Kentucky seized more than 140 domain names that belong to online casinos and poker rooms last Tuesday at the behest of Thomas Wingate, Franklin County Circuit Court Judge. It was done after a suit against the sites was filed by the Public Safety Cabinet of Kentucky.

Steve Beshear, state governor, announced the suit at a press conference at the beginning of last week. The suit claims these online sites to block access to the state’s citizens or relinquish their domain names ownership to the Kentucky commonwealth.

Among the named sites are a number of outstanding casino gambling sites, such as Bodoglife.com, Fulltiltpoker.com and Doylesroom.com. Though, the suit is careful about sites which are subsidiaries of lawful establishments such as Twinspires.com owned by the Churchill Downs.

But at the moment the House of Representatives of the USA considers the Payment System Protection Act. If it were passed, it would undercut the suit of Kentucky by letting payment systems used for online gambling operate lawfully.

Kentucky is the first state that successfully brought action against internet casino gambling sites and took control of privately held domain names on lawful grounds.

Some consider Kentucky’s actions hypocritical, because the state support continuously horse racing and Beshear lobbies gambling for a long time. In 2007 Beshear proposed amendment to Kentucky constitution that would make land casino operation legal in the state. At that time, he claimed the $500 million in yearly tax revenue that casino operations could raise.

But Beshear does not consider the current suit to contradict his platform.
The European Union has already decried Wingate’s judgment as violating international trade agreements.

One of the most famous and attended poker sites, PKR poker is hosting the Oktoberfest celebration. The poker site hosts the Oktoberfest for the second year. The celebration is starting on 17 October, 2008 after PKR’s Super Series and PKR poker is offering participants of the celebration over $260,000 in prizes.

There will be 12 events that will last twelve days on the PKR’s available poker rooms. A PKR Masters and a Tournament of Champions event will crown the celebration. The top ranked players from the Oktoberfest series will gather together at the Tournament of Champions event in order to win $5,000 and the champion title. Neil Wright, card room manager at PKR, says that the last festival was very successful, and it will be larger and better this year. They expect to achieve the largest prize pool ever in the PKR Masters event.

This year the Oktoberfest prize pool is a $260,000 that is nearly twice bigger than the guaranteed prize in the 2007 Oktoberfest. Players will compete in their favorite games for a part of the prize pool. The events are purposely designed to suit players of different skill levels and bankrolls. Moreover, there will be speed and deep stack tournaments that are scattered throughout the Oktoberfest schedule. According to one of PKR’s press releases, there will also be Terminator and bounty tournaments.

Players interested in the event can play in satellite tournaments for all the events. The variety of satellite events is huge, giving everyone a chance to win a seat in the tournament schedule. Furthermore, players will be able to take part in lotteries as an additional way to win a seat in the Oktoberfest.

While the UIGEA is being debated about if it is illegal, some online casinos have taken matters into their own hands. The new Cherry Red Casino has been released. Cherry Red Casino is the sister casino of Rushmore Casino. It is built on the same platform as its sister and it has been improved a lot. Moreover, Cherry Red Casino accepts players from different countries including American citizens with open arms.

The design of the website is sophisticated and the graphics are stunning. The new site is decorated in a warm dark red creating a classy feel that appeals to cash gamers and high rollers alike. According to the recent reviews, Cherry Red is beating its sister site in the sophistication department. The website provides its players with online slots, progressive jackpot games with payouts counting in the high six figures in blackjack, craps, roulette, and video poker. The tables resemble real tables in a land casino.

To play at this new casino one must register a cash account and download the software or may play the instant play which does not require download. RTG powers the casino software. Real Time Gaming is among the oldest and highly respected online gambling software developers. There were very few problems since the site launch and it is performing great above expected levels.

The site gives new players the opportunity to earn $777 as free bonus money. It is given to players who have made an initial deposit up to $377. There are terms and conditions applying to the bonuses and the way gamblers are allowed to withdraw their funds. Also there are weekly bonuses, slots promotions and blackjack promotions.

Nowadays, almost every internet casino offers some slots tournament. Regardless of the fact whether it is a weekend tourney or weekday free roll, without any doubt slots tournaments are very popular with gamblers and online casinos do everything possible to accommodate. It is the classic adage of demand and supply. If sufficient number of gamblers expresses interest or we may say “demand”, then the internet casinos will of course follow suit. Moreover, land casino slots tournaments have long been popular with dedicated players.

