming to casinos.

I'm sure they're also getting into the online casino game. Yeah. If they were smart, I'm sure they are, but, um, it raises a good point though, like Vegas, it used to be that Vegas made all their money on gambling and you could go and stay in a room for 10 bucks and eat for $2, but it's not the same anymore. And Vegas is a destination family vacation spot with all kinds of revenues coming in and you need people there to bring those revenues in, to see the shows and to take your kid to the stupid indoor amusement park and, uh, buy the now not so cheap food.

But that raises the question, then do you even need the gambling? If you have all this other stuff to attract people, like, do you need the casino and even if you do need the casino, if you have like the roller coaster and the indoor like amusement park and all that stuff that you're taking the kids to, like, as long as you're not losing money by having a casino open, it doesn't seem like online gambling would detract from that. Yeah, I see what you mean. I mean, those casinos are never losing money.

You can work in Atlantic City. They do. Really? Oh man. Even Donald Trump can't make money in Atlantic City. Well, that's probably just from, uh, overhead and low attendance. They're not actually, I mean, the house is always winning. Oh, I see what you mean.

You know what I mean? Right, right. Unless they, unless they own the casino. Exactly. Right. Uh, yeah, we get a great episode on casinos that was a good one that you should look into. I mean, it's not an addiction too, which is why we're not touching too much upon gambling

addiction. Yeah. I mean, there's different effort. When I was researching this, I saw different things. Obviously, it seems like it would make it super easy to get addicted for online gambling. But there was this one Harvard Medical School study of 40,000 people that they said the overwhelming majority of online gamblers playing a very moderate manner, spending minimal amounts.

I don't know how accurate that is though. That was, um, that site, like misused apostrophes and stuff like that. Yeah. I was like, your credibility is a little bit out the window because of your grammar. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, well, or maybe it's like any other kind of gambling. If you're a moderate gambler, then you'll probably stay that way. But if you have a problem with it, it's certainly going to make it easier to throw away a bunch

of dough. Sure. And it's not, you know, it's not money, cash money in front of you, at least in Vegas. That's why they use, one reason they use chips is to kind of trick your brain a little bit. It's not going to be any more abstract. Yeah. But there's nothing more abstract than just signing your bank account to something online

and clicking it. Yeah. Because the little wheel on greedy goblins is like mesmerizing. Well, it's also, it's small too. So I mean, you see the slot going, but the amount that you have in the bank is not that big and it doesn't seem like it's linked to real money. In my case, it wasn't linked to any real money, but I could see very easily how it just seems like a part of a game, like a computer game.

Yeah. And apparently there's a whole thing called slots for Tots, which is, if you are against online gambling, this stuff drives you crazy. It's basically like Disney versions of casino games for little kids like apps and things like that, where there's no gambling going on, but it's basically like, it's like Joe Camel. Yeah. Like for your adulthood as a gambler or a smoker or whatever.

Right. Make it cartoony and fun. Exactly. Or a McDonald's consumer, something like that. Yeah. I would be worried. It seems like an online casino, you can find a reputable one, but it seems like it would be really, really easy because the cards aren't in front of you to cheat the player every

time. Well, okay. That's another thing too that the Grabster points out. So if you're an American right now, it's still, it's kind of a gray area, especially if your state doesn't allow online gambling. So you are still a potential target for shady online gambling sites. So one of the things they can do is cheat you out of odds. That's why if you play an Australian site, you can feel comfortable that the Australian

government has vetted this computer program and found that the odds are there, it's the real deal. Like if you're playing blackjack, that is a 52 card deck and every card is in there. Right. Even though it's virtual. Right. That's what I would worry about is if you start winning too much, they'd be like, let's just have this guy lose the next 10 hands.

Exactly. Let's put the governor on this thing. Yeah. Not the governor of Australia. Right. Because he's called the prime minister. And you know, if you listen to Casino's podcast, Vegas used to be fraught with rigged games as well.

