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The third annual World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair has solidified its tournament schedule, Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., owner and operator of the world’s most prestigious poker tournaments announced over the holiday weekend.

The 2009 World Series of Poker Europe Presented by Betfair will feature four bracelet tournaments, including a new addition, the GBP 2 500 Pot Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha mixed event that begins on September 21st.

World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack, said: “The World Series of Poker Europe has quickly established itself as the most prestigious tournament outside the United States. Winning a gold bracelet is recognized globally as the top prize in the sport and we look forward to awarding four more bracelets in 2009 at the Casino at the Empire in London.”

The WSOPE will be held from September 17th to October 1st, 2009 in the heart of Leicester Square, London.The casino now stays open 24-hours a day and has begun offering satellite tournaments for the WSOPE.

“The Casino at the Empire has quickly become the destination for poker in the UK, ” said Michael Silberling, COO, London Clubs International. “”We look forward to hosting the best players in the game for the WSOPE this fall.”

Players can pre-register for the WSOPE at any London Clubs International (LCI) venue in the UK or at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Alternatively they can try and qualify online exclusively at Betfair Poker.com.

“We are delighted to be working alongside Harrah’s again for a successful third year of our sponsorship of the World Series of Poker Europe,” said Betfair CEO David Yu. “We will remain the only place to qualify online for the WSOPE tournament and we are also very excited about the new $1 million promotion which with free entry will give the WSOPE a wider appeal and add more value than ever before.”

The complete bracelet event schedule is as follows:

Friday, Sept. 18, 2009

Event #1 - GBP 1 000 + GBP 60 – No-Limit Hold’em Day 1A (3-day event/2 start days)

Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009

Event #1 - GBP 1 000 + GBP 60 – No-Limit Hold’em Day 1B

Monday, Sept. 21, 2009

Event #2 - GBP 2 500 + GBP 150 – Pot Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha (3-day event)

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009

Event #3 - GBP 5 000 + GBP 250 – Pot Limit Omaha (3-day event)

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009

Event #4 - GBP 10 000 + GBP 350 – World Championship No-Limit Hold’em Day 1A (5-day event/2 start days) “Main Event”

Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009

Event #4 - GBP 10 000 + GBP 350 – World Championship No-Limit Hold’em Day 1B “Main Event”

All the above tournaments will be sanctioned gold bracelet events. Non-stop cash games will also be scheduled during the tournament, as well as a bevy of satellite tournaments in the weeks leading up to each event.

Betfair Poker will also present a brand new WSOPE event exclusively free for Betfair poker players to enter, branded the Free Million Dollar Game. Qualification begins 13th April with the top 18 players travelling to London to play live at WSOPE for a first place prize of U.S. $1 million. The event will kick off the WSOPE on Thursday, September 17.

ESPN, the exclusive World Series of Poker telecaster, is scheduled to air ten original hours of coverage of the World Series of Poker Europe in the United States and distribute the tournament globally. ESPN360.com, ESPN’s signature broadband sports network, is scheduled to provide live coverage in the U.S., Europe, Mexico and Brazil.

Harrah’s Entertainment will distribute World Series of Poker Europe programming in non-ESPN markets, which totaled 170 million households in 2008 including U.K. host broadcaster Channel 4.

During the WSOP in Las Vegas (May 26-July 15), players can pre-register for WSOP Europe at the tournament cage as well as lock in poker player hotel rates via www.worldseriesofpoker.com. In addition, $1 570 Mega Satellites for the WSOP Europe Main Event will be held July 9th, 10th and 11th at 5:00 PM at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

During the first two years of the WSOPE, seven gold bracelets have been awarded along with GBP 9 997 500 in prize money.

Nordic poker prodigy Annette Obrestad won the largest amount ever for a female player, GBP 1 million when she won the inaugural WSOPE Main Event in 2007. John Juanda, the winner of the 2008 event, won in an epic battle in which the final table lasted 21 hours and awarded him the winner’s GBP 868 800 in prize money and a coveted WSOP bracelet for his remarkable efforts.

A plan by Atlantic Lottery Corp. to beef up its online sports betting platform had some Nova Scotia gambling critics crying foul Saturday.

“This is all part of the plan to make the entire casino gambling experience available online in every household,” gambling critic Bernie Walsh said in an interview.

“The lottery corporation already has online sports betting available with Pro-Line. This is all about something very much bigger than sports.”

Mr. Walsh has campaigned for years against video lottery terminals and is in the process of seeking compensation from the province, through the courts, for losses resulting from his own VLT addiction.

“The lottery corporation will not be satisfied until there is a VLT in every home,” he said. “It wants people to visit the casino before getting dressed or even before having breakfast.”

Mr. Walsh criticized the lottery corporation for continuing to expand its gambling offerings without public consultation and without considering a significant body of evidence about the social problems associated with gambling, and sports betting in particular.

An announcement that the Atlantic Lottery Corp. is seeking a supplier of a new Internet player account-management and sports betting platform is posted on the corporation’s website.

The corporation has provided few details on the specifics of this new platform, citing competitive concerns, but the deadline for submitting proposals is May 6.

But it appears the system would either replace or embellish the current Pro-Line sports betting platform.

Some online gamblers have criticized Pro-Line as cumbersome when compared to some of the slick offshore sites. Pro-Line was designed to offer win-and-loss bets on a posted roster of games, and registered players operate under a $99 weekly spending limit.

