As you may have heard, the biggest difference between live and online casinos is that online, you get to play with a more advantageous house edge. If you’re like me though, you’re going to take this statement with a grain of salt: how exactly will the online casino give you a better house edge, when the roulette wheel still has two green pockets on it? I mean those green pockets are the ones responsible for the house edge, and ultimately for the house drop too, at least as far as that game is concerned. The house edge will stay the same on the game itself, but there are other factors that will contribute to its diminishing. In online gambling, each of the new players is greeted with a sign-up bonus. The sign-up bonus has to be redeemed of course, but it still puts a rather serious dent into the house edge. In live gambling, you get no such rewards for walking into the casino.

In online gambling, players can secure all sorts of loyalty rewards too. These rewards work kind of like the rakeback deals in online poker. They give players a rebate on the money they spend at the casino tables. The size of the rebate is directly proportional with the amount of money spent. Thus, true high rollers will enjoy truly small house edges and house drops at the online tables. Why is it that online casinos offer such deals and brick and mortar ones don’t? After all, they do need to remain competitive, right? The reason is simple: just compare the setup and operating costs of an online casino with that of a land-based one and you’ll get the answer. Land based casinos need a building to operate in. That alone will cost a fortune, because just any piece of real estate won’t do either: it needs to be something extremely fancy in order to fit the goals of the casino. In contrast, the online casino only needs a URL and some server space for its games. While this too may run rather expensive as far as such setups go, it is by no means comparable to the costs incurred by live casinos.

Land based casinos are seriously limited in the number of games they can cram into the space at their disposal. Setting up poker tables is a serious setback for them, because poker tables take up a lot of space and generate relatively meager earnings through the poker rake. Online casinos on the other hand, have no such space issues at all. They can set up as many casino games as they like (or more likely: as many as their software supplier produces). The personnel needed to keep a live casino operation running is a huge one as well. From cocktail waitresses to casino floor personnel and surveillance specialists, it’s really an army of people we’re talking about. Online casinos only need support personnel a coder or two and some folks to handle the financial issues. Compared to live casino crews, this is really a skeleton of a personnel, which makes for reduced long-term costs.

The bottom line is, online casinos can well and truly afford to give you that competitive edge, so you should never settle for anything than the absolute best. Learn how to select online casinos based on the value they offer you and be aware of the fact that you deserve the best for putting your hard-earned money onto the line, whether it should be for fun or to make money.