The high price of gas is forcing us to do a lot of things at home. One of them is play at an online casino. Casino revenues are down for 2008, and it’s mainly because people don’t have as much disposable income as they did a year ago. Instead of going to Vegas or driving to the local casino, players are playing online poker at home and saving a few bucks as they do it.

Playing online is already cheaper than a live game, when you include bonuses and time you save not having to drive to the casino. Not to mention that the action is faster and the options are limitless as far as getting into a game of your choice.

Maybe casinos will start mailing out gas cards to VIP’s to get people to come back. They’ll have to do something – perhaps a car service that will pick you up and take you home.

Michael Jackson’s famed Neverland Ranch has been purchased by Colony Capital Group, and rumor has it that the theme park may be transformed into a gaming resort. Colony owns Hiltons in both Vegas and Atlantic City, and their intention of purchasing the ranch could be to convert it to a casino.

It is a ready-made park with a zoo, Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, wave swinger, super slide, zipper, spider, sea dragon, dragon wagon kiddie roller coaster and bumper cars. The notoriety of the ranch will attract many people, but there’s one issue that’s flawed with this idea, if indeed Colony Capital Group is planning to attempt to bring a casino to Santa Barbara County, California.

The State of California doesn’t hand out gaming licenses like they do in Nevada. Rural land is not available for development, and Santa Barbara County is known for stopping developers looking to make a quick buck.

Recent studies show that the future of online casinos continues to be bright. Online casinos are on the top of the list of topics that are being searched for on internet search engines like Google and Yahoo. This means that more people are searching for online casinos and casino information than ever before.

The opening up of China has introduced a large new gaming market to the global industry, and areas like Europe and Australia continue to grow interest in online casinos, sports books and poker rooms.

Online casinos have improved a great deal over the last couple of years, and players can find great deals and loose odds online much easier than in traditional casinos. Games are better and more easily accessed, and the security of online casinos is monitored and controlled. Once the US market is regulated, the industry will have another evolution that will make it even more popular.

A new study at Harvard University has shown that around 5% of online casino bettors show signs of problem gambling. That’s five times the amount as compared to a study that shows that only 1% of sports bettors become problematic gamblers. This information is being used to help launch an automatic warning system for online players.

The name of the study is “Stability and Progression of Disordered Gambling: Lessons from Longitudinal Studies”, and was published in the January 2008 issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. It was primarily funded by the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NCRG). The NCRG is an American non-profit organization.

The study also showed that addicted players will move back and forth between healthy and disordered states. Debi LaPlante, Ph.D., and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School said, “As researchers learn more about the course of the disorder, health care providers can develop better tailored treatment plans.”