“In order to remain relevant to our players, we must deliver what the player wants,” the corporation posted on its website.

Gambling opponent Terry Fulmer said revamping the online betting platform is an attempt by the corporation to widen its customer base.

“Rather than losing them to Internet gambling, the thinking is we should addict them ourselves,” Mr. Fulmer said.

“Here we go again with yet another assault on the pocketbooks of Atlantic Canadians.”

Mr. Fulmer, who campaigns against gambling at his GameOverVLTs.com website, said the push to get more gambling conducted in homes will result in reduced profits for a list of small businesses from pizza parlours to hardware stores.

“An addict will be able to drop $150 in a few moments without anybody knowing,” he said.

Several thousand Internet sites around the world offer 24-7 access to casino games, sports betting, lotteries and bingo.

This day and age, nothing spreads faster than over the internet. In terms of online gambling, when a casino launches a new game, it instantly becomes accessible to every player who is and will ever frequent that online casino. Therefore, the more popular the gaming software platform, or better yet, the casino itself, the more popular a newly launched game will become.

For those operators who are new to the online gambling industry, it often takes a more creative way to get the word of mouth adequately spread for driving traffic. For instance, Barriere Interactive Gaming, which is in the process of developing their first Next Gen online casino, has taken a new road, albeit unpredictable and uncertain. Their quest for success is an attempt to bring online gambling to the Xbox.

According to Barriere Interactive’s Jonathan Stock, the company is in the final development stages of a 3D gaming product that will not only be a one-of-a-kind online casino, but will also have the ability to link up with Sony Play Stations and the Xbox. And it doesn’t end there. In actuality, Berriere Interactive is the subsidiary of French hotels and casino group, Lucien Barriere - who is no stranger to casino gaming.

What brings Barriere to the online sector, says Stock, is a bid to regain business lost from “illicit” online gambling sites. In other words, Barriere has lost a considerable amount of business to online gambling sites catering to French residents. And since the French government has done nothing, in effect, to regulate online gambling and give French brick ‘n mortar businesses a chance to compete (other than their very own State-run gambling monopoly), Barrier is taking their own steps to compete.

Set to launch in March, 2009, Barriere’s LeCroupier.com casino, which was modeled off of Barrier’s brick ‘n mortar casino in Deauville, France, is being billed as “the world’s first truly 3D casino”. And judging by their website, it does indeed appear certain the casino will launch as expected. A video trailer, high resolution screen shots and free wallpaper downloads give a taste of just how exceptional the 3D graphics are. So much so, in fact, there is interest from one of the two main game console companies for making the online casino into a video game. Although Stock would not say which one (PSP or Xbox), he did say it has been the company’s intent from the beginning to expand their gaming product beyond the internet.

It’s not too often that you hear about the game of craps when you’re reading up on the online gambling news. I know because I read a whole lot of online gambling news! That said, I was pleasantly surprised to come across the online casino, Craps.com, in my recent foray of scanning the news headlines.

A Playtech Software powered site, Craps.com, is owned and managed by Playtech’s leading online casino network, Imperial E-Club (Intercontinental Online Gaming), and boasts some of the most popular Playtech online casinos of today, including the long standing Casino Tropez, European player favorite Casino Europa and the Italian Stallion, Casino Bellini.

And while you can certainly play online craps at all of these casinos, Craps.com was developed in celebration of this exciting games, which incidentally, can offer one of the lowest House Edges in the casino if played with the proper Craps Strategy. In fact, the casino started off by offering craps, and over time, began to offer the full suite of Playtech’s 100+ cutting-edge games.

What’s all the hubub about, you ask? Well, besides the fact that Craps.com is celebrating their second birthday, one lucky player recently nabbed an approximate $120,000 jackpot on the “Queen of Pyramids” progressive video slot here. See - I told you they offer more than craps :).

So, yes, while craps is definitely a game of strategy that can help stretch out your bankroll (assuming you know which bets to make, or should I say, not to make), other less strategic games like slots can certainly “blow up” a bankroll, so to speak. For this particular jackpot on Queen of Pyramids, the lucky player - Marie Claire P. from France (Playtech casinos are closed to U.S. players by the way), had only been playing twenty minutes making $.25 bets.

The ironic thing is that she could have won plenty more if she made the max bet. Such is the way with progressive jackpot casino games. Nonetheless, $120,000 is nothing to scoff at on a $.25 wager. It’s definitely a nice chunk of change to put toward some wagers on the craps table.

A huge rake race is underway at the CEREUS network, aka Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Some high octane poker action is in order over the next month as grinders rack up the hands to compete for a $530,000 prize pool.

This is more than double the $220,000 offered by the sites in their last Rake Race. To qualify for the competition, all you have to do is simply play hands at real money NLHE tables.

This counts for tournaments, sit n’ goes and cash games. By racking up as many RAI$E points at Ultimate Bet or FAME points at Absolute Poker, players put themselves in to win their share of the half a million.

At the end of the qualifying period, the top 500 STATUS Point earners on the CEREUS Rake Race leaderboard will share in the $500,000 prize pool that includes $25,000 for the first place finisher, $22,000 for the runner-up, and $20,000 for the player who ranks third. Those outside the 500 will still have a chance in the $30,000 Rake Race freeroll.