The Online Casino Versus The Brick And Mortar Casino

If you want to go gaming these days, you have two types of casino to choose from. You could opt to go to a traditional brick and mortar casino, or you could decide to go to an online casino. Either option has an upside and a downside to it, and it is that which we will be exploring, as we try to contrast both types of casino.

One of the advantages associated with the online casino is its convenience. The online casino is not a physical place you get into your car and drive to. Rather, it is a virtual place –a website you log into, and start playing. Under this arrangement, you can play anywhere and anytime. To many of the people whose first contact with casinos has been online, it is quite hard to see how much of an advantage this is. But to those of us who got to experience the time when enjoying a casino game always had to mean travelling or at least walking some distance, and being restricted to certain times (the casino opening hours), this convenience advantage of the online casino is not something that can be gainsaid.

Another advantage associated with the online casino is the fact that it is not bound by geographical limitations. You can find yourself playing against someone who is thousands of miles away in real time, playing with real money, and standing the potential to earn real money.

Yet another advantage associated with the online casino, perhaps an offshoot of the convenience advantage, is the fact that one ‘doesn’t get seen coming from a physical casino’ which would be considered a source of embarrassment in some quarters. ‘Respectable’ people who would have wanted to partake of gaming, but who were wary of being seen coming from casinos – and being embarrassed as the news got into the tabloids – can play with the peace of mind online.

But there are a number of potential disadvantages to these online casinos, which can also be seen as being the advantages of traditional brick and mortar casinos.
Firstly, the online casino (where one plays in physical isolation, the only union being virtual) doesn’t offer the opportunity for real social bonding that the traditional casino used to offer. This is not to be taken lightly, keeping in mind that one of the reasons some people would frequent casinos was not in search of the money per se, but rather in search of the social companionship in an exciting setting.

There are also people who raise security concerns with regard to online casinos. They feel, for instance, that their credit card details could end up being skimmed as they load money into their playing accounts, or that their winnings could end up being swindled in case they chanced upon the jackpots. These fears are not altogether farfetched. To be sure, most online casinos are good institutions, run by people of high integrity. But there is no denying that there are a few wayward ones, and that seeking recourse in case something goes wrong in these online establishments would be harder than in the case of a brick and mortar casino.

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Tags: Brick, Casino, Mortar, Online, Versus

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 21st, 2010 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Online Gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.