Online Casino News - Gambling News

No matter what type of game you enjoy playing, poker, slots or sports online betting, it is always best to know the inside scoop on how to stay safe.  Helping to educate lawmakers, the Remote Gaming Association (RGA) recently finished producing a video that demonstrates how the online gambling industry works to protect players. It is a five minute video that aims to provide insight into how online casinos are able to provide safe and fair online gambling environments, according to RGA Chief, Clive Hawkswood. Specifically, the video showcases technologies that are used to protect and encrypt personal information, including financial details, as well as preventing problem and underage gambling.

Unveiled to commemorate Responsible Gambling Awareness Day (that’s today, October 19th), the video has not been published online as of yet, but is expected to be available for view in the coming days or near future. If anything, it will also serve to inform players who are new to online gambling, as well as affiliates and partner sites advertising and promoting online casinos.

So take a peek and stay up-to-date.

Here are some of the most common slang terms for Texas Hold’em Poker hands:

A-A – American Airlines, bullets, pocket rockets
A-K – Big Slick, Machine Gun (AK-47), Anna Kournikova
A-Q – Little Slick, Mrs. Slick, Catch of the Day, Doyle Brunson
A-J – Ajax, Blackjack, Apple Jacks, Jack Ass, Apple Juice
K-K – Cowboys, Penn and Teller, Elvis Presley, King Kong
K-Q – Marriage, Royalty
K-J – Kojak, King John
K-9 – Canine, The Animal
Q-Q – Dames, Divas, Ladies, The Hilton Sisters, Siegfried & Roy
Q-J – Maverick, Oedipus Rex
Q-10 – Q-Tip,Varkonyi
Q-7: Computer Hand
Q-3 – A San Francisco Busboy
J-J – Jokers, Hooks, Fishhooks,
J-9 – T.J. Cloutier.
J-7: Jack Daniel’s
J-5 – Jackson Five, Motown
J-4 – Flat tire
10-10 – Rin Tin Tin
10-8 – Rosary, Hail Mary
10-5 – Five and dime
10-4: Good Buddy, Over and Out, Roger That
10-2 – Doyle Brunson
9-9 – Meat Hooks, Wayne Gretzky, German Virgin
9-8 – Oldsmobile
9-6 – Dinner for Two, Big Lick
9-5 – Dolly Parton
9-4 – Gold Rush, San Francisco
8-8 – Snowmen, Octopuses, Little Oldsmobile
7-7 – Hockey Sticks, Walking Sticks, Sunset Strip
7-6 – Philadelphia, Union Oil
7-5 – Pickle Man, Heinz, Ketchup
7-4 – Double Down, Blackjack Hand
7-3 – Hachem
7-2 – The Hammer, Beer Hand
6-6 – Route 66, Pocket Buddies
6-5 – Retirement, Jägermeister
5-5 – Nickels, Presto, Speed Limit
5-4 – Jesse James, Colt 45, Moneymaker
4-4 – Sailboats, Midlife Crisis
4-3 – George W. Bush
4-2 – Lumberman’s hand, Bill Clinton
3-3 – Crabs, Larry Bird
3-2 – Michael Jordan, Can of Corn, Hooter Hand, Mississippi Slick
2-2 – Ducks, Swans, Sleepers

Do you got the sports betting smarts?  Well, ProjectPointSpread.com is a new sports prediction website, has launched a marketplace for buying and selling sports knowledge giving sports fans a new opportunity to profit from their predictions. ProjectPointSpread isn’t your typical office pool website. Sports fans can now make picks on their favorite games, get ranked against the community, and also buy and sell predictions with other members. The site quietly launched at the beginning of the football season and has been in live beta for the past 3 months.

According to Founder and CEO, Jeff Wayne, the company has developed a next generation platform for aggregating and measuring fan predictions as well as a peer-to-peer marketplace for trading sports picks. “For the first time sports fans can quantify their expertise and profit from their sports knowledge. We rank every member by sport, league, conference, and individual team so fans can find experts for every game that’s played.”

In addition to the marketplace, ProjectPointSpread aggregates the predictions of all its members to publish a Fan Consensus Report for every game, a “wisdom of crowds” approach to odds making. Sports fans around the country can now test their skills against each other and against the consensus of the community. The company plans to offer prediction games for all major sports and says its business model is designed to monetize its audience through advertising, a subscription service, and trading fees.

I don’t bet sports often but I did find this site fascinating.

The first ever casino in Rwanda, Casino Kigali, failed to open as promised due to what insiders call unforeseen delays, The New Times has learnt. Casino Kigali which will be located at Top Tower Hotel in Kacyiru was supposed to open on October 21.

Sources close to the venture but who preferred anonymity, say that the Casino which will operate under Lotto Rwanda, from the opening was delayed by unfinished work at the building where it will be located.

The Director General of Lotto Rwanda, Philip Brizoua, had earlier on told the press that the opening of the new casino was among the many innovations that they are bringing in the gaming arena.

However, in spite of the fact that they failed to launch the casino, Top Tower Hotel ‘silently’ opened that very day. Until yesterday, work on the first floor of Top Tower hotel where the casino is located was still going on but there was no sign of gaming tables.

Some of the workers already employed who declined to be identified said that the delay to open on time was caused by late shipment of equipment from oversees.

“We are sure of opening soon though we have been delayed because of some equipment that have not yet been cleared, but we are sure this is a temporary setback,” said an employee who preferred anonymity.

