[roxbrand]

anybody know anything about internet casinos? have an opinion on them? it seems like it could be a good investment

[insomnia]

Huge barriers to entry, big industry, involves off shore hosting, banking, taxes, etc.

Most are profitable, poker is getting big. Just a tough industry to stay alive in though.

[mxer210]

Yeah it sounds complicated because the servers can't be in the US and I think they're all in jamaica or something.... Not really sure. It does sound big thogh and partypoker.com and other places seem to be doing very well.

[simonj]

Id check with a lawyer before starting any of this as the laws vary from palce to place.
But I think Costa Rica is where its at in terms of online casino's.
But from talking to friends in the US its all gotta be run offshore. Offshore business, gambling license etc etc.

[roxbrand]

I was actually thinking that I would have a site where only players can play against each other (poker) and never agianst a computer. Then I would just take a small rake from each player for every game that they play. So, it isnt actually an internet casino....because you never play against the house. But yea I think costa rica is the place where it is done.

[mxer210]

Yeah costa rica sounds about right. Imtoo young to gamble... but I'm not sure if they would be happy with having money subtracted from them every hand. Maybe have a montly subscription fee to play?

I'm a big fan of niches if you guys havn't noticed, and maybe you could start out with like, asian games or something. The casinos in my area have adapted to asian gaming because of their popularity. Or, you could cater to the baby boomers and offer like bingo and stuff. YOu should offer something different then the norm because alotof big online casinos have already been established and it would be hard ot fight for users.

[cheng]

Does it require a permit to setup such online gaming sites?

[roxbrand]

I was wondering the same thing myself. I think that you may need lisences. However, if you host the site on an offshore location you may be able to get around that.

Let me explain why I think that this is such a good idea.....

I just started playing poker online for real money. I play with pokerstars.com. Anyways the way it works, is you download their software and then you can play against other players who are also online.

Lets say I want to play Texas Hold-Em. I can enter into a tournament. There are different amounts you can play with/for. I usually just play $5 games. There are 8-9 players at a table. Each player pays $5.50 to play at a $5 table. $0.50 goes to pokerstars.com, then the $5 left over goes to the top three winners. 1st place gets you 20.00...2nd place gets you $12...and 3rd will get you 8.00.

So if there are 8 players at each table and they each pay 0.50 to play...each table generates $4.00 for poker stars. Thats a minimum...because for example, at a $10 game...they charge $1 per player. But for this lets just say that each table generates only $4.00.

I am looking at my pokerstars software....right now, there are 34,072 players online and 5130 active tables. Now, if you take that 5130 tables times $4.00 per table, you get $20,520. Each game takes about one hour...sometimes more, sometimes less.

Anyways....thats a lot of money...obviously ones success would greatly depend on the number of users that they can get. Its really all marketing.

I know of some sites that will give you $10 in your account to sign up.

[red]

sounds like you gotta find a way to get peoples trust. also if you like their poker site so much, what would set you apart to make people sign up with you instead of the others? since you will have so few members and people on at first, you will have to really under cut them to lure people in. first 20 hands are free maybe, not sure how you would like to work that.

[roxbrand]

I was thinking, if users could install software on their cellphones and pda's so that they could play online via those devices....that would diffenetly set me apart from the compeitition.