Online Casino Gambling Newsbriefs

Published: Friday, March 25, 2005 Online-Casinos.com

ONLINE CASINO GAMBLING NEWSBRIEFS

A gnome for the glossary

InfoPowa learned a new (for us) online gambling term this week - "gnomes."

We're reliably informed that the genesis of the term are those much ridiculed lawn ornaments, so whoever coined the term had a sense of humour.

Gnomes are apparently online casino accounts opened in the names of friends and relatives by greedy gamblers looking to exploit bonuses to the max. The *ring leader* player often gives the friend or relative a percentage of the bonuses to compensate for use of personal and financial details.

We're unsure of the collective noun for a group of gnomes, but a gang (for want of a better word) of gnomes can involve the use of one or two *personalities* or fairly large syndicates. The schizophrenic possibilities are daunting.

It's a risky practice, because if discovered the player does not get too much sympathy or return on investment.

Our source tells us that the practice is freely discussed on sites like the appropriately and presumably proudly named Bonus Whores.com.....


Ask Jeeves to change hands?

Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp announced this week that it intends to buy Web search provider Ask Jeeves Inc. for $1.85 billion in an effort to knit together its diverse holdings and profit from search advertising, one of the fastest growing businesses on the Web.

The purchase will pit IAC against well capitalized Web search giants Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. as well as new sector entrant Microsoft Corp.

"Global search is the gateway to everything,'' said media mogul Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive of IAC, calling it a multibillion dollar industry growing at double-digit rates.

IAC, which plans a spin-off of its Expedia and other travel-related businesses in the second quarter, said it will integrate the Ask Jeeves search box and its Web search results on all of its sites, including the Home Shopping Network, event ticket site Ticketmaster, online dating site Match.com and online mortgage provider LendingTree, as well as Expedia.

Known for its cartoon butler and early strategy of encouraging Web searchers to enter queries in the form of questions, Ask Jeeves runs a Web search network that is a distant fifth to those of Google, Yahoo, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, and Microsoft's MSN.


In search of advertising

Slickstreet Marketing is looking for the right agency to promote Prima Poker Network online poker site Royal Vegas Poker, and has reportedly settled on a short list of three. The three companies still in the running for the tasty $20 million account include Eisner Communications Inc., The Concept Farm and Avrett Free Ginsberg, the latter of which is a division of The Interpublic Group of Companies Inc.

The project is the first time the Gibraltar and South Africa-based Slickstreet has hired an agency, and is doing so in an effort to boost the online poker site in North America. The ideal agency will have experience in marketing retail brands over the Internet.


Italian breakthrough?

Better late than never is a report coming to us from Stanleybet that there have been some positive moves in the "sovereignty" debate regarding its operations in Italy.

Last month Supreme Administrative Court (Consiglio di Stato) in Italy handed down a decision that U.K.-licensed bookmaker Stanleybet International has the right to operate data transmission centers in that country, even in the absence of a gaming license from the Italian government. The court's decision is the result of several legal challenges, including the European Court of Justice's ruling in November 2003 on the Gambelli case.