When The New Times contacted the management of Casino Kigali, the person in charge refused to give any comment saying that it was not for him to comment on the current situation.

Also attempts to speak to the Director General of Lotto Rwanda were unsuccessful by the time of going to press as he did not pick up his phone.  I can’t even begin to consider the corruption that will go on in this casino project.  These seem more like the problems you can have with online betting.

A casino that could be one of the top employers in Carson City can build the city’s biggest hotel and tallest building as part of its resort project, the planning commission said Wednesday.

Las Vegas-based Golden Gaming Inc. got permission to build the $100 million Sierra Gold on 4.5 acres at the corner of Highway 50 East and the Carson City freeway. It will have a 100,000-square-foot casino, an eight-story, 220-room hotel and stand 118 feet tall, passing the 110-foot Ormsby House. It also got permission from the commission for a 44-foot-tall sign, a 700-space car garage and heavy water use.

The city board of supervisors has to also approve the project before work can start. Amy Sances, director of business development for Golden Gaming, said the casino will be “iconic” and a “perfect project” for Carson City, employing about 1,000 full- and part-time workers.

The Carson City School District and the Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center both employee more than 1,000 workers.

Sances said the company, which runs casinos in Colorado and Pahrump and taverns throughout the state including Sparky’s in Carson City, will start on design and engineering work, but she doesn’t know yet when building will start. It’s been working with the city for about a year and a half now, she said.

The commission unanimously approved the company’s requests, but Commissioner Craig Mullet said he was concerned about the parking garage. The garage will be built in the first of two phases, but Mullet said he wants the company to spread out building the garage over two phases so there wouldn’t be unnecessary space if the project is delayed.

This project is very important for the continued growth in this local.

One of the older and most well-established online gambling websites in the market, the Royal Vegas, is reportedly ready to be reopened, after an extensive ‘make-over’ – announced the corporation which owns the brand, the Fortune Lounge Group. The site and its casino software has undergone a complete transformation – but still retain its classy, respected feel, which players over the years have come to enjoy – making the Royal Vegas online casino one of the most successful and well-established online sites.

I am not sure it is up to par with the leading online casinos but it is heading in the right direction. The new look for the casino is set to increase the feel of ‘royalty’, alongside the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas – updating the casino for a really modern and vibrant feel. It is hoped that this new look will encourage the expansion of this already popular casino. Added to this, the casino will celebrate its transformation with a set of bonuses and deals offered to both new and existing customers – meaning that the new look benefits not just Royal Vegas, but its loyal clientele as well.

The company that owns Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, Tokwiro Enterprises, has finally made a statement regarding their investigation of a cheating scandal that took place a few months ago via the administrative back-end. While claiming to have rectified the matter by compensating players and enacting new security measures to keep such a thing from happening again, Ultimate Bet has still refrained from naming the guilty party’s.

For anybody unfamiliar with this story, a handful of suspicious players started taking note of some uncanny poker playing, and with no help from Ultimate Bet, began investigating the matter on their own. After enough prying and evidence, Ultimate Bet confessed that several super-user accounts had been created to access the software platform for viewing other players cards.

What makes the entire situation even more slimy is the fact that Tokwiro Enterprises also manages Absolute Poker, which had a cheating scandal of their own not too long back. The company’s owner, Joe Norton, who happens to be the former Grand Chief of the Kahnawake Indian tribe (yep, the same tribe that operates the Kahnawake Gaming Commission), has indeed made it clear that management is “outraged” about this scandal, namely because the illicit software used to facilitate the cheating was placed on the Ultimate Bet software platform servers prior to Tokwiro acquiring the site from its former owners.

So while Tokwiro is attempting to put the blame elsewhere and is not taking responsibility for the fact that they were not adequately monitoring player accounts, nobody goes to jail and everything is honky dory once again. Just like in the Absolute Poker scandal, the people responsible for opening the fake user accounts (19 total, with 88 associated usernames), have not been named.  If these companiens want to earn back players trust there are going to have to be a lot more transparent in their efforts.

The online gaming industy is so competititve these day that companies like PartyGaming are straining to match sign-up bonuses and tournament prize money offered by its aggressive online poker competitors in Europe, the company said recently.

The Gibraltar-based gambling group has reined back elements of spending on retaining clients, but a bitter price war has kept the cost of player recruitment high.  “Strong competition - particularly from poker sites that continue to accept US players - has led to an increase in bonuses and costs associated with some of our poker tournaments,” PartyGaming said in a statement.

Like most poker sites, PartyGaming pulled out of the US in October 2006 after the introduction of tough new anti-online gambling laws. The London-listed company lost three quarters of its business when it retreated from America, and overnight Europe became its largest market.

A handful of private operators, led by PokerStars and Full Tilt, continue to operate in the US, which is still believed to represent close to half the global market for online poker. They avoid the attentions of the Department of Justice because they have no assets or operations in America.

PartyGaming believes these firms are using the scale of their US player base to fund promotions around the globe, particularly targeting market share gains in Europe. A price war is focused on incentives to attract large numbers of cash players sites. High player numbers, in turn, attract the most big players - the top 10%, known as “sharks”, who generate about three quarters of income

All the above is great news for us, the customers because in the battle for our gambling dollars we will receive more and more value.

Welcome to my gambling news blog.  There is so much going on these days in the online casino industry that it can be hard to stay on top of it all.  That is where we come in, visit us a couple of times a week to catch up on the hottest blackjack, poker, bingo and other gambling news.