Thursday, January 14, 2010

Can I Perform Online Sports Betting?

By Jill Bean

In 2006, the United States got what it had been attempting to do for a long time, criminalize online sports betting for all citizens. Internet gambling, however, was and remains to this day a complicated issue. The Interstate Wire Act of 1961 was passed to stop sports gambling activity conducted over the telephone. Many people have been confused as to whether this act also applies to the Internet. As the act was enacted prior to the invention of the Internet, nobody was confident whether the law applied or not. Further, the act did not specify the type of gambling it was intended to control. Did it apply to all sorts of gambling or was it just betting on sports?

Only one thing was certain when it came to this topic after 2006 The government was going to pursue anyone that ran a gambling website until the day they shut down. The government wasn't messing around when it came to this issue. They were going after the source of the issue, and as a result there would be no more problems with gambling on sports. All they had to do was target a few hundred website owners, and the millions of individuals that were gambling online would be forced to quit.

Presently there is a huge and continuing discussion regarding sports gambling. Those who are opposed to it feel that it will result in the fixing of games. But in reality that is not probable in professional sports since it would be very hard to have players, coaches, referees and owners all conspiring to fix the outcomes of every game. Those who favor sports betting state that it is simply something people do for entertainment as they are watching the game. My personal thought is that sports gambling will sooner or later get everything that you have.

Of all the sports gamblers I've encountered over the years, they always started out putting down small, inconsequential bets. After they start losing, they try to keep chasing that one win that will make it all better, and that's where it starts. You'll lose a lot of money once you get into a winning streak of a dozen or more times. The first time you bet $100 and lose, you're out $200; by the time you've lost a 10th time, you'll end up betting $38,400 on your tenth bet. No matter how hard you try, in your quest to get just $100 back, you'll end up spending almost $77,000 in the process, ending up losing everything you have in the process. You're probably thinking the same thing most do. How do people get into this situation? However, it happens, as I've witnessed plenty of similar situations. A lot of people do sports betting with their emotions, which can affect your judgment.

Some discussion has been made about just charging the bettors a tax, and allowing them to bet on sporting events. I personally hope they don't make this legal, because betting on sports can ruin a person and their life. People can become way too obsessed when gambling on sports. I would be the first to vote to keep gambling on sports illegal for everyone in the United States.

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