There’s a certain excitement to playing roulette in a live casino environment. Even though we know there really is no strategy to playing roulette and that the odds are less in our favor the more we want to win, we’re drawn to the roulette table. Let’s take a look at the odds for a moment.  The best payouts come from betting on a single number. Which means the odds are pretty terrible for the top payouts. Now you can place bets that are almost fifty fifty if you bet odd or even or red vs black. Of course that just means that you may be able to walk away from the table with as much money as you started with. Not the gambling outcome that most people are looking for. But the roulette table is fun. It’s captivating. There’s a hypnotic quality to the whirl of that little ball around the wheel.

And online casinos try to emulate that feeling. Computer graphics have gotten so good that they can recreate what looks just like a real roulette wheel and you feel like you’re watching a real wheel spin. Some casinos have even made the graphics as three dimensional as possible, just to make the experience more realistic.  But they haven’t gotten around to recreating the crowds yet. And that’s really an essential part of playing roulette. Yes, you’ll find plenty of casino offering roulette. Just check out http://onlinerouletterealmoney.net for some of the top places. But look for a Microgaming casino because Microgaming is trying something new. They’ve introduced a  new live casino experience for roulette. Not all casinos have signed up for it, but if you enjoy playing roulette, you might find playing online even more fun when you play with others.

Are you a poker player in the UK interested in improving your poker game? If so, you’ll want to check out the latest offer from Badbeat poker. The folks at BadBeat claim that they have a revolutionary poker training system available that will help you play like a pro. Now, you might wonder just how good this training system is, but Badbeat is putting their money where their mouth is. Or more specifically, putting their money into your hands.  They’re giving new players $50 free to try out the poker training system.

Now, to try it out, you’ll need to complete an application form with badbeat and play on an online poker room associated with badbeat. (I’m not sure if there are rooms accepting US players included in that list. Antigua is again protesting the US stance on online gambling.) Then badbeat will give you the first installment of your free money. You take that and play 500 hands of No Limit Hold’em poker. The training system then uses these hands to evaluate your playing style and generates a report card for you.

So, now you’ll have a rundown of your playing style and your strengths and weaknesses. So the next step is to check out the appropriate classes in the poker clinic to fix those problems. Then back to the tables to test those fixes. The Badbeat system continues to evaluate your style and release your remaining $50 in large or small sums to encourage you to continue working on your game.

Will this turn you into a poker pro ready to sit down at the table with Phil Ivey? I don’t know, but as long as the training system is free, why not try it out.

We’ve been hearing about this for months. It feels like longer. But it looks like Groupe Bernard Tapie has actually registered as an owner of Full Tilt Poker or New Full Tilt Poker and … well … and, umm, we don’t really know where that’s going to lead.

Look, let’s be realistic about this. Full Tilt was forced out of the online gambling market because they were unable to pay $300 million that they owed to US players after the authorities seized their domain name and bank accounts. But then they were unable to pay out the $300 million they owed to UK and EU players because it was revealed that they’d been using player funds to fund the operation. And the funds players thought were in their personal Full Tilt account weren’t there.  The money everyone had been playing with was so fake that we might as well have been playing on Zynga poker.

So, even with Full Tilt under new management, if they manage to open back up again, will they reclaim the players that they lost? How many are just going to maintain their account long enough to get their money back?  What will the company do, if anything, to lure people to play again? Because that may be their one chance. Look, if folks aren’t going to close their accounts immediately because they want their money back, then that’s the time that Full Tilt has to convince them to play again. Play anything.  I think they’re going to need to offer some freerolls with real money prizes to get players started because no one in their right mind is going to put money back into a Full Tilt Poker account.

Meanwhile, it looks like US players may not even be part of the focus on paying back players. Tapie may make the claim that since the US Department of Justice took actions to force Full Tilt out of the US market, they need to be involved in paying players back and that any fines paid to the US, or funds confiscated, could be used for that action.  Which would at least keep Full Tilt from paying out even more money in the US.  US players can check http://best-online-casinos.com/blog/online-gambling-legislation-in-the-us/  for some news on what’s happening in their country. Though frankly, players were never the people responsible for the horrid money management at Full Tilt.

Yes, I realize at first look that headline may not seem overly impressive for a blog post. So, a poker place is looking for folks to answer the phone or chat online with players. Hey, we know jobs are always good but we’re players, not support staff.

