A 37-year old civil servant from Newcastle, England won the jackpot at SkyVegas playing on CryptoLogic’s Millionaires Club online slot game with just a 90 pence stake.

The player, who is the biggest SkyVegas winner to date, plans to spend some of the prize money buying houses for himself and his parents.

Sky Vegas’ Head of Gaming, John Parsonage, said: “We are in the business of making instant millionaires. This is the second time one of our players has bagged a life-changing windfall from CryptoLogic’s game and it is a great crowd-puller for our site.”

Victor Chandler will add the new product via an integrated platform provided by Cantor along side its own spread betting offering.

The new service will give customers of Victor Chandler access to fixed odds betting on a wide range of financial markets including currency pairs, commodities, shares and a wide range of global indices.

Lee Amaitis, CEO, Cantor commented: “We are delighted to announce our latest Financial Fixed Odds partnership with Victor Chandler. Having witnessed the growth in popularity of financial betting, now is the perfect time for the addition of the Financial Fixed Odds product giving Victor Chandler customers a new way to access a wide range of financial markets.’”

Victor Chandler, Chairman of Victor Chandler added: “Cantor are one of the leading companies for financial betting and we are both excited and pleased to be working with them on the launch of our new product. Our clients have been talking about Financial Fixed Odds for some time and we are looking forward to supporting all of their betting needs.”

CBS6 reports that the search warrant detailed alleged illegal gambling on an unspecified website, claiming that Khen Han Tran took illegal bets on college and professional sports such as football and basketball.

According to the search warrant, Tran is being investigated for money laundering and running an illegal sports gambling operation online. The document details a six month undercover investigation by Fairfax County detectives, who claim to have placed more than one hundred bets on Tran’s online gambling site.

A confidential informant met up with Tran on a weekly basis to recover monies owed to him or to pay monies owed to Tran as a result of the illegal bets.

Court filings relate that Fairfax detectives spent months building a case against Tran, assisted by the Virginia State Police.

Reports indicate that police officers seized several computers, CDs, and an undisclosed amount of money.

Tran, who was not detained, declined to comment on the raid.

The field of 2,412 was heavily star-laden for the $10 000 buy-in flight, but by the end of the day some of international poker’s most recognisable names were out of the competition and the Main Event.

Notable exits were multiple bracelet-holders Phil Ivey and veteran Doyle Brunson, whose son Todd was also a casualty.

Joining them on the route to the rail throughout the day were James Mackey, Chris Ferguson, Tom Schneider, 2009 November Niner Jeff Shulman and 2004 final tablist Josh Arieh, Ylon Schwartz, Layne Flack, Dan Kelly, Marco Traniello, Tommy Vedes, Freddy Deeb, George Lind, Darvin Moon, JC Tran, Gavin Griffin, Alexander Kravchenko, Shane Schleger, Ludovic Lacay, John Duthie, George Danzer, David Baker, John Phan, Gavin Griffin.and J.C. Tran.

After eight hours of unremitting action, and at level 9, the officials gave the bag ‘n tag call and the day was done. 1,359 players were all that remained of the starting field for the day and will go forward to Day 3, where the Day 2a and 2b survivors will combine in a single field for the first time.

Day 2b ended with David Assouline in the lead on 387 800, pursued by Ricardo Fassanaro on 380 000.

As the major emphasis of her platform, Senator Cantwell is seeking to repeal sections of legislation passed in 2000 that prohibit states from restraining the market for derivatives trading. She has stated that the behavior among derivatives traders, as well as those of other financial speculators, is no different than a gambler betting on which football team will win the Super Bowl.

Senator Cantwell’s efforts will seek to use the office of the individual states’ attorneys general to police derivatives trading, which generates trillions of dollars. In addition to the most recent financial crisis, the unregulated trading of derivatives also led to the downfall of the Houston-based Enron Corporation in late 2001. Before its collapse, energy traders with Enron manipulated electricity prices in California, which caused massive rolling blackouts and a statewide energy crunch.

