As an ex-online gambling junkie, here's my two cents on this subject:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by burgerwars:
What I did is open the account, and then use a virtual account number I created on Citibank's website. In just "registering" the card, their website rejected it.</font>
Virtually all U.S.-based credit card companies refuse to do business with online casinos any more, so any credit card you use is likely to get rejected. Even PayPal has now announced that it will no longer do business with online casinos. The online gambling industry has now created a bunch of third-party banking entities (such as NETTELLER) that you can use, but I have no idea how reliable they are. Personally, if I were to take up this habit again, I'd send the casino a money order up front, and avoid giving them any personal banking information.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by StarGoldmember:
Taking this into account, I'd say this is not a good deal. I usually equate the value of one point at one-cent, meaning 2,000 points is about equal to $20 USD. I think all (online) casinos are pretty much guaranteed to give zero-return, so you're trading apples for apples.</font>
Actually, if you run the $20 through the blackjack, craps or video poker games and play intelligently, you should ON AVERAGE get $18 or $19 back, making the cost of your 2,000 points just $1 or $2. But, of course, there is a chance that you could run through the whole $20 wad. On the other hand, you could walk away with 2,000 points AND $1,000 of Intercasino's money. (I once hit a royal flush on an online casino, and they sent me my $1,000 cheerfully and relatively quickly.) That's the fun of it.
I'd suggest exercising a lot of discipline if you decide to get into this. Online gambling has wrecked a lot of lives (not mine, fortunately), and one of the reasons the credit card companies no longer do business with them is that they got sued by several people for "letting" them use their credit cards to gamble so much money on the Internet.
Also keep in mind that the state of the law on Internet gambling is pretty vague at the federal level (several attempts to explicitly make Internet gambling a federal crime have been unsuccessful), but many state laws are pretty specific about prohibiting this type of gambling. I know of no instance where an individual, low-level gambler was ever prosecuted, but I decided I didn't want to take the chance, which is why I finally quit.