The first question you may have when digging into this article is "Can I play for real money in online casinos as a U.S. resident?" Rest assured, the answer is yes. In fact, millions are U.S. gamblers are at it even as you read this. Still, if you are new to the online casino and gaming scene, you may find a hard time finding a site that will accept your deposit as a U.S. citizen and this may be frustrating. This may even be the reason you are reading this now. Fear not, I will end this article by telling you some of the main sites where all your fellow countrymen are currently packing into.

Your second question may likely be, "OK, but is online gambling legal in the U.S.?" The answer to that question is vague. So, before I cover the where, let's get into the why. And the why begins with a piece of legislation dating back to 1961 called the Wire Act, which was largely implemented to prohibit sports bets from being accepted by bookies and bookmakers via the telephone. In this wireless age, you might think it ironic that a Wire Act nearly five years old would still have bearing on the question at hand, but it does. That is, this law was still the only case the courts had against online gambling until 2006, though the debate before 2006 and even now questions whether the Wire Act could in fact apply to gambling on the internet.

OK, fine. It's up in the air. It's vague. But what happened in 2006? At that time, the United States rolled out the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which finally put the clamps down. This act made it illegal for financial institutions to serve the U.S. gambling community with respect to offshore gaming companies. Still, the law does not speak towards the actual legality of U.S. residents to gamble online. Therefore, things remained the same in terms of legality, but now more difficult for U.S. citizens to play. Still, when this latest act was officially enforced in 2007, it led to most public offshore gaming companies pulling out of the U.S. market.

To add one additional layer to this, several states (Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Louisiana) have all specifically banned unauthorized forms of online gambling--typically with the exception of horse racing--while Hawaii and Utah have banned all forms. Further legislation by some states attempted to incorporate technology to allow/disallow players based on player age and locale, but this never took off to amendment violations.

OK, so where does that leave me as U.S. resident itching to just play already? Well, all you really need to do is find a good, trustworty casino that passes integrity reviews (such as all casinos, sportsbooks, poker rooms and other gaming sites listed on Gamblera.com) and accepts credit cards and other online deposit methods from U.S. players. Typically these will be private companies as opposed to the public companies that pulled out to avoid the complications and hassles that the U.S. government has imposed on them via U.S. financial institution bans.

And we might add that you can make this work in any U.S. state you might live in (even those we listed with specific bans) because of the vagueness that still exists.

As for where to play as a U.S. resident, you nose around Gamblera.com, but here are a few quick answers:

For Online Casinos, Sportsbooks and Poker Rooms, go with these two world-class sites we love:

Bodog.com
Sportsbook.com