Online Casino Games

Just this past week, Cryptologic signed an exclusive deal with Paramount Pictures to develop slot games based on popular movies. It seems like the ongoing battle between Playtech and Cryptologic never ends. Just as fast as Cryptologic signed their deal with Paramount, Playtech was back at it in the hopes of counteracting the deal.  

Playtech has announced that they will be adding sports betting to their already extensive list of casino features available to clients. This announcement allows Playtech to offer a complete online casino package to potential clients. Not only will they offer slots and classic table games, now they are able to offer a sports betting feature which is a huge component of all online casinos.  

“Playtech has put themselves in the position to really take over and be the leader when it comes to online gambling software,” noted one outside source. “It will be hard for other companies to keep up if the sports betting software is top quality.”  

In addition to being able to offer a complete casino platform to new clients, Playtech will extend the offer to existing clients. Those who currently use Playtech software will have the option to add sports betting to their existing casinos if they wish. This will give online casinos another platform for players to visit and gamble. 

April 29 - Intertops online casino, one of the leading sites in the Microgaming network, is gearing up to introduce its players to four exciting new slot titles from the software group’s arsenal.

The games will be released on May 7th, and players are already counting the days.

The four new titles are:

Fat Lady Sings, Your Lucky Day, Fearless Frederick, Mega Moolah Summertime

The five reel, 25 payline Fat Lady Sings is a humorous opera themed video slot game with plenty of bonus features, including a wild symbol, a scatter symbol, and the chance to win lots of free spins to increase winnings even further.

Fearless Frederick is an action packed video slot game with huge winning potential thanks to the chance to win 25 free spins that come with a massive three times multiplier.

Your Lucky Day is an amazing retro game show inspired video slot game that is reminiscent of the glitz of the ’80s. There are superb features crammed into this game to ensure that players really do walk off thinking that it’s their lucky day, including free spins, wild symbols, multipliers and no less than two bonus games played on a second screen.

Finally, Mega Moolah Summertime is another game in the incredibly lucrative Mega Moolah series, launched just in time for the fun season. What makes this game so attractive, over and above its wilds, scatters and bonus games, is its four tiered progressive jackpot that can players walking home with life changing amounts of money.

Intertops online casino is currently offering a 100% match up bonus of up to $100 on the player’s first deposit.

Read our Microgaming slots reviews.

Visit Intertops right now!

Software supplier WagerWorks announced Tuesday that it has signed a deal with Tatt’s Group subsidiary Talarius to provide the Australian gaming operator’s online casino Quicksilvergames.com with its full suite of games.

In a company press release, WagerWorks said Quicksilvergames.com has already integrated the software supplier’s remote server into its existing platform. The integration adds 70 WagerWorks games – including popular titles Battleship, Da Vinci Diamonds, Elvis, Monopoly and MegaJackpots – to the online casino’s existing library.

According to WagerWorks general manager Oliver Lofthouse, the deal will also allow Quicksilvergames.com to offer his company’s future titles as they launch.

"We are delighted that Talarius has decided to work with us to be able to offer players on Quickslivergames.com our full WagerWorks games portfolio,” Lofthouse said. “We are certain that the presence of our market-leading content will support the acquisition and retention of players.”

phill.provance@gamblingplanet.org

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The UK mobile gambling technology firm Probability plc has announced solid third quarter and full year result, together with a new games deal with Australian developer NextGen.

The unaudited financial results cover the period January 1st 2009 to March 31st 2009.

Unaudited NGR for the quarter was £1,126,543, whilst the total for 2008/9 was £5,056,236, an increase of 60% compared with 2007/8.

The company registered 49,506 new players during the quarter, taking the total number of new customers for the year to 248,667.

Operational highlights included the launch of the “Grease” movie themed slot following an agreement with Paramount Digital; a collaborative deal with Mfuse improving the distribution of Probability games to a wider audience and an agreement to license “The X-Factor” movie brand and other popular concepts from FreemantleMedia.

Commenting on the quarter, Probability CEO Charles Cohen said: “Since the start of March 2009 we have experienced a strong upswing in customer activity, both in terms of utilisation and new customer registrations, spearheaded by the launch of “Grease” slots across all networks and to our player base of over 400,000 customers. This game was an immediate hit, taking two million individual bets by new and existing players in the first month alone.

