VegasChatter

On the legal side, it seems as if Nevada will see lawful online poker later this year, with the rest of the country sometime after. We are guessing that Nevada will be a guinea pig to work out the kinks for the rest of the country.

With legal hoops appearing to be cleared, it looks as if the game providers (see above) are preparing for the eventual approval of legal online gambling. Last week, slot maker IGT purchased Double Down Interactive, a developer of casino-style Facebook games that don’t involve any actual gambling. The purchase may be inroads to Facebook but, regardless, this move will give IGT quick access to creative people with the minds to build their online gambling centers.

Going deeper into online gambling today, Zynga announced that they're "investigating several opportunities, and (are) in talks with several partners about gambling on the Internet." Zynga already has Zynga Poker on Facebook which has more than 7 million people anteing up, every day. Last year, they dabbled with a live poker tournament at Palms and seem ready to jump on board the legal gambling train.

All of this talk makes the future of online gambling look bright. Of course, when the government is involved, things usually move pretty slow so don't expect anything legal outside of Vegas until the end of the year, at the earliest. We're hoping that once online poker is legal nationally, sports betting will get its turn but that's way down the line. For the time being, we'll look for a little legal online poker in our future and go from there.