If you have a Facebook account, you know that the games are a big deal. Especially games like Farmville, which is a Zynga game. Zynga also offers poker and a number of other companies offer slot games that you can play right on Facebook. But the problem is that these aren’t real money games. You can’t play casinos for real money on Facebook. At least not in the US. (In Asia, you can.)

But the news is out that Facebook wants to jump big into the gambling business in 2012. Now, they’ll be starting in places like the UK, where gambling laws are more relaxed than in the US. Okay, relaxed means — online gambling is actually licensed and regulated in the UK as opposed to the US where at this time, no one knows what the heck is going on*.  Zynga poker already boasts about 30 million players. And while those players can’t win real money on Zynga poker, they can spend real money. Player play for virtual chips with a small amount of free chips awarded each day. For more chips, players either have to win them or buy them. Yes, you buy fake chips with real credit card money and it’s perfectly legal because you can’t win anything. (Giving your money away isn’t gambling. Just stupid.) But the evidence seems to be there to support the idea that people would play for real money on Facebook.

Okay, did you know you can play top quality slots games for free at most online casinos and never have to purchase “fake chips” with your credit card?  All you need to do is open a practice account and start playing. They generally don’t ask for more than an email address. If you run out of fake chips, they GIVE you more. If you want to give them real money, they will give you real chips to play with. This is called gambling because you might actually win. On Facebook, you won’t.

*The DOJ has decided the Wire Act of 1961 only applies to sports betting, so in the US, we really have no idea where we stand on online gambling at the moment. That was the act people thought made online gambling illegal.