But taking into consideration endless amount of the online tournaments, it is quite a difficult task to distinguish the most fortunate tournaments of the list. And whereas it is impossible to say what tournament is absolutely the best one, there are a number of tournaments that are distinguishes from the majority. One of the casinos that is in the list of the casinos with the best tournaments is Rich Reels Casino.

Recently Rich Reels has announced its Free Roll Private Tournaments, offering various jackpots. Lots of tournaments last only 5 minutes, whereas others continue for many days. Thus, any player can definitely find a wide range of tournaments to select from with Rich Reels Casino.

As regards the free roll tourneys, they apparently happen round the clock. Every listed tournament has a live countdown timer giving signal when the tournament starts and ends. There is not any entry fee to play. The only money you may have to spend is on “continue coins”, that worth only $2 for a reload.

Rich Reels is powered by Microgaming and audited by the eCOGRA.

Cryptologic, one of the top online software providers, is being greeted by the European iGaming Congress and Expo (EiG) organizers, and online casino gambling industry professionals. Maybe, instigated by the restructuring of the company and moving to Ireland, let alone certain repercussions that were caused by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, Cryptologic has really been taking a backstage approach to its marketing activities.

According to Brian Hadfield, CEO at Cryptologic, all this is about to change. Hadfield himself is scheduled to be present at a panel conference “The Software Suppliers Speak” at the expo. You may just guess what all the “speaking” will result in, but many are sure that there will be some important issues. The international leading online software providers including Cryptologic are the movers and shakers of the online gaming industry itself.

Cryptologic is not restraining itself in the least bit with their revived energy, and their availability at EiG will be fully omnipresent. The company will act as a famous sponsor for the expo that is very possibly one of the most significant in the gambling industry. Targeting the expanding betting market of Europe, EiG is a breeding site for software developers, online casino operators, marketers, affiliates and also tech companies.

EiG started on 23 September and has finished today. All the activities have been going down at the Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona in Spain, with headquarters at the Hilton Diagonal Mar. Clarion Gaming is the organizer of the event. Straightway after EiG from 25 September through 28 September the premier affiliate convention CAP Euro is taken place. The convention is hosted by Casino Affiliate Programs.

In spite of the fact that Kentucky governor is pro-gambling, he is seeking a method to ban over 140 gambling sites that are operating in the state at the moment. The state of Kentucky is one of the biggest horse racing states. Steve Beshear, Governor, has asked a judge of Franklin County Court to give the state control over online 141 gambling site domain names trying to limit the state residents’ access to these sites. He is making an attempt to block sites which include the highly popular casino gambling sites, for example bodoglife.com, fulltiltpoker.com, and doylesroom.com. The hearing in the court is scheduled for 25 September, 2008. Kentucky is the first state that is trying to block an online casino gambling by taking over internet domain names matching gambling sites.

Beshear calls online casino gambling sites ‘leeches on the communities’. According to Beshear, they differ from land casinos in the US since they do not pay tax revenues, do not provide jobs and do not bring tourism benefits. He is sure that by blocking online gambling websites Kentucky will preserve its signature industry. The state is famous for the Kentucky Derby, one of the largest horse races in the USA, and there is a lottery in the state and it permits gambling at horse tracks and also in bingo halls.

Online casino gambling sites siphon money off legal and regulated games like Kentucky’s purebred racing industry, lottery, and also charitable gaming activities. Nobody has ever estimated the amount of money which Kentucky is losing to internet gambling, but Beshear considers residents are spending millions online.

Online gambling proponents think that Beshear’s move is very ill-conceived and very disappointing since online poker sites targeted in the total ban don’t violate any state or federal law.

Online casinos and poker rooms are always seaching for new ways to make easier for their players to play at many sites. One of such ways is to offer multiple e-wallet sites. One of the first online poker sites to offer their players UKashout is Chili Poker. UKashout is a MasterCard endorse prepaid card parented by UKash. UKashOut should make the payouts for players quicker and easier. Of course, Chili Poker members are eager to try out this new payment method.

UKashOut is a state-of-the-art payment method. UKashOut will let players access their funds quickly and easily irrespective of as the funds were deposited on the online account. With UKashOut online poker rooms have no need to issue expensive checks, bank transfers and other more payment methods.

