The Ace Wins Blog on Online Casinos

(Isle of Man) — Microgaming announces its new Multiplayer Blackjack Tournament and Hitman Slot games are to be launched at the Barcelona 7th annual EiG EXPO in September 2008.

The online Blackjack and Slot Tournaments provide revolutionary software, coupled with intelligent and innovative design to provide a dynamic multiplayer experience that will excite existing players, as well as provide an enticing alternative for new players.

In an important new development, the Microgaming Multiplayer Blackjack Tournament and Hitman Slot software offers an array of notable common features including the option of both scheduled and Sit ‘n’ Go type tournaments, tabbed tournament information visible to the player in the main lobby and visually stunning and precise graphics.

Hitman Slot Tournament

The Multiplayer Slot Tournaments are fast and fun with the globally recognised Hitman game, in addition to existing games such as Lara Croft Tomb Raider, Avalon, Loaded and Thunderstruck, presenting players with the opportunity to win big whilst providing adrenalin-fuelled and action-packed entertainment as the player pursues their reward. Hitman will be the most advanced multiplayer tournament game yet and gives fans the chance to play against fellow enthusiasts from around the world - bringing the ultimate gaming experience to the home.

The slot tournament software is automatically downloaded as part of your casino package so it’s easy to gain access to tournaments. All players are awarded the same number of starting coins with all tournament wins added to the Win Box Balance. Players can keep constant track of their progress in tournaments via a Leaderboard that offers information such as position, players, win box, coins left and prize. At the end of the Slot Tournament, a summary screen becomes available detailing all the results and the player’s specific positioning.

Other benefits include the ability for players to do multiple re-buys and add-ons during the tournaments. Operators can also set their own private tournament schedule.

Blackjack Tournament

To appeal to the more experienced and skilled players, Microgaming have ensured that the Blackjack Tournaments are sophisticated and high-quality, thereby emulating a truly stylish and realistic multiplayer experience. A new feature now available to operators other than the standard Sit ‘n’ Go tournaments are Sit ‘n’ Go card counting tournaments that provide the more discerning player with the chance to get a real edge.

All scheduled Sit ‘n’ Go tournament types are clearly displayed in the player Main Lobby and a set number of hands per round are displayed via a Hand Map. Blackjack Tournaments are synchronised to ensure that faster players are not unfairly eliminated.

Roger Raatgever, CEO, Microgaming, adds, “We are currently running thousands of tournaments a day on Microgaming’s multiplayer tournament software.”

“We constantly strive to keep on the cutting edge of online gaming and our Multiplayer software development provides a revolutionary and well-thought out design. Once rolled out across all our operators we intend on developing the biggest and the best Multiplayer Slot and Blackjack online Tournament network to stay ahead of our competitors and continue leading the way in online gaming.”

The government commission examining gambling in Sweden wants to allow foreign gaming companies to operate in the country.

The companies would pay for a licence to arrange betting on sports such as football, ice hockey, as well as harness racing.

However, it would be a punishable offence to allow people under 18 to place bets, said commission head Jan Nyrén, citing harness racing and Oddset-brand sports betting sheets, reports Sveriges Radio.

Nyrén added that the commission has not yet formulated a proposal for internet poker and other online gaming.

Nor has he determined exactly how the gaming licences would look.

In order to continue generating income from its own gaming operations, the state must be able to stop foreign companies from operating their own online gaming operations.

It’s a sensitive issue which may involve blocking IP-addresses and payments to unlicenced companies.

The proposal also calls for restricting licenced companies from operating casinos or setting up gaming machines.

Nyrén considers such machines as problematic and therefore wants to maintain tighter state control over them.

As a way to keep the new gaming landscape in order, Nyrén suggests launching a new and more pointed monitoring agency, as well as tougher rules governing marketing practices.

Tobacco shops and other gaming outlets should not start to look like amusement parks, he said.

The gaming commission plans to submit its final proposal to the government in December.

ControlCircle, the datacentre services company, today announced that it has been selected by Betfair to provide datacentre space and collocation services as the hugely successful sports exchange commences virtualisation trials.

With more than a million registered customers today, 433,000 of them active (up 57 percent on the year before), Betfair handles more than 300 bets a second and 5 million transactions per day – more than all the European stock markets combined. It has taken around 1,000 man years to build the Java-written bespoke exchange and an investment of some $150 million.

Nick Laflin, Betfair’s utility computing programme manager, says, “In the past, every time we launched a new application, new physical hardware would be deployed.

Datacentres are often notoriously under utilised with some server resources remaining idle for 85 percent of the time.

This is due to over provisioning where more hardware is bought to handle peak traffic demand. We’re looking carefully at how virtualisation can help avoid this while increasing flexibility and saving costs for the company.”

Using server virtualisation software, Betfair’s goal is to rapidly provision new virtual machines and allocate capacity to support specific events for example, or allow applications and services to be easily moved as required between its datacentres located around the world.

Laflin adds, “The old model was like an arms race. As new applications were launched, it meant more and more physical hardware and more and more datacentre space and more and more cost. And given Betfair’s exponential growth this is not sustainable. Virtualisation will allow us to sweat assets and increase efficiency.”

To facilitate this Betfair selected ControlCircle to provide datacentre space and associated services so that a trial environment could be set up to test systems and applications using a virtual model, without impacting operational infrastructure.

ControlCircle is providing space at Global Switch London II to facilitate these test projects. Laflin says, “We’d have been too constrained trying to test virtualised systems in a production datacentre environment so ControlCircle has quickly given us greenfield space and the flexibility to do this, in the timescales we wanted which was within a month.”

ControlCircle was chosen as Betfair’s datacentre partner in March 2008 given its reputation and work with Tradefair, the new financial betting exchange launched by the Betfair Group in June 2008.

Initially ControlCircle is providing Betfair seven racks for this test environment (four for networking technology and three for servers), cabling and installation services, and connectivity to other Betfair infrastructure also located within Global Switch London II but on a different floor.

Having implemented production systems abroad Betfair is now virtualising various API[1] test systems, used by third parties who write and develop software which link into its sports exchange. This allows companies or individuals to review how changes, additional functionality or new software will behave in a live context.

Laflin says, “On average, we expect to have 10 virtual machines running on one physical server and are currently working on physical to virtual migrations and assessing how systems subsequently perform. While it is early days in terms of virtualisation projects within production, we have an 18 month roadmap and expect to virtualise as many systems as is practicable.”

From an IT operational perspective, virtualisation will make moving services between Betfair’s datacentres much easier – as virtual machines can be copied quickly and bought up in different locations – especially as Betfair is creating a standardised model for hardware in its datacentres encompassing common network, server and security designs.

Similarly, Betfair will virtualise systems currently used for disaster recovery purposes thereby avoiding IT sitting around doing nothing on the off chance there is a failure.

Laflin says, “Historically, each application was designed around the hardware needed. This meant it was difficult to forecast datacentre space required and the time to market was slower than we’d have liked as hardware had to be ordered and then configured.”

“With the virtual model, you just deploy a virtual machine on standardised infrastructure and we estimate a saving of about 6 weeks per project in terms of delivery timeframe. IT becomes just like a utility in this respect. You pretty much turn it on and off as you need. ”

Laflin concludes, “Working for Betfair is a challenge as we want everything in real time. ControlCircle has been particularly accommodating, got us the space quickly and we’ve been very impressed with their level of detail and quality of work.”

Damian Milkins, ControlCircle’s chief executive officer, says, “As we have close relationships with all the main datacentre providers, we can quickly help clients with the size of space they require, with the flexibility that they can scale up as required, all carefully supported by our expert technical staff.”

“We’re delighted that, based on our work with Tradefair, Betfair has now selected us, meaning we are now a trusted datacentre services partner supporting the whole Group.”

(London, England) — New Sun Bingo has launched. The new site has all of Sun Bingo’s old favourites, 90, 80 and 75 Ball Bingo plus 3 exciting new games - Gold Digger, Whack a Moley, WAG’s Shopping Spree.

We have the most amazing selection of prizes on offer to any bingo player - Where else will you be entered into a prize draw to win a house worth GBP250,000 for every day you play on the site?

New Sun Bingo is also offering free cards galore, GBP5k giveaways and exciting new promotions every week. Players still enjoy the same good value card prices but get to play for what must be the greatest selection of prizes on any bingo site. Since the launch, there has been a winner every second on New Sun Bingo.

The New Sun Bingo site has more friendly chat rooms than ever before, where players can now play lots of exciting games and quizzes, and win even more cash prizes.

A generous 100 percent match sign-up bonus up to GBP100 is on offer to everyone who joins New Sun Bingo. Players who’ve already signed up have won a Fiat 500 car, dream holidays to Australia and Dubai, Sky TV entertainment packages, Vespa scooters a year’s supply of groceries and, of course, big bingo jackpots.

Along with unrivalled 24/7 customer support service it is an amazing bingo offering.

Source: Press Release

(London, England) — New Sun Bingo has launched. The new site has all of Sun Bingo’s old favourites, 90, 80 and 75 Ball Bingo plus 3 exciting new games - Gold Digger, Whack a Moley, WAG’s Shopping Spree.

We have the most amazing selection of prizes on offer to any bingo player - Where else will you be entered into a prize draw to win a house worth GBP250,000 for every day you play on the site?

New Sun Bingo is also offering free cards galore, GBP5k giveaways and exciting new promotions every week. Players still enjoy the same good value card prices but get to play for what must be the greatest selection of prizes on any bingo site. Since the launch, there has been a winner every second on New Sun Bingo.

The New Sun Bingo site has more friendly chat rooms than ever before, where players can now play lots of exciting games and quizzes, and win even more cash prizes.

A generous 100 percent match sign-up bonus up to GBP100 is on offer to everyone who joins New Sun Bingo. Players who’ve already signed up have won a Fiat 500 car, dream holidays to Australia and Dubai, Sky TV entertainment packages, Vespa scooters a year’s supply of groceries and, of course, big bingo jackpots.

Along with unrivalled 24/7 customer support service it is an amazing bingo offering.