• Internet Gambling Approaches Tenth Anniversary

MILWAUKEE - It is a Friday night and Cory and Neil are on decent rolls on the roulette and blackjack tables. The 25-year-olds (who did not want their last names used) are a business graduate student and a law student, respectively, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither man knows or even notices the other. They are not dressed the way you might think good gamblers would be - fancy jeans and shiny, colorful club shirts, or business suits with gorgeous women on their arms. Instead of a seafood buffet and a bar with high-end booze, Cory has an end table with chips, dip, pizza and a can of Miller Light. Neil is not eating. There are no other gamblers or gawkers around him. And their roulette and blackjack tables? They are confined to computer monitors in corners of their apartments. Next year will mark the 10-year anniversary of online casinos. More than 5 million Americans have accounts with Internet gambling sites, according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. In 2005, the number of Web gamblers in the United States will reach about 7.4 million, according to the St. Louis-based gambling analysts River City Group. "The reason it's been so successful is that people are more comfortable with technology," said Cory Aronovitz, founder of the Chicago-based Casino Law Group. " ... So more people are comfortable staying home to do their gaming." [...]

> Read the full story here Source : Kentucky.com

• Slots Of Luck: The Internet Craze

The Internet is transforming the traditional image of the ‘one armed bandit’ and revolutionising the way people think about gambling. Online gaming has seen a recent explosion in popularity, driven predominantly by the poker craze, which has swept through Europe and America like wildfire this year. Hot on the heels of poker, and fast becoming the new game of choice for the savvy gamer is the ‘progressive jackpot’. Progressives are slot machines, which link a single game across a network of machines. A percentage of the money played on each machine throughout the network is added to a big jackpot, which grows and grows until it reaches dizzying heights, sometimes to over $1 million. When a player hits a certain combination, the progressive jackpot topples, and the player becomes instantly rich. But online progressive slots are far removed from the image of those hypnotized legions in Vegas, monotonously clanking the levers and feeding the ‘one armed bandits’ from their mountain of quarters, with glazed eyes and unchanging expressions. On the contrary, progressives are increasingly popular with people from all over the world, young and old alike, because, quite simply, they offer big money, good odds and low stakes. Many people are finding slot machines a viable alternative to other soft gambling pursuits such as bingo, or buying lottery tickets. Most progressives offer something approaching 98% payback, which means that, over time, the casino will have a 2% edge, but within this period percentages can vary widely and often rise to over 100% payback. Furthermore, stakes are low considering the size of the windfalls available, and are varied to suit all pockets, ranging from a few cents to around three dollars per play. They’re not like, for example, the roulette table where one might become seized with an uncontrollable urge to put their life savings on red! The new breed of online casino takes a responsible approach to gambling, and therefore will set limits on the amounts wagered and monitor excessive betting patterns. It’s this attitude which has helped progressives become a mainstream pastime, as the public are able trust online casinos and view them as safe and exciting places in which to stake a few dollars. Hannah Morante of Slotland told us: “Progressive slots are the thing at the moment, and it’s not only because they look great and there are so many different themes and variations. I think it’s because they’re fun and people know they can play and enjoy themselves without getting ripped-off.”

> Read the full story here Source : Press Release

• James Woods Hits The HollywoodPoker.com Red Carpet

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Some of Hollywood's biggest stars and professional poker players attended the virtual software premiere at the HollywoodPoker.com launch party this past Tuesday. The official release of this new cutting-edge gaming experience marks a new chapter in the poker craze that is sweeping the nation. HollywoodPoker.com delivers the excitement of big poker games, combined with the convenience of the Internet -- with a celebrity twist! Starting this week James Woods and Vince Van Patten will be online exclusively at HollywoodPoker.com playing real money games against poker players everywhere. Stay tuned -- we have all kinds of exciting things coming up, including your chance to attend an exclusive Hollywood Oscars party! HollywoodPoker.com's new online poker software features stunning graphics, real-time player chats and interaction, fast action and advanced security features -- all without having to download any software to your computer. This makes it perfect for playing at home, at the office, on your laptop at a Wi-Fi hotspot, or anywhere else with an Internet connection! [...]

> Read the full story here Source : Biz.Yahoo.com

• Report On The 3rd Annual European I-gaming Congress

We're one week beyond the 3rd annual European I-gaming Congress, and the jetlag has dissipated, so all that's left to do is reflect on the week that was. In the last installment of the Chair, I shared some thoughts on U.K. policy and DDOS attacks. In part two of a three part series of EIG observations, we move on to mobile gambling, the Virgin empire and the Gambelli debate. M-Commerce? Not Really After assuring delegates that the U.K. Gambling Bill will one day become a reality, British MP John Greenway on Wednesday offered his take on where the I-gaming industry is headed, and the biggest area of expansion, he said, will be the mobile space. Marcus Wareham, chief executive of Mfuse Ltd., concurred during his presentation on the market potential for mobile gambling and used the U.K. market as a prime example of growth potential. Wareham pointed out that there are 50 million gamblers in the United Kingdom and that 80 percent of them have already used mobile services. He also alluded to the ambitions of the National Lottery, which debuted its first mobile games in October and plans to launch more. Wareham identified three hurdles the mobile gambling industry must overcome to realize its potential: establishing an effective age verification process; making consumers aware that they can gamble using their mobile phones; and creating viable systems for micro-payments (both into and out of user accounts). The concept of mobile payment was incidentally one of the main focuses of a very thorough lecture given Monday by Thomas Kenny of tecbet on payment processing for I-gaming services. Overall, Kenny said, there really is no true m-commerce solution for I-gaming because mobile payments are still anchored to existing Internet channels. He said that one possible non-Internet solution is SIMPAY, which enables SIM cards to create what amounts to a mobile currency. But the rollout of this product has been pushed back several times. The current projected release date is early 2005, but as Kenny says, "Don't hold your breath." He also said that prepaid scratch cards could be an interesting option, but he doesn't expect any such solution to be widely available in the near future. For now, he concluded, mobile gambling is stuck with online payment solutions. [...]

> Read the full story here Source : IGamingNews.com

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