In the real, off-line world, where gambling is strictly regulated, the man who called himself Screwed might have found recourse in the law. In the online world, he lodges his complaint at the "Best and Worst Casinos" section of the Winner Online message board, where there are many messages about various casinos' practices.

Screwed's original message was followed by a flurry of player opinions on the matter. It turned out that Screwed's problem was not your typical case of online flimflammery; the casino he was playing at is a reputable firm, and, as many of the people in the message board saw it, the company had not blatantly stolen his money, and had indeed suffered a genuine problem.

Screwed, too, conceded that there was a real glitch. The question to the group, though, was what to do about it. Should Screwed collect any of his winnings, even though -- technically -- he hadn't been playing with his own money? Should he collect half? None?

The debate at Winner Online was rigorous, covering all aspects of the supposed scam. Some people were convinced that Screwed was trying to pull a fast one on everyone in the group; many people said that it was his fault for not noticing that he'd been playing with more money than he'd put in. Screwed responded that he hadn't noticed because it was late and he was tired, and the casino should pay. A few people agreed with him, and condemned the casino, saying they'd never go there.

In the offline world, there would have been a clear-cut, courtroom resolution; one party would have been reprimanded, one would have been vindicated, and the whole proceeding would have had the imprimatur of the government. Here at Winner Online, though, each party goes home poorer: Screwed doesn't get any money, and the casino may lose some customers.

Because of such problems, a few groups more formal than this message-board system have emerged to make monitoring more stringent. The most powerful of these is Mike Craig's OPA; its mission is to connect "honest players" with "fair casinos." When a dispute arises between a player and a casino, the executives of the OPA -- who are independent of the casinos -- try to mediate a resolution. They have some leverage with each party: If a player is found to be dishonest, he can be stripped of OPA membership, and will no longer have the right to get money back from a casino. If a casino is found to be unfair, it can end up on the OPA's "not recommended" list, which is not a good thing. The carrot-and-stick approach seems to work well -- in the two years that the group has been operating, it has recovered $400,000 from casinos.

But players still have problems with shady casinos, and shady casinos tend to be the only ones available to people in countries where Internet gambling isn't explicitly legal, Craig said. In an e-mail message, he noted that the United Kingdom has legalized Internet gambling, letting gamblers "play online with similar protections to what they have around the corner at home."

But "this is not available to Americans, Canadian, Hong Kong, or Australian bettors, unfortunately," he added. "Some jurisdictions in small countries have legalized online gambling and have gaming commissions, but they have not been very responsive to players' complaints or effective in offering clearly superior casinos to those operating completely without regulation. There is also a significant percentage of completely fraudulent casinos that don't even attempt a pretense of play or payout."

Casinos based on the Isle of Man, the self-governing territory island in the British Isles, are generally recognized to be the most well-regulated, and therefore the most fair. "The Isle of Man is the hardest place in the world to get a casino license," said Booth, of Bet2Gamble.com. "They also require background checks; they require casinos to have X amount of money."

Because of its strict policies, there are only a handful of Internet casinos based on the island, according to Booth. Most recently, MGM Mirage, the company that owns some of Las Vegas' biggest hotels, unveiled its own online casino -- www.playmgmmirage.com -- based on the Isle of Man. But MGM Mirage's casino and the others based on the island refuse to take bets from Americans; the uncertain U.S. legal atmosphere makes it impossible for them to do so.

"They're doing this at their own risk," said Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, the commercial casino industry's trade group. "They have to be very careful about who they offer bets to. Should it be shown that they're accepting bets from Americans or allowing minors to gamble, they face very serious sanctions from [state governments, like Nevada's] that provide them licenses." MGM Mirage did not respond to requests for interviews.

Fahrenkopf described MGM Mirage as the commercial gaming corporation most "bullish" on the Internet. Other land-based casinos, he said, are more conservative, and as a matter of policy, his group is officially against the legalization of online gaming. "It's very clear," he said, "that the regulators do not believe it's possible today, that the mechanism exists so they could properly regulate it."

But he did not rule out the possibility of his member casinos someday embracing legalized online gaming, because many of them, he said, see it as a source of added revenue. MGM Mirage obviously expects to make money from its venture; if it works, other casinos will surely see an opportunity there.

And Fahrenkopf dismissed the idea that online casinos were any kind of competition for the real deal. "We realize that people who go to Vegas don't just go to stand in front of a slot machine and push a button. They go for the entertainment -- the meals, the shows, the hotel rooms," he said. "The guy who's going to sit in his den with a can of Coors while playing against some robot machine in Belize -- he's not the same customer."

Lawmakers who support legislation to make it harder to gamble online often cast Internet gambling as a morally dangerous activity. For example, James Leach, co-sponsor of the House bill, has called Internet gambling "a danger to the family."

And certainly some of the gamblers' opposition to the proposed law is in response to this talk of gambling being immoral. "I should be able to do what I want with my own money," says Dunlap, the gambler in Los Angeles. "I live in Los Angeles, and there's casinos all around here. What about those? And I can pay for porn but I can't gamble online?"

But others aren't happy with the law because they think it won't do any good. Keith Whyte, the director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, is someone who's aware that gambling is, for some people, a life-and-death problem; it can be a danger to families and individuals. But he doesn't like to put the issue in moralistic terms. Instead, he says, problem gambling is a recognized mental health disorder, and people suffering from it need clinical help.

"When you consider how widely accepted it seems to be, you see that gambling is normal in America," Whyte says. Eighty-five percent of Americans have gambled once in their lives, and legal commercial gambling makes about $65 billion a year. In most states, Whyte says, "nobody with a telephone has any problem betting on sports."

Whyte concedes that "there are risk factors to Internet gambling -- the use of credit, and we know from clinical studies that problem gamblers tend to do it when they're alone." But out of the billions that casinos make each year, only about $20 million is spent on treating problem gambling, Whyte says. "We would rather see efforts made to help people with the problem -- funding research, that type of thing -- rather than making something legal or illegal. This is like trying to stop alcohol abuse by making drunk driving illegal."

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