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Aston Villa's scintillating form, combined with Arsenal's disappointing run of results, have blown the odds for English Premier League's top four wide open with UK bookmakers. The four power clubs of English football - Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool - have been so dominant in recent years, that the last time any other club broke through for a top four finish and a crack at European glory was the 2004-05 season, when Everton finished three points ahead of their arch-rivals Liverpool. But a string of surprise losses has Arsenal currently sitting in fifth place on 30 points from 17 games, four points behind third-placed Villa, and with a Sunday match-up with table-topping Liverpool to add to manager Arsene Wenger's concerns. Although Villa is third on the ladder, they have benefited from playing two games more than fourth-placed Manchester United. As a result, William Hill are offering odds of 13/8 for Aston Villa to be in the top four at season's end, presumably at the expense of Arsenal. Villa have firmed to 66/1 for the premiership, still a long way behind the big four, with second-placed Chelsea at evens, Manchester United 7/4, Liverpool 9/2 and Arsenal considered a long-shot at 20/1. Aston Villa is well ahead in the odds for which team will finish highest when excluding the big four, with William Hill offering 1/3. Everton 13/2, Tottenham 10/1 and Manchester City 12/1 are the other hopefuls, although the latter two will have to make up a lot of ground after disappointing starts to the season.
Contrary to what most people would think, Poker Hall of Famer Thomas Austin Preston, Jr., was actually born in Johnson, Arkansas in 1928, and only gained the nickname Amarillo Slim later on when he made the move to the Texas town of Amarillo, where he still resides today. In a career spanning decades, Slim made a name for himself in the early years of big-time poker tournaments, winning the third-ever World Series of Poker Main Event. The quality of the opposition that day - Walter "Puggy" Pearson, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Moss all made it to the final table - shows just what a quality player Slim was. Before going professional, Slim joined Doyle Brunson and other future poker legends as rounders, traveling the length and width of the United States of America looking for opponents willing to take them on. Slim's most recent WSOP bracelet came in 1990, bringing to four the total number of bracelets he has won. He has almost $600,000 in tournament prize money to his credit. However, it is his exploits off the poker table that have made him a household name. Slim and Bill Cox co-authored the 1973 book Play Poker to Win. In 2003, Slim published his autobiography Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, which included anecdotes about playing poker with former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. As with many of the stars of that era, Slim's life changed with the advent of the WSOP, and he appeared on talk shows and played roles in movies, including the 1974 Robert Altman film California Split, and the weekly game show I've got a Secret. Slim's secret was losing almost $200,000 in one night of poker. More recently, he has appeared in TV series Anything to Win and Beyond the Felt. Slim also hosted the Second Annual Poker Classic in 1980, a tournament that later became the Super Bowl of Poker and ran until 1990. True to his name, 80 year old Amarillo Slim still lives in Amarillo, Texas, to this day. Slim was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1992.
This has been - it always is - an exciting year in online gambling. New products are offered and new gambling niches investigated. As players, we only benefit from this pluralism. Along with them come new and higher jackpots, new gambling markets open up and the ball keeps rolling. On the other hand, online gambling is not yet fully adopted by governments, or governors; Kentucky is a case in point. Nevertheless, our end of year summary is a positive one, and the 2009 predictions just as much. Record Jackpots A jackpot of this magnitude is not won every day. Not even every year. In August 2008, Sylvia P. of Canada hit stratospheric platinum when she won the Beach Life Progressive Jackpot at Joyland Casino. When the slots stopped spinning, her winning tally had racked up $4,188,719. Other multi-million winnings have also been won this year. Such was the $5,556,753 jackpot won by Klaus E., who played Mega Moolah on Jackpot Ballroom Casino. Business News Behind the scenes, the casino operators and affiliate programs - the people who think up those promotions we constantly seek - have also made some major moves. In perhaps the largest merger in online gambling and sports betting history, affiliate programs CPays, Webroute Affiliates and William Hill all joined hands. The new super affiliate program will take form in 2009, and offer players excellent deals, software platforms and supports. Industry Events In October 2008, we met over 1,000 casino affiliates at CAP Euro Barcelona. While affiliates were making deals, food was served, wine poured and our OCR Live! team was filming it all - there was one beneficiary from the popular event, and that is the player. Great New Products This is a specially interesting category, where one would ask: What is there to invent in such a lush market as online gambling? Well, Cool Hand Poker offers something new. The new poker room targets a class of players that has often been left out. Beginner and medium players, who fear running into a poker shark who will rip them of their funds, can play at their leisure at Cool Hand, where by limiting the number of tables one can play at a given moment, manage to keep the pros out of interest. Sports Betting The 2008 UEFA European Football Championship. Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Need we say more? Regulation No news from the US, so no surprises there. But there have been positive developments elsewhere. The UK experiment has proven to be a success, with the UK Gambling Commission on top of licenses, enforcement, and issuing guides for players. South Africa is another example of careful, thought-out steps in the direction of regulating the local market. In this global expansion that has local markets develop a market, Online Casino Reports too has spread and now counts over 30 sites - in different languages, with a focus on products that cater to the local gambling communities. Next! The global crisis has already had an effect on land based casinos in Las Vegas, among others. Whether it will have the same effect on our online gambling industry is yet to be seen. In the year which is about to end online gambling has shown resilience in the face of challenges, and continued growth. We can hope, and do our best, that it continues in the right direction. Happy New Year!
