On a roll online

Everything clicking for Internet gambling as it tumbles toward the 10-year mark

It's a Friday night and Cory and Neil are on decent rolls on the roulette and blackjack tables.

The 25-year-olds (who didn't want their last names used) are a business graduate student and a law student, respectively, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither man knows or even notices the other.

They're not dressed the way you might think good gamblers would be -- fancy jeans and shiny, colorful club shirts, or business suits with gorgeous women on their arms.

Instead of a seafood buffet and a bar with high-end booze, Cory has an end table with chips, dip, pizza and a can of Miller Light. Neil isn't eating. There are no other gamblers or gawkers around him.

And their roulette and blackjack tables? They're confined to computer monitors in corners of their apartments.

Next year will mark the 10-year anniversary of online casinos. More than 5 million Americans have accounts with Internet gambling sites, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In 2005, the number of Web gamblers in the United States will reach about 7.4 million, according to the gambling analysts River City Group, which is based in St. Louis.

"The reason it's been so successful is that people are more comfortable with technology," said Cory Aronovitz, founder of the Chicago-based Casino Law Group. " . . . So more people are comfortable staying home to do their gaming."

Midwest concentration

And it appears that more people are "staying home" in the Midwest than in other parts of the country. Casino Fortune.com, one of the oldest online casinos, said its highest concentration of players -- more than 420,000 -- is spread among Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.

The GAO reported recently that 2003 online gambling revenue was more than $4 billion. Some estimates put the figure as high as $6.5 billion, a number partly due to the lack of overhead online, Aronovitz said.

Last year, a well-known online poker player who goes only by "Shawn" set a record by winning slightly more than $79,000 in a weekend marathon session on InterCasino.com, according to winneronline.com, a gambling news Web site.

Many Internet gamblers enjoy the same types of VIP treatment they'd get in land-based casinos.