“This momentum has continued into April. Average daily net gaming revenue in the first half of April 2009 was approximately 22% higher than the equivalent daily average across the whole of January 2009. New customer acquisitions were 12% higher on the same basis.

“Most encouragingly, the average total deposits per cash player per day was 83% higher in the first half of April 2009 than the equivalent figure for the whole of January 2009.

“In 2009, we had anticipated that demand in January and February would be weak compared to the previous quarter, as was the case in previous years, but compounded by the recession. The return to growth and profitability in March 2009 shows that we were right to maintain our disciplined approach to marketing and to continue to invest in new products to attract and retain customers in this tough environment. “

Probability took the opportunity to announce its latest deal - a joint development and licensing agreement with NextGen Gaming, one of the world’s leading designers of five-reel video slots games.

Cohen said: “NextGen Gaming is a leading independent supplier of innovative slot games to the gambling industry. NextGen’s clients include several of the largest providers of on-line gambling services including 888.com, PartyGaming and Cryptologic. Its slots games feature widely on over a hundred on-line casino and bingo sites.”

Under the agreement between Probability and NextGen, the companies will collaborate on designing and implementing mobile versions of NextGen’s most popular slots games for distribution by Probability. Game themes and mathematics will be provided by NextGen.

Probability will distribute the mobile versions of NextGen slot games to its 400,000 plus UK players on LadyLuck’s as well as making the games available through it’s growing network of B2B partners, including the clients of Mfuse Ltd, with whom Probability enoys a distribution agreement.

The first slots game to be produced under the agreement, launched this week, is “Rameses Riches” - the first five-reel slots game to be launched by Probability, and uses the company’s new slots engine developed during 2008/9.

Cohen says the good start to the year is encouraging.

“Given the economic conditions for consumer services (including gambling), this outcome represents good progress for the company and we remain confident of our ability to achieve current market expectations for revenues in the new financial year and beyond,” he said.

“Our portfolio of games is planned to double this coming year and we also remain on track to expand our direct marketing to consumers outside the UK during 2009/10 from our operational base in Alderney.”

Nordic game development company Jadestone, who made waves in the online gaming industry with their innovative DiceArena software, have created a version of their popular Scarab Solitaire game for the Apple iPhone.

Scarab Solitaire is an Egyptian themed variant of the solitaire classic with pyramid shaped card stacks. The game is one of the most played games on the GameArena skill games platform, and has also been popular both on casual game sites and on Facebook. It has been played over 30 million times during the past six months.

“With the iPhone’s increasing importance as a gaming device, it was practically a given that we’d get involved,” said Tommy Palm, Vice President Mobile at Jadestone. “We were interested in seeing how we could reinvent one of our most successful casual games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. We’re very pleased with the result. Not only does the touch screen get you closer to the action, we were also able to add real 3D animations and let players choose their own music.”

 

Making headlines across the USA and online media this morning is a story from the Reuters news agency confirming that Congressman Barney Frank’s next attempt to overturn the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act will take place early May.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington yesterday, Frank, who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said that he planned to introduce a bill next week to overturn a three-year-old US ban on Internet gambling. Frank said final drafting on the bill was being completed this week.

The legislation faces strong opposition from national sports leagues spearheaded by the NFL, rightist Christian and conservative groups and some Republican politicians.

“We’ll be introducing it next week and I plan to move on it,” said Frank, a senior Democrat.

The bill had been expected earlier, but Frank said his committee has been busy with other measures addressing the credit crisis and proposals to reform financial regulation.

The European Commission, said late last month in a draft report that a US Justice Department crackdown on European online gambling companies violated US commitments under the World Trade Organisation.

But the commission, which oversees trade policy for the 27-nation EU bloc, said it would seek a negotiated solution with the United States rather than file a WTO complaint.

EU online gambling firms lost billions of Euros in value after the US Congress in 2006 made it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.

Republicans controlled the White House and Congress when the law was approved. Now, Democrats are in control in both branches of the government, but it is unclear how the Obama administration will handle the issue.

