Slots! Blackjack! Dice! Cards!
You don't need to visit Vegas to gamble the night away. The Internet has plenty of places to play high roller.
But before you look for gambling on the Internet, make sure you stay legal.
There are many sites on the Web that allow you to gamble with play money. They're either an individual's programming project or a commercial venture's attempt to attract viewers for ads.
Then there's the real gambling sites, the ones that want a credit card number at the door and allow you to buy ''tokens'' or ''chips'' or ''credits'' or another euphemism for gambling with real cash.
Before I say anything more about real gambling on the Internet, I should mention a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the Minnesota attorney general against a Las Vegas Internet firm that planned to create an online sports betting parlor.
While the company claims that its service is legal, the attorney general says such activity is covered by federal law prohibiting ''a wire communication facility for the transmission in interstate or foreign commerce of bets and wagers.'' The lawsuit charged the company with fraud for saying in ads that such betting is legal. (The company now is running the service from a computer bulletin board in Belize.)
Carolyn Ham, an assistant Minnesota attorney general, said Internet gambling violates the spirit of Minnesota law, federal law and laws in many states. But the rise of gambling sites will force new lawsuits to prohibit such activity. And the feds have been slow to react.
''Clearly a federal case would be better, but if there's a vacuum, the states will act,'' Ms. Ham said. Her office has been working with the U.S. Department of Justice and National Association of Attorneys General to clarify the language in current gambling laws to specifically target Internet gambling.
Many Internet gambling parlors operate outside the United States, but that doesn't mean it's legal for an Internet user in the United States to gamble online. The gambler is the one breaking the law.
Having said all that, perhaps gambling with play money is a good way to learn about ''house odds'' - why casinos get rich and amateur gamblers do not. Here are some sites that let you try your luck at casino games without emptying your pockets:
Lotteries: Doug's Lotto Page (http://www.missouri.edu/~c639692/lotto.html) lets you play endless Pick 1, Pick 2 and Pick 3 games against a random number generator.
State lotteries are big business, and you can track the results of 38 state games and the multi-state Powerball games at InterLotto (http://www.interlotto.com). The site also includes links to pages on even more state lotteries.
Slots: There are several interactive slot machines online. Slot Mania!!! (http://slots.inetwave/com) allows you to play four different slot machine games. (Since the games are run from a CGI script, they tend to be somewhat slow.)
If you have a fast Internet connection and a browser with Shockwave, visit the Rock & Roll slot machine (http://www.cni.inc.com/slot.html) to try your luck. You start with $25, and it lasts quite a while on this machine. (The slots game is a showpiece for the company's Web work.) Variations of this slot machine can be found at other sites.
Cards: You can play four-deck blackjack at Blackjack Emporium (http://game-genie.nvc.cc.ca.us/cgi-bin/bjp), at Blackjack on the WWW (http://www.web-source.com/blackjack/) or at BlackJack Time (http://test.blackjacktime.com). Those are just three of almost a dozen sites available. Poker can be found at Tiffany Video Poker (http://tiffany.indirect.com/cgi-bin/poker), at Draw 5 Poker (http://www.i5.com/cgi-bin/draw5) or at Net Poker (http://www.libertynet.org/~consult/poker/).
Here's a unique gambling idea: bet on ideas. At the Idea Futures site (http://if.arc.ab.ca), you can join a betting pool on an eclectic collection of scientific and technical issues. Some are understandable (''150-250 MHz Pentium by 20Feb97''); others are tongue-in-cheek (''OS/2 is killed before 1997''; ''IBM abandons OS/2 by 3096''). Many are obscure. A disclaimer says ''this is not real money.''
Charles Brewer can be sent e-mail at CBrewer@enquirer.com.