State Sponsored Online Casino
Introduction
You know all those jokes about Canadians, like this one; If you ask a Canadian how many Canadians does it take to fix a light bulb, the answer you get is “What’s a light bulb?” – Well I now officially take them all back and apologies for them whoever may have spouted them first. Why? Well quite simply the Canadians have shown themselves to be far more enlightened, intelligent and forward thinking than anyone in the USA with the news that there is now a state sponsored online casino in Canada.
BC rules
Vancouver, British Columbia - the home of state sponsored online poker as well as the 2010 Winter Olympics.
OK, before getting on to the really interesting bit perhaps I need to reign back a bit on all that effusiveness about how wonderful Canadians are now. Yes it is true that the Canadian Province of British Columbia – yes that’s correct the bit above Seattle – last week rolled out its had its very own casino games gambling website, but sadly it is also true that they had to then shut it down almost immediately due to a privacy issue. However, the fact is that the shut down was due to a genuine glitch with the way that the online casino handles customer’s accounts – and not as some cover by the anti-gambling conservatives.
Legalized online poker for Canadians
When the website is back up and running anyone resident in British Columbia and aged 19 years upwards will be able to gamble online – entirely with the states support and blessing. At present, in these early days, the games available are only slots, baccarat and craps but later in the year online poker will also be available – you lucky, lucky Canadian online poker players! A sports betting function is also due to be added later in the year. Like the moves afoot in California and one or two other states here in the USA, it’s the taxes that BC can collect that has proved to be the winning argument for adopting a – “if you can’t beat them then at least get taxes from it”, attitude. Over the course of just one year BC expects to tax around $100 million a year, which they expect to then rise by a further 11% every year too.