The unthinkable is true - gambling isn't recession proof. The resilient industry, a defiant recessionary opponent is starting to show cracks as the global crisis bears down on its customer base. With gamblers across the United States feeling the pinch of the global crisis, they are increasingly less likely to spend the same quantity of their hard-earned money on gambling activities. The Nevada Gaming Control Board reported drops in gambling activity as much as 22% from the same time a year ago. Suffering most is the world famous Las Vegas Strip. But this is a nationwide problem also being reported in New Jersey and Washington state (30% drop). Surprisingly for casinos in Vegas, this is the tenth straight monthly decline. Innovative suggestions Industry pundits are calling to drop the gambling age from 21 to 18 in Nevada. While other casinos are offering locals free accommodation and entrance to shows and extravaganzas simply to entice them into gambling at their casinos. What is true is that people are coming less frequently and spending less per visit than before. Layoffs and streamlining Black Gaming LLC of Nevada suffered a steep 28% decline in third quarter revenues - alongside similar declines in multiple casinos - and they have laid off 350 employees at the Oasis. This is now an industry phenomenon and it looks set to continue until a global upturn starts to get underway. Whether it's called downsizing or laying folks off, it has the same result - a loss of confidence in the economy and the casinos' ability to survive the mayhem. Golden pot With the adversity comes opportunity for many gamblers. Big stakes gamblers will be lured by Trump Marina Hotel Casino's $1 million blackjack challenge scheduled for January 3 2009. Big bargains for eager gamblers still exist - they're ready to be snatched up by whoever's game!
Some online casinos offer progressive jackpots; sometimes as many as 10, 13 or even 18 of them. The prizes at these gaming machines reach much higher sums. Progressive jackpots are networked across online casinos so that their prize grows not by a small amount for every game you play, but by larger amount for every game anyone plays. The running jackpot meter grows, and grows, until its won. Major Winnings The sums won reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, and occasionally reach the millions. The 4 million dollar mark was crossed twice in 2008. Joyland Casino turned Canadian Sylvia P into a multi-millionaire in August of 2008. Sylvia won a progressive jackpot and collected $4,188,719 when playing the Beach Life Progressive Jackpot slot machine. The 5 million dollar mark was crossed earlier in 2008, when Microgaming's Mega Moolah turned one lucky player into one lucky millionaire. Klaus E. from X played the game at Jackpot Ballroom in April, 2008. The total sum reached $5,556,753. The Mega Moolah slot, a video slot that is 5-reels, has created quite a few millionaires in the past. It is reported to have paid out over 200 million dollars in jackpots to date. Starting at a million dollars, the game assures a millionaire with every time it resets.
It's been an eventful year in poker with online poker rooms continuing to attract millions of fans all over the world. Players now have more choice than ever before, check out our poker room reviews to see the online poker stars of 2008. The World Series of Poker had its youngest ever winner, Texas Hold 'em continued its increasing popularity world-wide, and U.S. legislators continued to crack down on the game. We bring you the highs and lows of the last 12 months in poker. Highs Peter Eastgate wins World Series of Poker Main Event: 22-year-old Dane, Peter Eastgate became the youngest winner at a World Series of Poker Main event, beating Russian Ivan Demidov in Las Vegas to take away over $9 million and a gold bracelet for his efforts. And with age on his side, this won't be the last we hear of Peter Eastgate. The increasing global popularity of poker - and in particular the American version Texas Hold 'em - was highlighted by new initiatives in Russia and China. PokerStars, the largest online poker site in the world, announced a new Russian poker tour in December. A month earlier, Chinese television began broadcasting Traktor Poker, a World Poker Tour-sponsored series sanctioned by Beijing. TV ratings went through the roof at this year's WSOP main event. Around 1.9 million U.S. households watched the Eastgate-Demidov final, which was aired closer to the real-life event than usual, resulting in a 50 percent increase in viewers on last year. Lows Anurag Dikshit's guilty plea in a U.S. federal court for violating the federal wire act while running online gaming site PartyGaming, will unfairly turn attention on the large majority of people who manage to practice their passion for poker without violating the law. The controversial UIGEA legislation continued to make headlines in the poker world throughout 2008. Pro-gambing legislators have so far found no way to push back the 2006 bill, which effectively imposes a ban on all forms of Internet gambling.
