Regulated Online Casinos

Online casinos have gained popularity in recent years thanks to the busy lifestyle most of us have. If you like playing games of chance but have no time to visit a land-based gaming establishment, online casinos will be a perfect way to satisfy your gaming urge. However, in the US, this is still a questionable practice.

As the demand for online gaming is pretty high, new international online casinos appear daily, and most of them accept players from the US. What is more, they offer lucrative bonuses and promotions and promise the best online gaming experience you’ve always dreamt of. However, not all these casinos practice what they preach.

Some of them often turn out to be shady without being properly regulated, which may lead to cheating players and entirely disappearing from the web. In order to prevent this from happening, you should always play your favorite games of chance on reliable and trustworthy casino sites.

Again, in the US, it is not easy to determine whether online casino gaming is legal, and which online casinos can be trusted. That’s why we’ve created this text that will hopefully help you find out all about the regulated online casinos in the US, as well as the reason you should pay attention to this aspect.

The US States With Regulated Online Casinos

Until recently, US players had limited options when it comes to regulated online casinos. However, the situation has changed for the better, and it seems that more and more US states realize the benefits of regulating online casinos.

Still, the US states that have officially legalized online casino sites are not many. Here’s the list of all the states in which you can legally play online casino games at the time of writing this article:

  • New Jersey: The first US state that gave the green light to online gambling legislation was New Jersey. Today, New Jersey is home to many legal online casino sites that can be visited by US players without any fear of prosecution.
  • Delaware: Another state that has legalized online poker and casino games is Delaware, thus allowing its residents to enjoy online casino games within the state’s borders.
  • Pennsylvania: In the Keystone State, you can legally enjoy online casino games. Apart from many online casinos already operating, there are also separate online poker rooms that are getting popular thanks to the major poker provider PokerStars.
  • West Virginia: Thanks to the West Virginia Lottery Interactive Wagering Act from 2019, it’s officially legal to play online slots and table games in the Mountain State. Also, it is said that the residents of West Virginia can expect the first apps to come out in 2020.
  • Michigan: Michigan has also said yes to online casino games, and 2020 should be the year of its expansion. The state regulated online gambling by allowing Michigan’s land-based casinos to launch their online counterparts. Yet, although the legislation has been done with, we’re still waiting for practical realization.

What Is a Regulated Online Casino?

Every serious online casino that has a goal to survive in the iGaming industry must be properly regulated. To achieve this, a casino site must display excellence in the following aspects:

  • Legality: First and foremost, a site must operate within the state in which online gaming is officially legal. If there’s no law that strictly prohibits online gaming, it means the coast is clear.
  • License: Legality must be paramount to every online casino out there. A casino can’t be considered legal without a license by a trustworthy regulating body. If a casino owns a legal iGaming license, its details must be mentioned on the casino site and accessible to players at any given point in time, even before they decide to create an account.
  • Safety and Security: Next in line is the matter of safety and security. When registering in an online casino, players have to share their personal information that is considered sensitive. That’s why casino sites must use cyber protection measures that’ll keep players private data safe at all times. These include cutting-edge SSL encryption, the latest firewalls, DPOs or, preferably, a couple of them combined. With all this activated, you can rest assured that your sensitive data and transaction details will be kept away from any unauthorized personnel.
  • Fairness and randomness of games: Most games in online casinos are powered by RNG software that guarantees the outcome of each game will be absolutely random. This is supposed to ensure fair play and give all players equal chances to cash out some winnings. To stay on the right track, every respective online casino will willingly submit its platform to testing performed by an independent auditing body. These auditors are third-party organizations that test online casinos for fairness and randomness. If all turns out well, the casino gets a seal of approval that guarantees fair and square online gaming experience.
  • Preventing underage gambling: Although the legal gambling age differs from one country to another, casinos must monitor how old players are and prevent underage gambling. In order to do this, casino sites usually ask players to provide a copy of a legal document. Therefore, even if you put a false year of birth when creating an account, you’ll have to drop it once a casino requests documents for your account verification.
  • Handling complaints: No matter how good a casino site is, complaints are inevitable, as it’s virtually impossible to have control of everything all the time. While you can’t completely prevent complaints, you can handle them with skill and style. That’s why a well-regulated online casino must have responsive and polite customer support that will quickly sort out any issues players might experience.
  • Dealing with problem gamblers: Even though online gaming is so much fun, it can be really addictive and turn someone’s life upside-down. However, every respectful online gaming site will have an exclusion program ready at all times for players who think they need to take a break from playing online games of chance.

Why Is It Important for a Casino Site to Be Regulated?

The online gaming industry is regularly moving billions of dollars around the planet without anyone actually noticing. We get such a feeling, as we don’t know who stands behind a website that provides online games of chance we gladly pay for.

Since players are rightfully skeptical when it comes to depositing money to online casinos, the owners of these online gaming establishments decided to do something in order to become trustworthy. As you can probably guess, that’s how casino site regulation came into being.

Apart from letting players know where their money goes, online casino owners realized that the regulation of their websites could help with several other issues. Here are some of the reasons some US states decided to regulate online casinos:

  • To ensure legal online gaming environment;
  • To ensure that players feel safe and get a fair treatment;
  • To ensure ethical behavior towards players.

In practice, this means that players should never experience any maltreatment from the casino they play in. Furthermore, every casino that claims to be regulated has to comply with specific rules and regulations that go hand in hand with ethics and honor.

Just like a player who tries to cheat when playing casino games, the gaming site should also face the consequences in case of breaking any point of their own terms and conditions.

Unfortunately, the extinction of rogue sites that trick people into depositing money for nothing and going away with it is virtually impossible, as no organization is able to control all the casino sites that operate these days. For this, we would need a global regulatory body with sub-agencies in charge of online gaming for every country in the world.

Considering the fact the US players won’t have the state back them up if their online gaming journey on international sites goes wrong, the best thing they can do is stick to the regulated online casinos available at the moment.

Final Thoughts

In the US, online casinos are still making their way through the online gaming barriers. Several states have decided to give thumbs up to online gaming venues, and more of them are following the lead. So far, US players from several states are officially allowed to take part in online casino games, provided that they do it on state-approved platforms. We’re positive that more US states actively work on legalizing online casinos and that, soon enough, every US resident will have the opportunity to enjoy online gaming at its best.