Unlike sports betting, online casino gambling remained illegal in Illinois, and Jason wasn’t sure if the online games he was playing were legal or not. “Being able to just sit in bed and go on my phone and gamble made it almost impossible to stop.” But, he added, “I didn’t have to explain where I was or anything like that. “I could do everything you could do at a casino on my phone,” he said. By comparison, his phone allowed him to be “100 percent plugged in” from anywhere, without people asking questions. The casinos, he came to believe, were less efficient-“too much non-gambling time,” he said-and led to questions about where he had been. Soon enough, however, he preferred online gambling.
