Online Gambling

So — we’re about three weeks into the 2011 MLB Baseball Season. How’s your favorite team doing…? 4-12 or 12-4?

If you’re like me and a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, you’re pretty happy at the top of the National League Central Division, coming off of a 11-2 pounding of the Pirates on Saturday, a game that included the team’s first grand slam of the 2011 season.

Regardless of how your team is doing, I hope that your sportsbook betting season is in full swing. If not, it’s time to get started with a great offer from one of the top-rated US-friendly online sportsbooks, Oddsmaker. It’s a 100% match bonus, up to a grand. You must use bonus code OCGD100 when you sign up at the sportsbook in order to be eligible for this promotion.

• Minimum deposit of $50 and maximum of $1,000.
• Only New members are eligible to claim this offer.
• Bonus money cannot be played on or transferred to poker.
• This offer cannot be combined with any other promotional offers.
• In order to cash out you must rollover the deposit plus the bonus 20 times.
• General Terms and Conditions will also apply.

Use your sportsbook bonus to bet on the MLB season, the NHL and NBA playoffs, and countless number of other sports and entertainment events.

Bodog Poker offers fantastic value to players of all types. From sign up to cashout, experience the VIP treatment, Bodog style!

Sign Up with Bodog for a Huge Poker Bonus

Bodog Poker now has the best sign-up poker bonus in its history at 110%! Make any deposit and you’ll immediately receive an up front cash bonus of 10%. Then hit the tables and for every 10 poker points you earn you’ll receive an additional $1 bonus up to 100% match of your first deposit (up to a maximum of $500). You earn poker points in three different ways:

1. Rake: You earn up to 1 poker point per raked pot.
2. Tournament Fees: You earn 3 poker points per dollar in tournament fees.
3. Time Spent Player: You even earn an additional 1 poker point per hour of play!

Plus, based on thousands of hours of user interaction and feedback Bodog Poker has recently released a slick, new version of their poker software. Check it out today while taking advantage of this limited time offer.

Find out more about Bodog Poker’s 110% signup bonus.

The FBI has shut down Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, UltimateBet, and Absolute Poker. Visitors are shown a message saying, “This domain name has been seized by the F.B.I. pursuant to an Arrest Warrant.”. (Read the full article at the LA Times.)

Until all of this gets sorted out, here is a list of  the top 5 online poker sites that accept US players. (In case you are interested, here is the full list of all online poker sites that accept US players.)

Bodog Poker: 110% bonus
Create an account and download Bodog Poker for free with our Getting Started Guide. Play free online poker on our play money tables or head straight to the real money tables and earn Bodog Poker Points.

Sports Interaction Poker: 110% bonus
Bonus code: signup110. You can play for free, or at our 24/7 cash games and enter any of the tournaments of your choice. All you have to do is download, register, and play.

Poker4Ever: 100% bonus
POKER4EVER.com is a fast-growing cardroom offering your favorite poker games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo, and 7 Card Stud. POKER4EVER.com also offers the ultimate tournament experience with its multi-table tournaments

BetUS Poker: 110% bonus
We have an amazing new first time deposit bonus for all our new players. We offer you 110% bonus up to a fantastic $1000. Simply make a deposit, in the poker room click rewards, deposit bonus and enter the code POKER1000.

Doyles Room Poker: 100% bonus

You won’t be able to find another poker room where you can participate in tournaments, ring games and heads up matches with Doyle Brunson — author of SUPER SYSTEM (the bible of poker), winner of 10 WSOP Bracelets and player in every single WSOP.

To celebrate the return of the Boys of Summer for the 2011 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, Linesmaker sportsbook is offering their largest sportsbook deposit match bonus ever offered — a whopping 50% bonus. Sportsbook deposit match bonus offers are generally in the 10%-20% range, so take advantage of this offer before it expires on March 31, 2011.

Be sure to enter the following promo code when you join Linesmaker: AFBB50.

Big Bet Poker is getting into the holiday spirt of giving by hosting five online poker freerolls every other day from now through Monday, December 27, 2010. If you missed the first day of poker freerolls yesterday, get into the poker action starting tomorrow. Here is the schedule for each day of the Big Bet Poker online poker freerolls.

Real-money players are all automatically entered into 12 48-hour holiday dashes — the top ten point earners from real money play share in $1000 prize pool. $350 is the prize for the first-place finish, and there’s an additional $100 bonus awarded to any player that wins consecutive dashes (one bonus per player).

Big Bet Poker is on the Merge Poker Network, and welcomes players from all US states.

It’s been over a year since US players have had the opportunity to play at an online casino with new online casino software. (The last new online casino software for US players was from Top Game; before that was Rival.) Recently, however, the new BetOnSoft Platform has been released and has opened their virtual doors to players from around the world — including US players.

The BetOnSoft Platform offers 15 Classic Slots, 28 Video Slots, and Keno. Their table games include Blackjack (1, 2, 4, and 8 deck versions), 3 Card Poker, Craps, Baccarat, and both American and European Roulette. To wrap things up, they offer 28 varieties of Video Poker.

I’ve taken an initial look at one of the BetOnSoft online casinos – Treasure Mile. (Since they offer a practice mode, you can check out all the games before making a deposit.) The interface is clean and intuitive — start at the bottom and work your way up from Casino to (for example) Video Poker until a ring of available games is displayed. Pretty cool!

Here is a list of the five BetOnSoft online casinos. Only one offers free chips, while all offer an initial deposit bonus (the minimum deposit is $20).

