Online gambling has become incredibly popular over the last few years. This is in part due to the ability to now access online casinos via smartphones, as well as the quality of the games increasing. Sports betting is the gambling industry’s largest source of revenue and accounts for $216 billion with around 26,000 businesses in this market around the world.
This is one of the reasons why many online casinos incorporated sports betting on their sites and give reason to the creation of virtual sports betting. It is only natural that many of those sports bettors would try out some of the casino games that are abundantly available, such as poker, keno, blackjack, slot machine games, and more.
Although sports betting and online casino gambling are similar, there are a few important differences to keep in mind when playing online casino games. We asked the experts at Japan 101 about the main differences between sports betting and casino gambling.
Weighing the odds
When making a sports bet, it can be quite a simple process that doesn’t involve that many moving parts, but also quite unreliable in terms of statistics.
For example, before placing a bet on the outcome of a game, a bettor would research the winning percentages of each team, how many games they’ve played, who is on the team, and their skill level. But that doesn’t account for other unknown factors such as the emotional and physical wellbeing of the players, if the wet grass will influence the skill of players and who can deal with it better, etc.
In terms of making a wager on a casino game, such as slots, you could research the statistical information that would help you to choose which game to play. For example, the payback percentage would inform you about how much you would win if you did, the hit frequency would inform you how often you would win, the number of symbols on each reel would help you to calculate the probability of how often you’d get a combination and so on.
This means that there are more known factors when calculating the odds when gambling.
Easy to spend more money
One of the biggest differences when playing online casino games is that there is a higher chance that you would end up spending more money. This is because when betting on the outcome of a sports game, you would bet one amount, and then you would have to wait until the game is over before knowing the result.
This natural time restraint between bets means that you are able to keep track on how much money you are spending and there is no impulse to spend more while the game is going.
When playing online casino games, the games are usually over very quickly, for example slots; the game is essentially over once the reel has been spun. Even blackjack doesn’t last very long between hands.
Another factor is that the wagers are usually smaller, so it’s easy to lose track of exactly how much money you have spent, unless you have allocated a budget.
More games and different entertainment value
Perhaps the biggest difference between sports betting and playing on an online casino is the number of games available. When betting on the outcome of a sports match or game, the process is pretty similar across the board, regardless of the sport. However, this is not the case for online casino games.
If broken down, there are the categories of casino games; table games, gaming machines, and random number games. Table games would be blackjack or poker, gaming machines would be slots or pachinko and random number games would be bingo or keno.
Within each of these games are different rules to memorize, as well as different statistics and factors that affect the outcome of each. Bingo for example is completely random, poker has many complicated rules and can be practiced, and slots has many statistics that affect which game you would choose to play.
Another thing to consider is that regardless of the sport you would choose to bet on, the entertainment value will most likely be the same as you would enjoy watching the game. This may not be true for online casino games as the entertainment value might not be the same when losing while playing.