Joe T. was at the end of his rope. In under an hour, he’d burned through $350 at an online casino. The previous week, he’d lost $400, after which he promised himself he’d quit gambling online forever. It wasn’t the first time he’d promised to quit, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Might government intervention save Joe (and millions of other online gamblers) from their own obsession?

　　Many politicians in America seem determined to protect gamblers from themselves by cutting off their access to online casinos. But because the majority of online casinos are fly-by-night operations located in foreign countries, sending in the FBI is out of the question. So, rather than trying to shut down the casinos directly, the government is making sure they can’t get paid.

　　Joe used to pay the casinos with his credit cards but, under pressure from the government, major credit card companies are cutting the casinos off. Online payment services like Paypal are also reluctantly getting out of the online gambling business.

　　But with revenues of around $3.5 billion a year, much of it from America, online casinos are unlikely to give up without a fight. For ever law that’s passed to curtail online gambling, two mew methods are devised to allow people like Joe to keep playing. Off-shore accounts and per-paid cash cards are just two ways by which gamblers can keep the government off their back, and Americans can keep gambling beyond the long arm of the law. So while it’s impossible to know what’s really in the cards for the industry, few are betting that it will go away anytime soon. The stakes are just too high.