Speculation on whether the bill will gain sufficient traction to be effective has been intense over the past two weeks, with mainstream media taking an interest in the issue, and debate on whether cash strapped individual states are likely to view Internet gaming in a more favourable light as a source of tax revenues.

Internet poker star Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier could have established a new multi-tabling sit ‘n go record this week whilst in Monte Carlo for the PokerStars European Poker Tour’s Grand Final.

The French Internet poker whizz played 62 PokerStars S’n'Gs in sixty minutes, taking the action across four monitors and watched by an avid crowd of appreciative webcast railbirds.

The Frenchman more than met the record requirements of turning a profit, and he won the tournament to boot after an exciting heads up battle.

His achievement was made all the more remarkable by the knowledge that he fought off jetlag, having only flown into Las Vegas the previous evening.

Fellow Internet pro Hevad Khan, who once managed to play 26 tables at once, said that turning a profit whilst playing 62 tables was a difficult and impressive achievement that demanded both discipline and talent.

JackpotCapital.com has eight progressive jackpots, each combining to make a cumulative jackpot total of over $4,500,000.

The Jackpot Piñatas and Aztec’s Millions jackpots are both over $1.2 and the Shopping Spree and Mid-life Crisis jackpots are both quickly approaching a million.

Now, the casino is giving their players up to $800 in order to try and find a big winner at the casino.

“We have a lot of players that have been watching these jackpots climb for months now,” said Oliver Smith of JackpotCapital.com. “This special bonus will give them more chances to win one of the million dollar jackpots!”

Until June 30th, you can use the deposit bonus code 8ISGREAT to play any of those machines with free money. Four of the jackpots are over or near $1,000,000.

 

A British criminal court is currently hearing a case against an illegal Chinese immigrant, Guang Hui Cao (30), who stands accused of the brutal murder last year of two Chinese students thought to have been involved in Internet gambling, although no sites or companies have been specified.

The two Chinese students were found bound and badly beaten with hammers, one with a cut throat, and could have been murdered in a dispute over Internet betting money, the Newcastle crown court heard Monday.

Zhen Xing Yang and Xi Zhou, both 25, had an official joint income of only £17,000 but more than £233,000 passed through their bank account, reports The Guardian newspaper.

The ferocity of the murders in August last year was described by Robert Smith QC, prosecuting, as “not even remotely necessary” to enable the theft of a laptop and three mobile phones, which were all that were taken from the couple’s flat.

A motive of minor theft also conflicts with elaborate arrangements made by the man accused of the killings to win the couple’s confidence by pretending to want to rent their spare room.

Cao has pleaded not guilty, although clothes stained with the victim’s blood were found at his residence, along with personal belongings of the victims.

Sweden’s state gambling monopoly Svenska Spel has reported weaker online poker revenues in FY 2008, and declining group profit in the first quarter of 2009.

Poker revenues fell 3.6% to SEK 372 million (€34.6 million) in 2008 from SEK 385 million in 2007, the monopoly revealed in its annual report. The company attributed the decline to less interest in Internet poker, reporting:

“Both Svenska Spel and the casinos offer poker games. The casinos arranged a number of popular poker tournaments in 2008 and poker interest in casinos continues to increase. The internet boom of the four last years has subsided, but the game is still popular on svenskaspel.se,” the company reported.

Online poker operators need not necessarily be discouraged by the general remarks concerning the online poker industry; Svenska Spel can only speak for its own involvement, and it is widely accepted that many Scandinavian online poker players are active at poker websites elsewhere on the Internet, something the monopoly would like to constrain.

Other key performance indicators from the report are:

• GGR up at SEK 22,800 million (FY 2007: SEK 21,716 million)
• NGR up at SEK 9,804 million (FY 2007: 9,598 million)
• Operation Margin down at 21.9% (FY 2007: 23.2%)
• Profit down at SEK 5,108 million (FY 2007: SEK 5,247 million)
• Headcount up at 1,720 (2007: 1,588)

Q.1,2009 group after-tax profit figures also showed a decline of SEK 133 million at SEK 1,238 million when compared with Q1:2008 numbers. The new CEO at Svenska Spel, Meta Persdottir, attributed the lower figures to recessionary elements and tougher competition.