Two Poker Studies Shed Interesting Light
Two new reports from both the United States and England have shown that there is a sizeable interest in online poker, gaming overall and, surprisingly enough, the governmental regulation of the ever-growing industry. The American Gaming Association, in their State of the States report for 2006, not only looked at the casino and racetrack gaming world but also took an in-depth look at the online gaming and poker scene as well. In the report, the AGA reports in a special section of the "State of the States" yearly review that the typical online player is a much younger participant in gaming activities than those that typically frequent casinos in the United States.
The typical U. S. Internet gambler is under 40, is college-educatedor has post-high school education of some sort, is male and is generally more affluent than his fellow citizens, according to the results of the AGA survey. There are other interesting discoveries as the rest of the forty-three page report is digested. The poll was conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AGA and found that 70 percent of respondents started gambling online within the past two years, indicating the growing popularity of Internet poker and gaming. Surprisingly, while Americans seem to be taking part in the online gaming industry, there is a tremendous amount of distrust of the industry as a whole.
More than half of the respondents in the survey said that the offshore companies find ways to cheat their customers and nearly half of those surveyed felt that their fellow players were scheming to cheat. In what was a very disingenuous part of the report, the AGA also questioned people's knowledge of the legal status of Internet gaming. When the participants in the survey were asked whether online poker was legal or not, about one in five said that it wasn't legal and the AGA added to this confusion by stating that it is currently illegal to wager online in the United States.
To this date, no one has been prosecuted for playing on the Internet and the further legal status of doing so is murky at best. Even with this faux pas, the overall report of the AGA is a decent look at the world of the casinos, both online and in their physical forms.
May 9, 2006
Posted By Susan Torres
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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