Neteller is well known all over the world for its high stakes battle with the Department of Justice of the USA soon after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act had came into force. In spite of the fact that Neteller has been one of the most trustworthy, reliable and widely used third party e-Wallet serving to transfer funds to and from internet casinos the outrageous and unfair persecution started by the DOJ is the event that caught most of the world’s attention and made the headlines.

This is the reason why Neteller has made a decision to change its name to Neovia Financial that nobody could associate it with the above mentioned events. Though Neteller has not officially stated that the reason to change the name was its case with the US DOJ, the rumor that is circulating inside the gambling and financial industries says that this is the reason indeed.

Ron Martin, CEO at Neteller, said that the company wasn’t going to just change its name. Actually, the company is being rebranded and adopting a name of a parent company. The company has an aim to restore credibility with merchants, regulators and customers. The company will retain the three financial products such as Neteller, Netbanx and Net+ (a recent financial card).

Martin says that the company’s wish is to show the financial services community that it is not longer dependent on online gambling revenues. And the company is already diversifying its revenue stream that 18.5% will come from non-online gambling sources.

And from November 17, Neteller will be Neovia Financial (or perhaps, just Neovia for short).

The activity of 141 online gambling domains is blocked since the courts in Frankfort, Kentucky listened to Steve Beshear’s arguments against online gambling domains and their operation in the mentioned state. Of course, not only was Beshear who opined in the hearing in the court, online casino gambling community representatives also expressed their opinions on Beshear’s claim to take control over the well-known domain names such as fulltiltpoker.com, pokerstars.com, bodoglife.com, and doylesroom.com

The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative released a statement against Beshear’s actions. They have support from eCOGRA, Baker Tilly, and the Remote Gambling Association, all the organizations that are involved in the licensing and administration of lawful online gambling.

More than that, Ed Leyden, President of the iMEGA, stated that Beshear factually broke the ‘Commerce Clause’ of the Constitution of the United States. The article says that an individual state can’t interfere in interstate commerce or commerce that involves foreign countries. He continued pointing out that the Supreme Court has very clearly expressed its opinion on that issue. iMEGA is among those companies which biased the Federal Government against the questionable online gambling ban.

Judge Wingate said that he needed a week to take into consideration the arguments of both sides before he reaches a verdict that will be on 15 October. At the moment California is considering the issue on permitting legalized online casino gambling based under the UIGEA rules. If Beshear wins, the whole online casino gambling industry will think about the number of states that could follow.

Unfortunately Kentucky players already feel the backlash of the request of their governor. Many of the online gambling sites don’t access their Kentucky members to the sites and accept new members from the state.

At the moment another three of Cryptologic most popular online games can be played at 888 (CasinoOnNet). The two leading gaming companies agreed to collaborate even further, increasing the total licensing deal to 13 casino games.

They have recently added two games of the Marvel Superhero slots - Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, the highly popular “Bejeweled” based on the puzzle game of the same name. Both companies are sure to be happy about the said deal. Cryptologic gets benefit as 888 is one of the biggest online casinos on the net, whereas the players of 888 can get experience playing the hottest online casino games and enjoying the best graphics available.

Sorry to say, but one of the reasons why 888.com and Cryptologic could work together is because they do not accept players from the USA. The unique part of the relationship is that Cryptologic doesn’t solely power CasinoOnNet. 888 operates on a number of software platforms, including their own. The company is supposed to be called a proprietary blend of casino software.

Indeed, 888 Holdings Plc is the British second-largest gaming company. It has several great credentials and is a very big site with large customer service. Without any doubt, the 888 Casino site offered exciting and frequent promotions funny to play, and funny to foresee. 888 is fine for newbie, non-US players. Cryptologic is certainly powered most of online casinos. And now, any with an inclination for 888, “Bejeweled” or Marvel Superhero slots can join 888 and have a great time playing online.

These days, number one UK online casino portal and online casino, CasinoChoice.co.uk is celebrating its sixth birthday. This site is more than an internet casino, and that is one of the reasons why it has managed to keep afloat while many sites have been having troubles or have closed their doors after the US banned most of the online gaming sites because of the passing of the notorious UIGEA.

