New Jersey Adds Internet Exclusion

In November, 2013, New Jersey became the third US state to permit gambling over the internet, following Nevada and Delaware, and the state expanded its self-exclusion program with options involving internet gambling. People on New Jersey's casino self-exclusion list automatically had their exclusion extended to internet gambling. This is in keeping with the fact that New Jersey's exclusion program does not currently allow, it seems, someone to exclude from casinos while maintaining the option to bet on the internet. The opposite configuration, where a person can exclude from the internet but not from the bricks-and-mortar casinos, is available in New Jersey, however.

New Jersey appears poised to alter its self-exclusion rules, which currently require self-excluders to confess to being a "problem gambler." There can be many motives to self-exclude, and not everyone who wants to self-exclude is a problem gambler. [I haven't checked, but my suspicion is that many jurisdictions have a similar admission required for their self-exclusion agreements. While I am engaging in uninformed speculation, I think that this language might have been thought important to provide legal protection for casinos attempting to enforce exclusion agreements. And if I can continue speculating wildly, the change in New Jersey law may have been sparked by some old fashioned journalism.]

Currently, only adults located within the state borders can engage in internet gambling. (This is true for all three of the states that currently offer legal internet gambling.) Some lawmakers in New Jersey are looking to alter that situation.

More Casino Exclusion Noncompliance

As effective as casino self-exclusion can be for combating pathological gambling, its implementation often leaves something to be desired: gamblers in some jurisdictions repeatedly enter casinos from which they have excluded without being removed. Recently, casinos in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been fined for allowing self-excluded individuals to gamble. The transgressive customer in New Jersey used aliases to set up frequent player accounts: thirteen of his fifteen aliases were spotted by the casinos, but two "worked." While the two New Jersey casinos were fined $10,000 each for allowing this self-excluded, pseudonymous person to gamble, they were "allowed to keep the more than $87,000 he lost while gambling there because they did not knowingly allow an excluded player to gamble, the commission said." The self-excluded generally are drawn from the pool of a casino's best customers.