Casinos in Maine
Maine residents have two land-based casinos to choose from: the Hollywood Casino Hotel & Raceway located in Penobscot and the Oxford Casino located in Oxford. Both venues allow you to play slots online, video poker, and classic table games. In addition, Maine offers regulated horse race betting and state operated online lottery games.
Maine is very strict when dealing with illegal gambling operators. Anyone caught running illegal games of chance could be fined up to $20,000 and given a prison term of up to 10 years. However, the state is exceptionally lenient when it comes to dealing with individual players and lets them off without penalizing them, which means that Maine residents are pretty much free to play on offshore casino sites.
Maine Gambling Laws
The most important regulations pertaining to online gambling can be found in Maine Revised Statutes, Title 17-A, Chapter 39: Unlawful Gambling. The state allows social gambling, which means that playing casino games like blackjack or baccarat in the privacy of your home is perfectly legal as long as nobody profits from organizing the games.
Online gambling is a gray area, as there are no laws that apply specifically to online casino games. Nevertheless, you should keep in mind that law enforcement agencies can definitely claim that the local gambling laws prohibit Maine residents from playing on offshore sites and consider the computer that you used to join the action an illegal gambling device.
On a brighter note, no online casino customers have been prosecuted so far, so it should come as no surprise that most Maine residents don’t really care about the nuances of the current regulations and simply go for the sites that offer the best bonuses and games.
Online Casinos
Maine doesn’t have an intrastate online casino market, which means that Maine residents have no access to gambling sites that are operated by local businesses. Fortunately, most of the offshore casinos that still accept US citizens have no qualms about allowing Maine players to register and play the real money games they offer. Consequently, online gambling enthusiasts from Maine can access some of the best international casinos in the industry and benefit from the amazing bonuses and promotions that they have in store.
Offshore Casino Sites That Accept Maine Players
Most of the Maine-friendly sites are powered by Real Time Gaming casino software, which means that they allow you to access an extensive library of online slots, video poker games, and classic table games. Even better, some of the sites listed here offer additional slots from third-party developers, including the amazing three-dimensional slots developed by BetSoft Gaming.
Please note that while playing on offshore casino sites is very easy and doesn’t require you to go through a lot of hassle, funding your on-site account may get troublesome at times. The available deposit methods are extremely limited, which means that most Maine residents go for a credit card deposit.
The downside of using this option is the fact that both MasterCard and American Express have a rather low acceptance rate, so unless you have a Visa credit card you might be required to try a few cards before the money actually goes through. If you’d like to avoid wasting time and going through several cards, your best bet would be to deposit via Western Union or MoneyGram, as cash transfer payments are 100% reliable and relatively fast.
Developing Legal Scenarios
Maine legislators have already stated that it might be time for the state to update its old gambling regulations by opening its intrastate i-gaming market, but unfortunately the only bill introduced so far has to do with online lottery gaming instead of casino games. Whether the lawmakers opt to follow in the footsteps of Nevada or New Jersey remains to be seen, but regulated online Maine casinos are definitely a possibility in the months to come.