But those familiar with Full Tilt poker and its recent history will go “wait, Full Tilt needs support people? Why?” You can read all about Full Tilt’s woes on Wikipedia.org, but I’ll give you a quick rundown here.   After a run in with the feds in the United States, Full Tilt found itself unable to pay out money it owed to players, which caused the Alderney Gambling Control Commission to revoke their licenses.  Which means Full Tilt Poker hasn’t been running, so there hasn’t been much to support other than telling players “no, sorry, we don’t know when you’ll get your money back.”  However, recent news has indicated that the French company Groupe Bernard Tapie is interested in purchasing the company and of course, they’ll have to pay back players if they want to get the poker room up and running again. No news on whether than means they have to pay back US players.

So, is the job announcement, which looks for multi-lingual support members and others to work in Dublin, a sign that Full Tilt is coming back? It could be. I imagine that any announcement is going to result in a barrage of phone calls from players asking about funds. So they’d need support people before they’d need anything else. The advertised jobs are listed as contract positions that could last a couple of months or become permanent positions. Perhaps an indication that even Full Tilt isn’t sure exactly how well things are going to go over the next few months.

Ah, the yanks. We’ve seen it  happen over the last year or so with Bodog.com being the latest victim. The US government has claimed that it has the right to seize any domain ending in .com, .net, .org, .biz, and a few others that probably haven’t even come into being yet.  This is causing quite a controversy in the online poker community but also in the online world over all. Suddenly folks who don’t even play poker are wondering – “could Uncle Sam seize my tasty cupcakes.com business?”  (We hear cupcakes are a popular item in the US with entire TV shows devoted to wars involving the sugary little cakes. We imagine them throwing them at each other, though we aren’t sure that’s what actually happens.)  Yes, cupcake bakers, you could be the next online shutdown should Uncle Sam decide to declare war against online cupcakes.

So, what’s behind all this?  Why would the US have dominion over every .com domain in the universe when a business behind a .com domain doesn’t have to  operate in the US?  Well, it seems that he companies with the contracts to administer the .com and other domains are located in the US. And if it’s on US soil, the US government is stating that the business falls under the jurisdiction of the US courts.  The US has been at the forefront of the internet with programs like the http://www.nccs.gov/ falling under them. But now many on the web are protesting this measure and calling on companies to consider how vulnerable they are to US action. (Actually, the cupcake people are probably safe.)

Of course the online poker and online casino world has already had a front row seat to the action and the result has been a bit of rush to change to non-US centered domain names like .uk and .lv. Which is what Bodog did earlier last year and why the latest US seizure only resulted in them seizing a domain used to redirect traffic rather than actually play poker.

Mobile gambling is the next generation of gambling and casinos are working to get as many players as possible involved in the mobile revolution.  Now you might think that just having an account at an online casino gives you access to the games while you travel but if you want to play on a smart phone or tablet, you’ll want to use the casino’s mobile software. This software doesn’t offer the full range of games that software that you download to your computer does, but it does offer selected games in a mobile ready format.

The good news is that mobile gaming is already a part of the UK Gambling scene. Countries like the UK are still working to get up to speed when it comes to online gambling. But in the UK, you’ll find plenty of online casinos that offer mobile gaming apps. And if you want to play your favorite casino games on your smart phone, make sure you check out the bonus offers and promotions in the mobile gaming section of the casino. Those can be different from the offers made for regular online players and can let you, as a mobile player, snap up some great offers.

Of course the usual gambling advice applies when playing mobile. Watch your bankroll and your budget and keep a good strategy in mind. The games themselves haven’t changed and blackjack is still blackjack. It also might be good advice not to play where you’ll be easily distracted or where you attention really is needed elsewhere. Zebra crossings are not an ideal gambling location. But you want to play for money, check out  onlinecasinosformoney.com  for more advice and tips.

Zynga has been rumored to be investigating moving into the real money poker world and I’m wondering if the new bingo game they’re testing means even more effort to conquer gambling in the UK.  Now Zynga isn’t a company free from controversy.  First, even without hitting the gambling aspects of the company, they seem to face constant accusations of stealing other developers ideas and games. Zynga Bingo is already said to be a copy of the already available Bingo Blast games on Facebook.  Could Zynga have rushed a bingo game into production because they want to be able to tie into the lucrative and popular UK bingo market?  Well, yes. Especially if it will make money for them.

And now allegations have surfaced regarding Zynga Poker.  Currently Zynga Poker isn’t a real money option, at least for players.  It is for Zynga who makes a fortune by selling additional “coins” or chips to poker fans.  Here’s how it works. When you play Zynga poker, you only get a small number of chips each day. Then you have to win more chips to keep playing. But if you run out, you can use a credit card to purchase more chips.  So, yes, you pay real money to buy pretend money. And Zynga keeps the real money.