For those of you who have been around a while, you may recall a few years ago when there was a flood of G-FED online casinos that began opening across the world. These online casinos were available to U.S. players prior to the UIGEA of 2006. Subsequently, the G-FED online casinos closed their virtual doors to U.S. players, and the G-FED software was rebranded as CGTV Games.

Last month, iFortune777 opened its online casino. It is running the CGTV Games software, and it is open to U.S. players from 39 states (players from the following U.S. states are barred from real-money play: Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington).

This is good news for all of you who have missed their unique brand of slot machines and other games. They have added quite a few new games in the past years, so you’ll want to check them out. New players are being offered $20 FREE to try their online casino (40X playthrough, $50 max withdrawal), while new depositors will receive a 100% match, up to — surprise, surprise — $777 (15x playthrough on the deposit+bonus amount).

Be aware, however, that they have very limited banking options — bank wire and Visa only. Look for them to add additional banking options going forward.

Pretty simple online casino promo here. Click the banner below and you’re in. US players welcome at this Rival online casino.

Depositors will also get a 100% slots bonus on their deposits of between $50 and $1000.

For more online casino bonuses, The Online Casino Gambling Directory is the place!

I’ve been playing poker online for several years now. Based on my experiences, feedback from others, and news reports (both good and bad), here is my list of the 4 best online poker sites for US players.

1. Doyle’s Room – Free and easy credit card and e-wallet deposits, fast and free e-wallet withdrawals (express check withdrawals are $50), and their unique bounty tournaments set this poker room apart from the others. Doyle’s Room operates on the Cake Poker network, the 4th-largest poker network open to US players in terms of number of players. They also have a pretty good casino, too. Accepting players from 47 states (KY, WA, LA are barred), Doyle’s Room is a great choice for playing poker online. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 110% bonus up to $550.
2. Full Tilt – There is always a lot of action at Full Tilt, the 2nd-largest poker network in terms of number of players. E-checks are free for depositing and withdrawing, so that’s a real bankroll saver. Also, thinking back to when I first opened an account with Full Tilt, their initial deposit bonus was generous and straightforward to clear. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $600.
3. PokerStars – The granddaddy of them all, PokerStars is the largest poker room in the world — it’s about twice as big as Full Tilt. The PokerStars lobby is full-featured, yet still easy-to-use; the tabbed interface and filtering options allow you to customize its display of just the cash games, tourneys, and poker variants that you want to see. Freerolls abound at PokerStars. E-checks are free for depositing and withdrawing. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $600.
4. OddsMaker.com Poker – This is one of 70+ rooms in the growing Merge Network. While I suppose that one room on the network is as good as any other, OddsMaker.com also has a sportsbook, racebook, and casino, which is convenient if you like to bet sports, play table games, and win at some video poker. Their initial signup offer is simpler than it sounds: $10 rake = 800 VIP points = $10 free money released to real money account. Current online poker promotion for new players: Get a 100% bonus up to $1000 + 14 days of entries into a daily $500 freeroll.

In addition to maintaining The Online Casino Gambling Directory, I also answer online gambling questions at AllExperts.com, the oldest and largest free Q&A service on the internet. I thought that I would share with you a recent question about sportsbooks, as well as my response.

Question:

What sites are good for online sports betting? Is there a catch to placing bets? I understand money line bets i think just wanna know if there was max or minumum bets?

Answer:

If you’re a casual bettor, you really need just one sportsbook account. If you’re a more serious bettor, you’ll want to have five or more accounts. The reason for this is so that you can compare lines (often called “shopping lines”) offered at the sportsbooks, and get the best odds on the bet you’d like to place. Moneyline odds, for example, can vary by as much as 15 cents (e.g. a team may be +105 at one book and +120 at another) and you’ll want to be able to take advantage of that by having accounts at different sportsbooks.

As for if there is a “catch” to placing bets, I’d say not really. The only thing you need to be aware of is when you accept a bonus on your deposit, the types of bets that you can place with the bonus money are often limited to -110 bets (or worse, e.g. -105, -100, +105, etc.), and usually no parlays or props are allowed with the bonus. Also after accepting a bonus, you must place a minimum number of wagers before you can make a withdraw. These restrictions vary by sportsbook, so you’ll want to make sure that you understand their bonus when you make a deposit.

The minimum bet varies by sportsbook as well. Most sportsbooks accept bets of as little as $5 if you place the bet online; higher minimums are required when placing a bet by phone (where phone betting is offered, which is pretty rare). Maximum bets depend on the type of wager and your relationship with the sportsbook; generally speaking, more exotic wagers have lower maximums, which may be increased as you develop a relationship with a sportsbook.

Now to the meat of your question — which are the best sportsbooks? I’ve been betting online for years, and use a 5-star rating scale to rate sportsbooks. As of this writing, there are only two sportsbooks that I rate as 5-star and that accept US players. You can find them at this link, which you may need to copy and paste into the address bar of your browser:
http://www.theonlinecasinogamblingdirectory.com/s.php?as_usa=2&as_rat=5&t=Sportsbook&SRC=AEJul2010Blog

If you want a few more options, here is a list of the 4- and 5-star sportsbooks that accept US players:
http://www.theonlinecasinogamblingdirectory.com/s.php?as_usa=2&as_rat=4&t=Sportsbook&SRC=AEJul2010Blog

Finally, here is a list of the 3-, 4-, and 5-star sportsbooks that accept US players:
http://www.theonlinecasinogamblingdirectory.com/s.php?as_usa=2&as_rat=3&t=Sportsbook&SRC=AEJul2010Blog

I hope you found my answer helpful; feel free to let me know if you have additional questions.