British company the Gala Coral Group, one of Europe's largest gambling companies, has signed a three-year deal with mobile technology provider Mfuse, it was announced last week. The new deal will allow players to access bingo, casino and betting products via their mobiles. With revenue of 1.3 billion pounds in the last year, Gala Coral is one of Europe's largest gaming companies. The deal with Mfuse will give the company the technology to enable advanced mobile sports betting by the first half of 2009. Other game formats will be launched later in the year. The new services will be provided by the Mfuse NOVO provision and Transact platforms. Mfuse also counts UK bookmakers Ladbrokes, Bet365 and William Hill among its many clients. Gala Coral's head of new product development, Joe Coughlin said "Mfuse were the obvious choice. They are the leaders in this sector by a long way and have shown a commitment to product development that Gala Coral asks of all its suppliers. We're very happy to be doing business with them." This is not the first time Gala Coral has led innovation in the field of online gambling. The company's E-Commerce division already claims to be the first operator of digital interactive television bingo, which can be accessed in the UK via Sky Channel 861 using the red button on the remote control.
The pressure on the U.S. gaming industry is expected to continue through 2009, with a recovery forecast for 2010, according to global credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings. Fitch is forecasting the biggest economic decline suffered by the world's major economies since World War II. The company expects U.S. consumer spending to decline 1.6 percent in 2009. This is likely to have a heavy impact on the gambling industry, which has already suffered more than many investors predicted during the 2008 financial crisis. Although it's not all and gloom as gambling operators brace themselves for the year ahead and prepare themselves for more prosperous times ahead.
Five hundred workers at the Venetian Macau, the world's largest casino, have been laid off, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The casino's parent company, Las Vegas Sands Corp, let go of 100 managers as part of the move. The layoffs amount to two percent of the company's total Macau staff. In somewhat contradictory news, the gloom facing casinos in Macau was offset by figures released by the Chinese Special Administrative Region Tuesday, which show that visitor arrivals in Macau are actually increasing. There were 2.53 million total arrivals in the Asian casino hub in November, up three percent on the figure of 2.46 million from a year earlier, the government's Statistics and Census Service said. Arrivals from mainland China rose 4.2 percent to 1.46 million for the same period. Macau gaming revenues were actually up 45 percent for the first nine months of the year when compared to the same period in 2007, news agencies reported. However, overall revenues for 2008 are not expected to show an increase on 2007. Not so cheery news for mega casinos such as the $2.4 billion Venetian Macau, which only opened its doors in August 2007. It would appear, however, that some online gambling providers are escaping unscathed from the global crisis. Tel Aviv, the online gaming hub, home to super-brands like 888, Playtech and Mansion Poker seems to be riding through the economic downturn. Casino Affiliate Convention organizer, Marc Lesnick, says: "Everyone I have met is telling me the same thing. They are not seeing any downturn in business even with the bad economic conditions worldwide." Encouraging news for the online gambling market, and an indication that, in these unceratin times, online is the place to be.
Launched in July 2008, PartyMarkets enables gamblers to purchase Contracts for Difference (CFD's) and place spread bets on economic fluctuations, both of which empower users to wager on the rises and falls of global markets. Party products This is a new step for PartyGaming, which traditionally deals with more mainstream gaming such as poker rooms and online casinos. The initiative was made possible by the alliance formed with City Index, who provide retail derivative trading through CFD's, spread betting and foreign exchange options. While still in stages of development, PartyMarkets aims to reach customers in the UK, EU and Asia, giving them the opportunity to trade in financial markets around the world. Not as simple as it seems Even though gamblers don't own the assets that they're trading with PartyMarkets (they simply wager on whether the asset will change in worth and by how much), this type of gaming requires a high level of user skill and knowledge. The company even warns new users that costs can quickly out-grow initial deposits. PartyMarkets is regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the UK, which is necessary considering the complexity of the auditing involved.
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