North American gambling industry is reported to be blooming this year.

Card room and casino gaming accumulated 48% of all gaming revenue. As for the state lotteries, they accounted 24% of gaming revenues. 22% of the revenue comes from tribal gaming, that is 7.31 more than last year.

Alongside with the increase of tribal gaming revenue lotteries grew 4.91 percent, and card room and casino gaming grew by 5.56 percent. To say more, these numbers are expected to grow, as the casinos are getting more and more accessible, and there is no need to travel far away to play casino games.

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from Burger King, Citrix, Northrop Grumman, AutoNation and several cruise lines have been asked to participate in a charity poker tournament. In such a way they are going to help raise over $50,000 in scholarship for 12 ladies to get into the IT industry. The female school leavers will study computers.

The 4th CIO Celebrity Poker Tournament and Casino Night held by ITWomen will take place on November 15th at the Sheraton in Fort Lauderdale.

Last year CIOs from South Florida’s top corporation help raise nearly $30,000 thus providing 7 ladies with scholarship.

Poker fans in South Florida can join the tournament through a donation of $2,500. all of them have a chance to win a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line and a watch from Monitca Jewelry. Besides, there are spa vouchers, romantic dinners and gift baskets on offer.

The aim of the tournament is to promote professional education and training for women in the field of technology.

SkyBet, online gambling group, has been recently added to the client roster of Neutralize, search engine marketing agency. Now, Neutralize is going to work with BSkyB’s betting and gaming products such as SkyBet, SkyPoker, SkyVegas and the forthcoming SkyBingo. Besides, Neutralize will have to handle all the elements of search engine optimization for these brands.

Being a successful agency, representing household names such as Black and Decker, London Stock Exchange and CNET, Neutralize was a natural choice for BSkyB. Neutralize has recently launched its new Ascendex tool which is very similar to a search engine. It is able “to identify critical search engine optimization issues in one hit” saving valuable time. Besides, it is “proving to be highly desirable for brands with large-scale sites”.

It’s unknown how much the U.S. compensation would be, but it is claimed to come in the form of increased foreign access to the U.S. market. According to the U.S. official opinion, the numbers put forth by the EU for compensation were “faulty” and “exaggerated”.

The U.S. is also involved in a case against Antigua. The island nation is asking for $3.4 billion, while the U.S. is offering $500,000. The Antigua is pressing for its right to take $3.4 billion for the losses.  If being not paid, Antigua threatens to offer copyright-protected products to the Internet without doing anything illegal.

Other WTO members like India, Japan, Costa Rica, Macao, Canada and Australia are in talks with the USA regarding compensation.

New players who are not familiar with hi-low play now can play an easy-to-learn introductory card game launched by Mansion.com. As soon as the players feel confident playing their Draw Hi-Low card game, they are able to move onto Instant Play Casino and try the game for real money.

A player plays Draw Hi-Low with one deck of cards with the object predicting if the next card will be higher or lower than the currently dealt card. Aces are considered to be low. The King is the highest card. In case a player guesses correctly, he/she wins. The amount they win is automatically added to their bet amount for the next round. In the situation when there is a tie (the next card is the same rank as the previous one), the bet gets pushed.

With Draw Hi-Low, players can bet on a tie with the result paying out a bonus of ten to one.

Youth gambling is known to have been an issue in the USA. A number of different organizations have made efforts to educate and prevent youth gambling. Youth gambling has also become one of the reasons for the recent online casino gambling ban.

Nowadays the statistics what is the result of the National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth study show a decline in the number of youth gamblers. The report showed decreases in the percentage of male youths 14-22 who played cards for money (2006: 11.6 percent, 2005: 12.5 percent). Another significant statistics was the decline in the number of male youths 14-17 who gambled weekly and also showed at least one problem gambling symptom (2006: 6.7 percent, 2005: 13.9 percent).

The results of the study contradict information presented by media (they say “that youth gambling is not under control and in decline) and is known to have become an issue.

The UK Gambling Act that came into effect on September 1, allows online gaming companies to advertise in the UK if they meet such criteria as the location where their license is held, the protection of children and social responsibility. Besides, while advertising the gaming sites should follow some rules as well. E.g. “they may not use sexual innuendos such as models in bikinis nor may they make any reference to the fact that players can gamble and win money or that players can receive a bonus if they deposit money at a gambling site”.

Ladbrokes, the British bookmaker and online gambling giant, turned out to be the first to advertise. The target audience of their campaign is occasional gamblers between the ages of 18 to 34. They are known to bet occasionally on the outcome of soccer matches. The ad features Jimmy Hill, veteran television presenter and former soccer professional, Arsenal’s Lee Dixon and Ian Wright with Glasgow Rangers’ Alistair ‘Ally’ McCoist, all popular ex-footballers, and the strap line of ‘Everyone’s got an opinion, what’s yours worth?’.

Betfair appeared to be the second to present their advertising campaign. William Hill and other online gaming companies will follow with their own adverts.

A new mobile betting service will soon be available for a large number of Gibraltar-based bookmaker Stan James’ customers who use technology from mobile gaming technology provider Mfuse. Users of Stan James Mobile are able to get an “in-running” experience and to place bets from anywhere at any time. Having texted “stans” to 89700, customers will be able to download the mobile application and log-in using their existing username and password within minutes.

The demand for a new betting service is explained by rising number of Internet-compatible mobile handsets and the growing number of customers who want to place their bets during sport events.

Readers of the Southern California Gaming Guide voted for the 2007 Southern California Gaming Reader’s Choice Awards. “The 2007 Best of Southern California Gaming reflects the choices of our over 400,000 readers”. There, casinos and slot machines were rated across 28 categories.

According to the results, Valley View is called the luckiest casino in South Carolina. The next on the list are Harrah’s Rincon Casino and Resort and the Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino.

The best slot machines are Star Wars and Megabucks.

Star Wars is called the best in the penny slot category. It is followed by Fort Knox and Zorro.

The third annual eGaming Awards has recently taken place at the National History Museum in London. Lots of online casinos, betting companies, poker sites, etc were recognized there. Top executives from various sectors of the industry were present there to accept the awards and to recognize the accomplishments of other companies within the gambling industry.

Mark Blandford, who served as the Chairman of the e-Gaming Awards’ judging panel, has also been given recognition for his contributions to the online casino and e-gaming industry. Blandford is one of the foremost industry analysts who got his experience working with Sportingbet and serving on various committees related to the industry. Blandford was honored with the event’s Outstanding Contribution Award.