Derivatives are different from actual stocks in that they form a “hedge” against the price of a certain commodity, such as oil or soybeans. In recent years, derivatives have become popular as a “side bet” on the true price of either a commodity or a financial movement, such as a stock index or the mortgage market. Many people maintain that the collapse induced by this form of speculation contributed significantly to the current economic crisis.

The practice of trading derivatives is similar to a practice outlawed in the US a century ago. In addition to the regular casino games, some establishments, called “bucket shops”, allowed patrons to bet on the direction of a stock price without the need to purchase the stock itself. After the stock market collapse of 1907, states banned the practice.

Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland, likened Wall Street to the Las Vegas Strip. The difference, he pointed out, was that the casinos in Las Vegas were among the most regulated business in the world, where regulators turned a blind eye to the “gambling” happening at the Wall Street investment banks.

Now in its fifth year, eCOGRA’s training courses are available for any key personnel working at eCOGRA certified online casinos, poker rooms, sportsbooks and bingo rooms. In total, there are now currently 145 approved sites, the majority of which are online casino operators. For anyone who doesn’t know what the eCOGRA seal stands for, it is undoubtedly the highest accreditation a gaming operator can receive, thus giving any “Fair and Safe” seal-bearer a Tier-1 status in the online gambling industry.

However, as eCOGRA’s Responsible Gambling Manager, Tex Rees, points out, the heightened demand for training courses demonstrates that eCOGRA’s Safe and Fair Seal goes much further than simply meeting approval criteria, albeit such criteria represents the strictest code of regulations an operator can willingly bound themselves to. In other words, the willingness of operators to receive further training demonstrates that online gaming operators want to be meet the highest responsible gaming standards they can – even exceeding such standards in an industry that has seen its fair share of criticism.

Whether all such criticism is warranted, is another subject altogether. For example, eCOGRA points out that while problem gambling is certainly a concern that should be taken seriously, problem gambling oftentimes is blown out of proportion by special interest groups, many of which have political agendas. When considering that there are hundreds of thousands, even millions of active online gamblers, the percentage of bettors that qualify as being “pathologic” is a miniscule percentage. The 2007 UK Gambling Prevalence Study confirmed this in its findings that 0.6 percent of adults should be considered “at risk” pathological bettors.

However, numbers like these are either blown up or downright refuted by gambling opponents, who generally conduct their own studies on the gambling sector or are behind seemingly third party studies that show much higher numbers, which in turn, are fed to media outlets and government officials. Not meaning to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but for anyone who knows the extent at which eCOGRA approved operators go to preventing problem gambling, the claims that online gambling is rampantly out of control are simply lacking in merit and credibility, and as such, cannot be taken at face value.

Instead of battling it out with detractors, however, eCOGRA has directed its energies toward training online casino operators, such being the case at the aforementioned training session. Course topics included identifying and dealing with problem gamblers by holistically examining the issues and psychological implications which problem gamblers are often faced with. Moreso, Rees pointed out that eCOGRA teaches operators to address problem gambling via marketing and advertising avenues, mandating the use of self-diagnostic aids, counseling advice, and especially training staff members to recognize problem gambling traits.

It should go without saying, eCOGRA operators exemplify the social and moral responsibilities that all online gaming operators need to run their business models by. The continued success and demand of eCOGRA’s training courses is indeed highly encouraging, not to mention reassuring from an online gamblers perspective.

Super Casino was first introduced via satellite in 2005 and features live roulette, blackjack, and occasionally other online casino games where you have
casino mastercard payment option. Viewers can register to participate, and then call in to place bets on each round of play. This is the first time that live, interactive gambling has been offered to the general UK population through a terrestrial analogue channel. In the past, such programming was restricted to satellite channels and the Internet, but recent changes in the UK’s teleshopping regulations have created a loophole that NetPlay TV and Five were quick to exploit.

The new deal has created some controversy among religious groups, who are calling it “a temptation,” and within gambling addiction organizations that insist the accessability of the format will be dangerous to viewers with a predisposition toward problem gambling. NetPlay responded by promising intense regulation. The show will premier on Five at midnight on September 17.