Casinos in New Jersey
New Jersey has recently passed an online gambling bill, but the state has a lot more to offer to gambling enthusiasts than a few intrastate casino and poker sites. Atlantic City is home to a number of amazing casinos, which offer some of the best online slots, table games and video poker machines available in the industry these days. The state allows bingo and pari-mutuel horse race betting and operates a rather popular online lottery. In addition, New Jersey is quite famous for hosting a lot of charity gambling events.
New Jersey Gambling Laws
Gambling and gambling-related issues are covered by Article II of the New Jersey Constitution and New Jersey Criminal Law 2A:40 and 2C:37 through 2C:43. The law was last updated in February 2013, when Gov. Chris Christie passed a bill allowing Atlantic City casinos to operate their own real online gambling sites, which are available only to New Jersey residents. Participating in unlicensed gambling is unlawful, but the state isn’t very strict when it comes to punishing individual players. Please note that since New Jersey has a definite set of gambling regulations, playing at the popular offshore US-facing casino sites is definitely illegal. However, the state doesn’t punish offshore casino customers, so many New Jersey customers still register at those sites.
Online Casinos
New Jersey online casinos that operate on the intrastate market are all well-designed, which shouldn’t be all that surprising since all the Atlantic City casinos that opted to enter this market have partnered by top-notch casino software developers. However, the New Jersey player pool is extremely limited, so the local casinos generate less revenue than offshore sites that accept players from all over the world. Consequently, the bonuses, promotions and jackpots offered by offshore casino sites are considerably higher than the ones available locally, so naturally many players haven’t stopped playing there even when the first New Jersey-licensed online casinos appeared online.
Offshore Casino Sites That Accept New Jersey Players
New Jersey has recently requested many high-profile offshore sites to stop accepting New Jersey-based players. Some of those sites complied, so the number of quality offshore casinos that allow New Jersey residents to register new accounts is somewhat limited. Unlike the New Jersey-licensed sites that operate on the intrastate market, those offshore sites are all powered by Real Time Gaming software due to the fact that all the other major software developers like Playtech or Microgaming refuse to cooperate with offshore sites that accept players based in USA.
While online casino enthusiasts who play on New Jersey-licensed sites are free to use a wide range banking methods including Neteller and other e-wallet services, the customers who joined offshore casinos have very few options at their disposal. Most players decide to deposit via a credit card payment. Unfortunately, this method isn’t very reliable – about 25% Visa transactions get blocked, while MasterCard and American Express have even lower acceptance rates. While you won’t lose any money or face any charges if your transaction gets blocked, there’s no denying the fact that being forced to assume a trial and error approach is rather annoying. Surprisingly, many people who play on the intrastate sites have reported similar problems.
Developing Legal Scenarios
New Jersey has already passed an online gambling bill and most of the Atlantic City casinos that were interested in entering the intrastate gambling market have already launched their sites, so the current regulations aren’t likely to change a lot in the foreseeable future. However, it is worth pointing out that New Jersey legislators have been mulling over creating a wider, interstate market which would allow some of the New Jersey sites to offer their gambling products to the residents of other states, which would allow them to compete with some offshore casinos and poker rooms in terms of overall traffic.