But now allegations have been made that the company spies on the habits of players and uses the information they find to make sure that features used most often by players who buy lots of chips are given priority in the game. Now, this may seem to be a somewhat harmless accusation. Certainly if you ran a business, you’d want to offer items that customers buy, but the problem is that this is poker. In poker, certain aspects of a player’s activity and certainly what they might hold in their hand at any time are meant to be private.  So players are wondering — just how much does Zynga’s spying reveal? And could there be a potential scandal if company employees could spy on real money hands?  So far Zynga has not responded to questions.

The popular online poker room PokerStars made recent changes that result in such outrage among players that the poker room has had to back down and agree to meet with a player panel. PokerStars was among the sites forced out of the US in April of 2011 but they seemed to be the one site that managed to continue a successful operation after that action. Oddly, this time it’s they who may have shot themselves in the foot.

PokerStars recently made changes to their rake structure and their VIP plans that have angered players.  Many of those were high-ranking players who lost points in the VIP changes. As a result, a number of players joined together to protest the changes. And PokerStars responded to that by banning the players. This didn’t go over well since poker is a very social game and players do talk to one another. Poker forums exploded with outrage over the action and traffic over at PokerStars dropped.  Oh, and for some unexplained reason, the CEO left the company. No one at PokerStars has explained why and apparently the CEO has even deleted PokerStars references from his Linkedin profile.

But now PokerStars is working to take some action to help bring players back on board. They’ve acreed to meet with a panel of player representatives chosen from a popular online poker forum.  The goal of the panel, at least from the panel’s perspective, is to negotiate a rake and VIP benefits plan that would be acceptable to players. Now they have to hope PokerStars is there to negotiate and not just explain the changes already in place. But in the swiftly changing world of poker, companies are finding that they do need to have player approval to survive and thrive.

Get ready to play some poker in January. This year PartyPoker is giving players a little extra holiday bonus by offering their multi table tournaments rake free during the month of January.  Now the popular poker room is handing the rake in two ways.  Oh, wait, perhaps I should first explain what the rake is for the novice poker players in the room.

When you play a game like slots or craps games at an online casino, you bet against the house and when you lose, the casino takes your money. Since the odds are always with the house, this means the casino makes money off of the player’s actual bets.  But at an online poker room, or any poker room for that matter, the players at the table are playing against each other and the money in the pot comes from the players and goes to the winner of the pot. So, how do poker rooms make their money? That’s the rake. The poker room takes a percentage of the pot for themselves.

Now, when you sign up for a poker tournament, the poker room usually breaks the admission fee down to the fee plus the rake, so $2.70 + .30 = $3 to join the game. At PartyPoker what they’re doing is adding the rake to the prize pool. So in our example above, the $3 all goes into the prize pool and not to Party Poker. But for tournaments that run $6 and over to enter, they’re just dropping the rake. So $20 + $2 would just be a straight $20 to enter.  This either saves players money or puts more money in the kitty for the winner, so it’s bound to be popular with players.

If you don’t’ have a Party Poker account yet, you can sign up with them and get 100% first time deposit bonus up to $500.

Bodog poker has been in the news recently with their new anonymous tables. These anonymous tables are apparently destroying the world of poker as we know it, and as a result Bodog’s traffic has dropped nearly ten percentage points. Now, before I get into the debate over the new anonymous software and what it’s attempting to do, I have to point something out. Bodog announced a few months ago that at the end of 2012 it would pull out of the US market and focus more on UK gambling. Now, it would strike me as logical that this might mean that some US poker players have cut back on their play at Bodog in order to move to a poker room that won’t be leaving their market soon.

But no, that can’t be the reason for the drop in traffic. It must be the much hated anonymous software. See Bodog did do something that has pissed off some poker players. They’ve instituted new software that makes the play at their poker tables anonymous. The reason they’re doing this is to try to defeat the data mining sites that collect player data and sell it to other players. Professional poker players will admit that this data can help them win. Bodog believes that by making the tables anonymous and eliminating data mining, they’ll be able to attract more casual players.

So, have the new anonymous tables been part of the reason for the decrease in traffic on the site? Possibly. After all, some players just may not want to play anonymously.  Is Bodog worried about this?  Well, it might be too early to tell. If they keep losing players, they may rethink the anonymous concept. But they also point out that if the players leaving the site are the poker sharks they’re actually trying to get rid of, then the software has done its job.