Right. So it's the same thing. It's just the wild west right now as far as the online version goes. Yeah. So Grabsford gives a couple of pieces of advice. One, he said, especially when you're trying out a new one and you're using a payment processor and that kind of stuff, he said, open up an account with a small amount of money initially. Don't throw $10,000 there just to see if it works.

He said, put a little in, try it out, try to get it back out. And if everything seems legitimate, then you can start to add more money if that's what you want to do. He also said that no matter how much trust you have for this company, you want to get your money out very regularly and frequently. Sure. They go under. You're done.

They go under. They get raided, whatever. Yeah. You just want your money out. This is illegal in some weird way still in the United States, so the feds could conceivably come along and take your money. Yeah. And you're also signing up for terms of service, so there are age requirements.

If you fraudulently sign up for something as an underage gambler, then you're breaking the law there, too. Yeah. Do you recommend that? There's one more thing, man. I wanted to talk about, so when the feds in 2011 raided those top three poker sites, and then in the same year, the Department of Justice issued that 13-page memo that said, I think we've been misreading this.

Those sites that were raided, the Department of Justice brokered a deal where one of the sites that was raided bought the assets of its rival that was also raided with the Department of Justice taking the money and then distributing the assets to the other illegal gambling operation. What? Because the middle man for a merger, I would guess that they got a significant cut of that. At the big. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

The Department of Justice was brokering a deal between online gambling and outfits. Unbelievable. Man, so that's it. That's online gambling. If you want to know more about it, I suggest you go look it up on Forbes, because they have a ton of articles on it. But first, go to howstuffworks.com and type in online gambling, and it'll bring up an excellent Grabster article to start you out.

And since I said Grabster, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this the Brazilian. Hey guys, my name is Raphael. I'm your greatest fan in Brazil. I've listened to at least 100 episodes, and you keep surprising me with new, interesting topics. I love the soccer show especially because you know absolutely nothing about it, which was very funny for a Brazilian.

I thought we were never going to talk about that one again. I love podcasts because they help me improve my English, and I can listen to them while I am riding the bike, but the gym are climbing. Last week I was listening to other podcasts, and I must say that you're winning the competition of good knowledge providers. Awesome. First, I listened to a program of Freakonomics Radio called Tell Me Something I Don't Know. And one of the contenders presented the New York prohibition of pinball machines to the

early 70s. They might didn't know, but I knew because of your show on pinball. I remember when that happened. Do you remember that? What? We got a lot of e-mailed that like two weeks after we did our pinball show, this guy on Freakonomics Radio on that show, but the guy was a pinball expert because it did a little digging.

He did not copy us. Oh, no, rarely do people copy us, I think. No, I think you're totally right. Rarely, if ever. Second, almost at the same day that you launched the Nuclear Fusion Show, the BBC podcast, in our time with Melvin Bragg invited three experts to discuss Nuclear Fusion. Both programs are awesome, but yours was funny. Only yours was funny.

I could see that. My conclusion is that you are beating the heck out of other podcasts. Congratulations. Wish you all the best, and if I might add, challenge you to make a show on deflation and inflation. I'm sure that the crazy Latin American experiences to challenge high inflation will amaze you. We have. We've talked about that a bunch.

Yes, stagflation. We did one, Rafael, called what is stagflation, and we've talked about deflation and currency. The stuff you should know guide to economics. That's right. Superstuff guide even. That's right. Rafael, the information is out there for you, and he says, P.S., could you please tell me if my English is actually improving?

I don't know where you started. We don't have a baseline, Rafael, but your English is pretty darn good. It is. It's like little charming Latin Americanisms, I think, but I think you did a great job. Yes. Thanks, Rafael. We are your biggest fans. That's right.

We appreciate all the flattering stuff. Thanks for that. If you want to flatter Chuck and I, we're always up for that. And by Chuck and I, of course, you grammar Nazis, I mean Chuck and me. Don't listen to that part, Rafael. You can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts.