Online Casinos Best And Worst

Influential information portal CasinoMeister.com released its ‘2007 - Best and Worst’ list last week as a useful guide for gamblers, affiliates and operators.

The awards consist of 31 categories ranging from Best Online Casino and its antithesis through to the best and worst player experiences to most significant industry milestone and most spectacular blunder.

Players nominate for the awards with Bryan Bailey, owner and webmaster for the portal, making the final decisions.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Best Casino award went to 32Red Casino, a Gibraltar-based online casino and poker company that has maintained high standards of efficiency and customer service for many years. The man behind the site, Pat Harrison, also won Best Casino Manager.

The Worst Casino gong went to Costa Rica-based CirrusCasino.com in the RealTime Gaming-powered Virtual group. Virtual also won the Worst Casino Group award as it has, apparently, become notorious for a reluctance to pay players who win more than they have deposited.

The Best Casino Group accolade went to the Microgaming-powered Jackpot Factory company, which made a comeback after a search engine optimisation disaster in 2006 that saw them penalised by eCOGRA.

The Best New Casino award went to 3Dice.com, a new arrival owned by a land gambling group in Belgium using proprietary software while the Worst Player Experience prize went to the RTG-powered HippoJo.com as it allegedly began giving players, affiliates and winners a hard time on payments and customer service only months after being started.

The Customer Service accolade was taken home by UK-based ClubWorldCasinos.com as players can ask questions via chat, toll free numbers in five languages and standard e-mail.
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source: casino news

US Governments Debate Amnesty Deal

The Government of Antigua and Barbuda has announced that it has asked officials in the United States to grant amnesty to operators of online casinos based on the Caribbean island so that they may enter and exit the US.

Most online gaming operators fear travelling to or through the United States after a series of high-profile arrests and the initialisation of Internet gambling prohibitions.

'We believe this matter can be settled in an amicable way because we enjoy an excellent relationship with the United States,' said Errol Cort, Finance Minister for the small nation.

On such operator is the founder of BodogLife.com Calvin Ayre who has not travelled to the US for over a year and stated that he is beginning to miss it.

'It's the first time I actually really wanted to come back,' said Ayre.

Assuming the US allows operators residing in Antigua to move about the United States freely, there are still concerns regarding states such as Louisiana that have filed at least a dozen sealed arrest warrants against online gambling executives. There is also the long standing case of World Sports Exchange owners Steve Shillinger and Hayden Ware, who remain fugitives in Antigua after being indicted for violations of the 1962 Wire Act in 1998.

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source: Casino News

888 London Taxi Advertising

An innovative marketing strategy has been announced involving London taxi drivers spreading the word about online casino 888.com by word of mouth in addition to advertisements on the sides of their vehicles.

According to Taxi Promotions UK, the advertising agency behind a recent campaign for 888.com that saw 375 taxis turned into ‘mobile billboards’ featuring the company’s logo, this idea has been extended and will see drivers in ten cabs seek to engage passengers in a conversation about poker. If customers respond, the conversation is to embrace 888.com with those showing interest given sign-up coupons worth ten dollars.


Taxi Promotions said the selected drivers would be 888’s ‘ambassadors’ and that it plans to expand the program to create a Word Of Mouth Taxi unit.


Asher Moses, Managing Director for Taxi Promotions UK, stated that the average London taxi journey lasts 16 minutes and that, in an average day, a driver would pick up 40 to 60 fares. He said that Taxi Promotions is training more drivers and as many as 300 could be involved by the end of the year with drivers receiving no formal training.


“The driver can choose what he wants to point out,” said Moses.


“It’s not a hard-core sales talk, it’s sort of a subliminal talk.”


Matt Robinson, Marketing Director for 888 uk, said that the company was spending approximately half a million dollars for the campaign and that it had already signed up for a bigger promotion involving 20 drivers for the introduction of a bingo website next month.
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source: CasinoNews