The gaming operators will directly issue the UKashOut card for the players. The players will be able to select the amount of money they want to withdraw from their account and it is credited to the card at once. Then the player can withdraw his money from an ATM or used at any place where MasterCard is accepted all over the world. First Chili Poker will issue their cards for their VIP consumers for free. There are high rollers who play at the online poker site in thirty countries. By adding the UKashOut card to their portfolio, Chili Poker hopes to attract new players and increase the retention ratio of their customer base. The UKashOut cards use the advanced UKash integration system that makes the adoption process simpler. The websites that want to go to this option should just add a technical interface and managed service on the site backside activities.

UKashOut is expected to be used by other online poker sites which are seeking different and more efficient payment methods.

In November Titan Poker, online casino poker site will host the European Championship of Online Poker for the third time. This year championship is expected to be better and bigger than two preceding years and those who participate in the online tournament get the opportunity to get $4.15 million in guaranteed prizes. The championship is scheduled to last for two weeks.

The Titan Poker ECOOP of 2007 lasted only ten days and guaranteed prize pools was made up of $2.5 million. The winner of the World Championship of Online Poker was ‘wkllkllu’ who won a prize of $220,000 as he took first place in this online poker tournament.

Titan Poker held the second ECOOP this May and it was also ten days long. The poker championship had a range of various poker games and mini-tournaments. The guaranteed prize pool first was $2.5 million and then it grew up to $3.6 million. World’s top online poker gamblers took part in the second ECOOP. ‘Jeanss89’ won the main event; he earned an ECOOP bracelet, one of the popular prizes in the poker world and $415,000.

The third ECOOP will again feature a lot of tournaments for gamblers to get pleasure from while they are competing to earn part of the $4.15 million guaranteed prize pool. A Titan Poker spokesperson said the tournament lasted 14 days thus additional Titan Poker gamblers could ‘show their skill and play to get the sensational reward’. The ECOOP III is scheduled to be held from 24 November through 7December, 2008.

US Congress has taken another step in relation to the online gambling that maybe make those who play online a little bit happier than the players were before. Congressmen passed a bill relieving life of US financial institutions concerning the online gambling ban. The House Committee on Financial Services approved The Payments System Protection Act. And now the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury will work together with the Attorney General in order to appoint an Administrative Law Judge, the aim of this all is to define what are unlawful internet gambling activities and what are not. They will conduct an economic study on compliance costs. After this bill had been passed the implementation of regulations for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act were delayed. It means the regulations will not put into force till it is clear what are legal online transactions.

Congress also approved an amendment to the bill which obliges federal regulators to issue the latest regulations to financial institutions within 60 days of enactment. The amendment blocks all online gambling bets for a while excluding the bets put on dog and horse races, and jai-lai games. The Department of Treasury will also be required to make a list of all illegal sports operators and sites to the bank and other institutions for consultation till the economic impact study and definition of lawful internet transactions are created. Chairman Barney Frank introduced the legislation and the amendment to Congress.

The bill was made in response to the concerns raised by the financial institutions. After transactions made online are defined, the banks will be able to monitor more closely what their clients are doing.

Reuters news agency has informed that Bwin Interactive Entertainment, the online gambling group from Austria, has lost about $3.22 million which followed after the company’s application for a sportsbetting license in Turkey had been rejected. The online gambling company had been concealed the loss for more than a year, and only recently the Austrian magazine, Profil, has made it public.

Last year, in March the online gambling group stated in response to the mass media that Bwin Interactive Entertainment had made a decision to withdraw from the Turkish gambling market following new laws on online gambling which banned games of chance, but, on the other hand, it provides also the possibility to license the business in future. The company’s management said that they considered being able to get the license at a later date.

By the time of withdrawal from the Turkish market, Bwin generated 6% of its gross online gambling revenues in Turkey. For the company not taking part in this gambling market could mean losing about 20-25 million Euros annually, according to analysts’ forecast.

Bwin has just recovered from a range of analogous events as well. In March, 2006, it purchased Ongame, the internet gambling company, which lost it nearly half a milliard of Euros. That year in October, Bwin lost the same amount when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed in the USA.

Bwin operates in a lot of countries, such as Belize, Croatia, Germany, Kahnawake, Mexico, Sweden, Italy and the UK.