CasinoChoice provides their members with regular land and online casino news, unbiased casino sites reviews and thorough analysis of all the leading online casino suppliers in the UK. They have reviewed 32Red, InterCasino, Betfair, Littlewoods, Coral, and Ladbrokes. Many CasinoChoice members rely on the facts that the site posts about the many available online casinos. The site also covers internet poker and bingo rooms, tells about any current online gaming sites offers, and any current jackpots and payout percentages.

Any time you need information about various casino games available over the web, CasinoChoice has a very detailed list that contains Baccarat, Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, Craps, Sic Bo, and Keno. Here you can find information on the games rules, tips, strategy guides and more, all this can help you to play different games that different online casinos offer. Moreover, all above mentioned can be used when playing the games in brick and mortar casinos.

CasinoChoice finds online casinos, poker and bingo rooms, they test every room and they list only the online gaming sites that are trustworthy and reputable. All the sites that are listed on CasinoChoice are sanctioned under European law.

According to the Global Betting and Gaming Consultants’ report, the economic crisis could prove to be a boon for online casino gambling. The report says that the global gambling market is expected to increase from $345 billion in 2007 to $433 billion by 2012. Though, the GBGC think that this growth will be mostly in online gambling markets and will be compensated by a negative situation in land casinos.

Warwick Bartlett, Chief Executive at the GBGC, said that the slowdown in the States would hit the purses of Americans, and Las Vegas would perceive the effect of that together with high costs on energy and transportation. He added that the USA had invested a bit in high-speed rail and destination resorts, so they would suffer because the cost of carbon-based fuels continues growing.

Bartlett has also expressed his opinion that the UK gambling establishment is bad equipped to avoid the market’s problems. Though, British users are better off, the UK can’t draw the online gambling consumers in spite of their industry’s probity and social responsibility.

Concerning the European Union “Change is on the Cards” anticipates that the European online casino gambling market will expand since the European Courts of Justice rules that players have rights to the same guarantees of choice and value as buyers.

The Asian market, at the same time, will go on benefitting from expansion with two main casinos that are in Singapore and loosening gambling laws in Japan.

So, whereas economic seem to be at the crux, the report states that online gambling sees the rise.

Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) seem to get into the online casino gambling market. This week CryptoLogic, the software provider, has announced that they have made an exclusive licensing agreement with Kurastica in order to distribute its online gambling software in the country and the commonwealth. Such an agreement with Russia and the countries of the former USSR has been made for the first time.

At the point Kurastica can distribute the online gambling software in Russia and the CIS with this multi-year, multi-million dollar agreement. Several channels are planned to be available to players at the beginning of 2009. According to the president and CEO at CryptoLogic, Brian Hadfield, the company continues expanding to new markets fit into specific needs of a player. The company plans to expand into new markets and be the leading online software company in the world and taking into account their plans to launch more games, they are on the right way to it.

Hadfield said that the CIS is a very challenging market that has a deep-rooted gaming culture, great population and increasing Web economy. And having such a seasoned local partner, CryptoLogic will give players a really exceptional gambling experience. Kurastica is the Russian company, a spin-off of a main global operating company that has experience in the gaming market and operates in the CIS.

Justin Thouin, the vice president at CryptoLogic, says that the penetrating into the CIS is an additional clear demonstration of CryptoLogic’s success in adjusting their software for different customers and different markets.

An independent inquiry concerning the cheating scandals at Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet poker rooms has been completed in accordance with an official statement that the Kahnawake Gaming Commission released. Frank Catania, former New Jersey Gaming Commissioner, conducted the investigation and in the end the mentioned investigation has really answered some main enquiries that the online poker community brought up for some time.

The main thing that people have wanted to know is the names of the perpetrators who were involved in the cheating scandal that had been taking place for 36 months and caused more than $60 million in deceitful poker playing. After everyone had known about the cheating scandals, Kahnawake Gaming Commission answered that a “former employee” was involved in it.

According to the report made by Catania, Russ Hamilton, the former owner of Ultimate Bet and World Series of Poker champion, is in the center of the cheating scandal. Actually the Commission named Hamilton as the “chief perpetrator”. Hamilton is sure not to be the only one engaged, so he must know all about the cheating actions that took place.

Many will be surprised after hearing such news. But, somebody suspected Hamilton to be involved in the Absolute Poker scandal that preceded the Ultimate Bet scandal.

