Online gambling

There’s no denying it, punters in the UK love to have a flutter. That explains why there are more than 8,000 bookmaking outlets huddling among Britain’s clothes shops and restaurants.

But you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your own home to place a bet these days. The online world is quickly catching up with its high-street opposition.

In 2005 and 2006, according to estimates from MarketResearch.com, the online gambling business flowered, with an estimated 2,300 gambling sites on the internet today.

The internet may offer more opportunities to bet but that is no reason to throw caution to the wind. As the UK charity GamCare puts it: “Gambling can be great fun, but it’s also important to know when to stop and what the danger signs are.”

With an estimated £1bn wagered on this summer’s FIFA World Cup alone it is big business, and there’re a lot of gamblers who won’t be seeing the money from their bets again. So let’s be clear from the start: gambling is not an investment. If you can’t afford to lose it, don’t bet with it.

The gambling world may only have been pulling in internet punters for the past 10 years, but the ability to lose your shirt on the web now comes in many different flavours. Imagine any kind of gambling you can do in the real world and you can usually find the equivalent game of chance online.

Whether it’s the football Pools, horse racing, the dog track, lotteries, dice, bingo, roulette, blackjack, slot machines, backgammon or poker, someone is always willing to take your money. Whether you get it back or not depends on your luck.

Perhaps the easiest way to gamble online is by visiting one of the online bookmakers. These tend to offer the same service you could expect if you walked into any William Hill, Victor Chandler, Paddy Power or Ladbrokes betting shop. As with the vast majority of sites, you sign up with a debit or credit card, which is used to transfer money to a gambling fund. And if your luck’s in, winnings will be paid into the same account.

Bets can be placed on everything from Premiership football to golf by clicking the checkboxes, in much the same way you would use a pencil on a form in the real shop.

Of course, if you subscribe to the belief that in the long run you can never beat the bookie, there are even ways around that. With sites such as Betfair you can bet as normal and try and beat odds set by someone else, or you can become the bookmaker and set odds for other people.

This second option is known as ‘laying’ the bet. For example, you could decide Chelsea won’t win the Premiership come May 2007 and ‘lay’ them at odds of two to one. If someone bet £100 on Chelsea winning the league, you would owe them £200 if Jose Mourinho’s men lift the trophy. But you would get to keep that £100 if the Blues don’t retain the title.

The website keeps the deal secret from both parties, so you don’t know who you are winning money from or losing money too.

Life’s a lottery 
There are also online gambling services such as lotteries available, which are open to anyone over the age of 16 in the UK. Not that lotteries should be dismissed as any less of a form of gambling, as National Lottery operator Camelot makes clear on its website: “For most people playing the lottery is a harmless flutter, but Camelot has a role to play alongside the gambling industry in preventing problem gambling and protecting vulnerable groups.”

While lottery games offer one of the cheapest ways for gamblers to stake a bet, fake lottery sites could cost you a lot more. Following a link in a spam email or finding your way onto such a site through a search engine or advert could see you passing over your details and your credit card numbers.