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.

PokerStars is one of the top online poker rooms available to players but also a poker room known for going after world records. Now they’ve announced that on December 4^th, they’re going to go after another and attempt to get into the Guiness World Records for the world’s largest online poker tournament.

Now, to accomplish that, they need the help of their players. As a result, they’re offering plenty of prizes and a special live broadcast to keep the action interesting.  Oh, and of course they have a low buy in for this tournament. After all, they’d hardly set a record for most players if they demanded thousands of pounds to play. Nope, all you’ll need is a PokerStars account and $1 for your buy in. (Yes, they keep track of business in American dollars. Much of the gambling world still does.)

During the pre-tournament radio show, they’ll also announce a secret code (I suspect someone will twitter it)  where players who make a real money deposit will be able to get a ticket for a December 18the freeroll tournament where they can  compete for a prize pool valued at $10 million.

The radio show will also offer plenty of prizes for players who call in. The online poker room will be giving away goody bags with special edition hats, t-shirts, and card protector. Oh, and one player will win a PokerStars watch.

So, what does PokerStars have to accomplish to set this new World Record. Well, the current record for an online poker tournament is 149,196. That record was set by PokerStars. So, it seems win or lose, they’ll hold the world record at the end of the day.

Today I want to take a moment to look at online poker and internet casino gambling developments in the US. First, I suppose I should mention that the World Series of Poker recently concluded in Las Vegas and the folks in the United States have awarded one of the most coveted awards in Poker to — a German. Actually 22 year old Pius Heinz. Now is the time to go up against the American players and there’s a good reason for it. The blocking of the major online poker rooms from US players means that they aren’t getting as much online practice and that those poker rooms available to them are pretty much smaller sites with mostly US players. It’s become poker isolation in the US and the international players are taking full advantage of that.

But that may be on the verge of change. News is out that bwin.party is forming a gambling company with both MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming. This combined company will give them access to the US market. But it doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to offer online poker. Except now Nevada has announced that they’ll begin issuing online poker licenses in February. This means there will be online and regulated poker in one state. Hmm, should we wonder why that’s the state that hosts the WSOP and just a German win the Main Event?

But things aren’t completely rosy in the US. It looks like the online poker in Nevada will be restricted to Nevada and to existing gambling establishments in the state.  But Party Poker might be a big enough deal to pull the top US poker players into those locations to gamble.  We’ll see what happens at next year’s WSOP.

Europa Casino is a top European online casino open to UK and EU players. (Sorry, no USA players accepted) The Playtech powered casino offers great bonus offers for new players including a recent Rookie Race.

So, what was the Rookie Race? It was a promotion that actually let players take advantage of that new player fascination with an online casino. Studies have shown that when a player starts playing at an online casino, they play frequently, but that after a few weeks, the urge to splurge wears off and so does the playing.  But Europa Casino’s Rookie Race was a great way to take advantage of the urge to splurge. When players signed up for an account at the casino, used the bonus code “race” and followed that up with a deposit of at least 75 pounds/ euros/ US dollars, they then  played as much as they could to win a prize based on their activity.  I found the bonus offer interesting because it is so similar to the comp system in a land based casino, only here, players were online.  I’ll be keeping an eye on the casino to see if this bonus comes back, but there are always great bonuses on offer. Which this blog because you won’t see this on Google news.

Sign up with Europa Casino and you can start off with a bonus offer up to 2.400 pounds.  If you like to play slots, check out Mr. Cashback a new slot game that gives you the chance to double your money on every win.  Or check the casino’s list of games to find other great choices like online blackjack for money.

News is out that Buzzluck online casino is going to relaunch as a part of the Club World Casino group, but with some differences.  Now most avid online gamblers will recognize the Club World name. It’s a casino group that includes Club World, Club World USA (the USA facing casino brand), Aladdin’s Gold and others. Buzzluck is probably less familiar to those reading this blog. The online casino launched in 2009 and started strong with awards and promotions. And in 2010, it closed without explanation.  Online casino player scratched their heads, shrugged, and went on with their lives.  The business world for online casinos is tough and unless a casino crashes and burns like Full Tilt Poker it’s just a blip on Google News.

But when an online casino comes back from the dead, that’s news. Buzzluck might just be proving that there is luck out there. But the interesting part of this announcement is that Buzzluck won’t be running the Real Time Gaming software that the other Club World Casinos run. Instead Buzzluck will run on NuWorks software with 30 slots games, 3 video poker variations, and 4 table games. The offerings sound a bit skimpy right now, but I’m eager to check out the offerings. Buzzluck is live, but the instant play version hasn’t launched yet. The casino gives a UK address so I know it has launched as a UK Online Casino.  I’m still checking to see if it will be available to players in the USA.

The news out there about Full Tilt poker has a lot of online players wondering about what’s goes on with casino licenses and what they really mean. Now, it’s easy to find out what someone needs to obtain a casino license because places like the UK Gambling Commission make that information public. A gambling control board has nothing to lose by sharing their requirements and in fact, should make those requirements available to the public.

It’s easy to set requirements. The question becomes — what happens when a casino doesn’t meet the requirements and Full Tilt Poker is a good example of that. Now, any gambling control board will carefully examine a casino’s application and qualifications before granting a license and that step should eliminate most shady or problem businesses.  The board also has to set requirements on what a casino needs to do to maintain the license and that’s where Full Tilt and the Alderney Gambing Control Commission ran into a problem.

It should seem so easy to say that if a casino can’t fulfill the requirements set by the board, the license is revoked, but Full Tilt illustrates the problem with that.  Take a quick look at the history. Back in April, the US government shut down Full Tilt operations in the US where it claimed Full Tilt was in violation of US laws. This still hasn’t been heard in court, and Full Tilt wasn’t in violation of the law elsewhere, so the AGCC had no cause to revoke the license.  Full Tilt wasn’t able to pay out on US accounts because bank accounts were seized and frozen. PokerStars faced the same issue.  So the AGCC waited to give the poker rooms time to resolve the issues.  PokerStars was able to do so but Full Tilt suddenly had experienced delays in paying out non-US players. The AGCC was forced to take action which began with a hearing.

Here’s where the challenge came in. If Full Tilt was able to keep offering online poker, they might eventually be able to pay back players. If the AGCC shut them down, that was unlikely to happen.  So it was in the AGCC’s favor to move cautiously. And they did so. But I think eventually, they had to decide that Full Tilt might be a lost cause and letting them keep offering poker games was just going to put more player’s in jeopardy.