Post by FTC Forum Administrator on 12/16/10 at 1:28pm
Well, it seems that websites that offer gaming for real money are not allowed to advertise on USA television. To get around this, poker or casino sites offer two different brands of their sites. The brands are separated by the .net and the .com Top Level Domain names. For example, pokerstars.net and pokerstars.com. Same company and ownership, but two different offerings. I believe Full Tilt and some other places have the same concept of branding created and currently used too. So, it is not just pokerstars that this applies to.
The .net site only offers poker action with play money chips and is labeled as an education and entertainment site. The .com site offers both play money games and real money games.
The sites are allowed to advertise their .net branded site on television networks like ESPN, the Travel Channel, Fox Sports, and NBC because they are technically not gambling sites. I guess, the idea is that people will migrate from the .net site or software to the .com site or software. Some people may directly go to the .com site instead of the .net site by mistake after seeing a commercial or event on TV. They may delay before going to the site, and not recall it was a .net and type .com. Of course there are other ways, such as this FTC site where they can learn about the .com brand site, and get free cash bonus too by making use of the banners here.
Basically, if you want to play real money and make real money deposit, you will need to install the .com version of the software, and probably need to uninstall the .net version of the software. If you make use of the banners on this site, you can typically get up to $600 or more in matching money or even some free money when making a cash deposit to play real money games.
For real money games:
Use ClubUWin Bonus Code PLAYFREE
No deposit needed. No Risk Play System.
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However, for the ClubUwin and Spade Club, you will not need to make a deposit to win real money. Their systems are totally different in that the games are based on allocated Tournament Points, and you have a cost of about $.50 USD per day ($20 and less per month), and you can win hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars $USD without any deposit or any risk of losing money or change in your monthly cost.