Casinos in Virginia
Gambling in Virginia is pretty much all about horse race betting, which shouldn’t be all that surprising since the state doesn’t have any Native American casinos or commercial land-based casinos. Consequently, playing games like online slots, baccarat, blackjack, or online roulette is pretty much impossible within the borders of the state. In addition, Virginia operates its own online lottery, which is fairly popular among its residents. Virginia doesn’t have a regulated industry for real online gambling.
Virginia Gambling Laws
Gambling is covered by Chapter 11 and Chapter 18 of the Virginia Code. As you’d expect, operating an unregulated legal online gambling sites is illegal, but the state doesn’t really have any specific regulations that would apply to playing on an offshore casino site. Home gambling is also legal as long as host doesn’t benefit financially from organizing the games, so gambling enthusiasts from Virginia are pretty much free to argue that gambling online is allowed.
Obviously, state officials could claim that placing wagers over the internet isn’t allowed under the general gambling regulations, but fortunately the state isn’t really interested in going after individual players. Therefore, there’s nothing to stop Virginia residents from registering at offshore casinos, as no players have been prosecuted so far.
Online Casinos
Virginia doesn’t have an intrastate gambling market, which means that Virginia residents who want to experience the thrill of playing at a quality online casino have to join offshore sites, such as Bovada. Most of those sites have thousands of customers from all over the world, so they can afford to offer amazing promotions and jackpots.
Offshore casinos aren’t licensed in the United States, but the high-profile sites are perfectly safe to play on and won’t try to delay your withdrawals or cheat you out of bonus funds. Obviously, there are some scammers out there, so if you’re an experienced gambler, I’d advise sticking to the sites that have already been reviewed by our experts.
Offshore Casino Sites That Accept Virginia Players
All the top online casinos that accept American customers have absolutely no qualms about accepting Virginia residents. Consequently, Virginia-based i-gaming enthusiasts have plenty of top-notch casinos to choose from, most of which are powered by Real Time Gaming software. Unfortunately, Virginia residents aren’t able to register at Playtech and Microgaming casinos, as those software companies consider US to be a high-risk market and refuse to cooperate with sites that offer their services to players from Virginia or other states.
Keep in mind that while playing at offshore sites is easy and risk-free, actually funding your casino account can be troublesome and time-consuming. E-wallet services aren’t supported by those sites due to previous federal-level regulations, so the most common deposit method is to use a credit card like Visa, MasterCard or American Express. Unfortunately, credit card payments aren’t 100% reliable, as some of the transactions are blocked.
In such a case, you won’t face any charges as you didn’t do anything illegal and you won’t lose any money, but there’s no denying the fact that wasting time and being forced to try several cards can get very annoying. Fortunately, some of the US-facing casinos support Western Union and MoneyGram money order deposits, allowing Virginia players to play online casino games without having to worry about credit card-related issues.
Developing Legal Scenarios
Virginia has a conservative governor, so it’s very unlikely for a bill that’d legalize online gambling to even be put on the table. Nevertheless, more and more states are introducing i-gaming friendly regulations, so it certainly is possible for Virginia to follow this trend in the future.
