"Coming to a Cell Phone Near You. Online Gambling."

At the present time Minnesota lawmakers are debating as to whether or not they should allow more cities within the state to legalize gambling. This includes the cities of Canterbury Park and the city of Bloomington. At the same time gambling is nevertheless, already heading their way, legalized or not. Now that mobile gambling is available, Minnesota residents, or for that matter, the residents of any other state, can now just pick up their cell phone, download the software for a casino-style game, and begin wagering real money.

But since the state of Minnesota or any other state, will not be collecting any of the revenue generated from mobile gambling, they are suffering a major drawback. There is yet another drawback to mobile gambling or gambling over a cellular phone, and that is the ease and convenience with which gambling over the cell phone may be carried out. This in principle makes it too easy for people with gambling addictions, or people with potential gambling addictions, to feed their habit.

With this new mobile service, players can play just about anywhere at anytime. It is a new program offered by PokerRooms.com. This program lets players into games by just dialing in with a cell phone. Up to this point however, PokerRooms.com has only offered Texas Hold’em poker and slot machines. But Ira Gladnipuff of PokerRooms.com, says that this is slated to change in the future.

Although it is only now just starting to become popular in the United States, mobile gambling has been available in Europe for some time. Industry analysts are predicting that it will become increasingly popular. It is for sure that those who enjoy gambling in casinos or over the Internet will certainly be drawn to mobile gambling. Still, there is a new breed of gamblers that mobile gambling will also attract. We are talking about those gamblers who have never set foot inside a casino to gamble. Actually their first experience in gambling is through the use of a cell phone. Brian Dooley of CNET claims that gambling satisfies the more personal feature of gambling. The way that he explains it is that cell phones are personal just as gambling is personal. These two are combined together in the consumer’s mind, he explains. Dooley sees it as the next big thing. He also refers to mobile gambling as like having a casino in your pocket.

When we look at the projected totals for future dollar expenditures on mobile gambling we can easily answer the question as to whether or not it can be considered as being the next big thing. The figure for expenditures on mobile gambling by 2009 comes to no less than to close to twenty billion dollars. Players will be given the opportunity to bet anywhere from fifty cents to three hundred dollars a hand. Another factor that makes the future look rosy is the issue of the illegal status of online and mobile gambling which is really more of a non-issue. This is because it is generally accepted that the legal authorities in the U.S. do not have the drive or resources to go after individual gamblers.