As regards Kahnawake’s answer to the report, they are claiming that all the players who were affected by the scandal will have been fully refunded by 7 November, 2008. Ultimate Bet has already returned $6.1 million to date. Moreover, the Commission demands Ultimate Bet to dismiss any employee who is deemed “unsuitable”. UB must prepare a daily written report to the Commission concerning player activity, submit all software and transaction logs whenever needed and pay out a $1.5 million fine. Otherwise, the company loses its license.

Not every online casino manages to become very famous and popular like Bodog or 32Red. So, LazerWager.com is an internet casino, sports betting online gambling site. Because of complex processing of player’s accounts for withdrawals and deposits, the company announced that they will shut down their gambling operations only a year after they started the online gambling business.

The site itself notes that LazerWager.com announces that it will not operate any longer. The management of the gambling site tried to continue operations, but they were unable to after getting a note from the last affiliated processor. The processing company, whose name has not been mentioned, informed the online site and its owners that all their assets had been frozen and the processor would not handle any banking transactions any longer.

The management of LazerWager.com had been trying to work regardless of the problems with their processors, but since they worked through one problem, others appeared. Affiliates, advertisers and vendors expressed concerns about the ability of the company to service their player’s accounts with the problems regarding the processing of deposits and withdrawals. The said problem is not just an isolated case with LazerWager.com. It is an industry wide issue.

LazerWager.com contributed the loss of assets to the company’s limited ability to process financial operations, and the strain between the company and their advertisers and affiliates were sufficient to run the internet gambling site through the 2008-2009 football season. The majority of the more famous sports book sites could manage to cope with banking problems, but LazerWager.com is not so famous or competitive enough at the moment to be able to get over the losses.

Throughout not long internet-based gambling history online casinos have all the time been trying to secure against cheating. At the moment Avea Network has contracted Mobiclear Inc services. Mobiclear Inc owns a rights pending personal identity certification product that has an aim to eradicate credit card cheating and also to prevent gamblers from gaming in illegal jurisdictions.

Alea Network, an operator of online casino sites, was founded in 2005 by a group of international entrepreneurs. Alea operates under Curacao gaming license. The company offers a full gaming suite that has state-of-the-art graphics for sites such as fourkingspoker.com and metropolitanpoker.com and some others. President of Alea, Anders Andersson stated that they have become more and more concerned in respect of the personal information security on the site account. They also wanted to prevent fraud, money laundering and gambling at the illegal jurisdictions. The success of the company is founded mainly on the fact that Alea’s user interface and proprietary software is very light that makes it easy to integrate with any other software.

Real-time ID verification system of Mobiclear will guarantee that online casinos accept only legitimate transactions from legal sources. Stephen P. Cutler, CEO at Mobiclear, said that they were happy to assist Alea with all this and they were confident that Mobiclear could provide the additional security needed and to stop cheating in the beneficial online casino gambling industry.

Alea’s reputation will be increased by the addition of top Personal Identification Verification system of Mobiclear Inc. Their products include solutions to cheating in all kinds of electronic transactions.

Last Friday Jennifer Bruner, Secretary of State in Ohio stated that MyOhioNow.com had collected enough signatures to remain a gambling referendum on the November, 4 ballot. Under discussion is an amendment to the state of Ohio constitution allowing casinos to operate in this anti-gambling state.

MyOhioNow.com is a limited liability company that is owned by Rick Lertzman and Brad Pressman. The company submitted 812, 978 signatures, the state have verified 480,003 of them. This verified amount is even more than 402,000 minimum required in order to place an issue on the state ballot.

The referendum, known as Issue 6, faced difficulties when Penn National Gaming, the competitor of MyOhioNow.com, filed a protest against it. Eric Schippers, Penn National Gaming spokesman said that Issue 6 would grant MyOhioNow.Com a casino monopoly and could close the door for future casinos.
In spite of any wrongdoing, though, the Ohio’s official signature tally included certified signatures in as minimum 77 of its 88 counties, gives Bruner no choice but deny the protest of Penn National.

If the amendment passes, it gives the casino nearly 220,000 square feet of gaming area, with 5,000 slot machines, a hundred table games including Blackjack, Baccarat, Craps, some others, and a poker room with 20 tables. The proposed casino will have a suite-hotel with 1,500 rooms, multiple restaurants, retail shops and entertainment bars. MyOhioNow.com plans also to include a full service destination spa, championship golf course and entertainment complex.

Without any doubt, both sides will go on arguing during the nearest weeks. But in the end, Ohio’s voters will decide whether or not Issue 6 becomes law.