Damn you Yahoo, how can you mislead me like that? Well, actually, I can’t blame it all on Yahoo. The supposed Full Tilt buyer was all over the blogosphere early last week. I think Full Tilt was making sure that we all heard the good news - they had a buyer. The French company Groupe Bernard Taipe was going to pull their arses out of the proverbial fire. Then people started taking a closer look at the news and the Groupe Bernard Taipe. Now, it wasn’t that the news wasn’t true. The French company is interested in making an investment in Full Tilt. The problem was that the company wasn’t saying they were will to be the full and only investors involved in pulling the company out of the mess it’s gotten itself into.

Not that I can blame them. Here’s the think — Full Tilt owes about $300 million to players. The Alderney Gambling Control Commission isn’t going to let them resume operation until they can pay that back. So any investor coming in is going to lose $300 million right off the bat. And that’s before they even being getting the messed up poker room in order. Now, Groupe Bernard Taipe does have a sensible approach. If there were enough investors, that would offset the cost per investor and spread out the money crunch. There may be more investors out there. Hey, we know Full Tilt has hinted at them. And we all know that we can trust everything Full Tilt Poker says. Right?

Full Tilt Poker may have found a buyer. Of course the deal isn’t completely sealed just yet and even the prestigious Wall Street Journal is full of stories about the online poker room’s woes from shut down by the FBI to allegations of a Ponzi scheme. So, will the poker room really be bought out by a mysterious French savior? We’re waiting to find out, but we do have the name of the man behind the purchase offer.

Bernard Tapie, a French investor who has faced allegations of tax fraud and even served time in prison for fixing a soccer match with a team he owned, is apparently the mysterious European buyer with interest in Full Tilt Poker. Now, not all of Tapie’s investments are as problematic as the poker room, but the French investor’s Groupe Bernard Tapie company is known for buying up and salvaging financially distressed businesses.

But there are still some issues left to resolve. First, Full Tilt must successfully resolve the issues it faces with authorities in the United States, and even the WSJ doesn’t give me much insight on how it’s going to do that. And Full Tilt must also have a valid license to provide gambling services. Which could be a problem for the online poker room since the AGCC (Alderney Gambling Control Commission) just revoked their license. My guess is that there’s a lot of discussion going on about that one and how to get the license reinstated.

So, why would players want the admittedly problematic poker room to get its license back? Because part of the agreement with the Groupe Bernard Tapie is that they will pay back the estimated $300 million that Full Tilt owes to players both in the United States and around the globe. And players want to get their money back. Whether they’ll play with the site after that remains to be seen.

Full Tilt Poker is having another bad week. Heck, Full Tilt is just having a plain bad year. But now they’re being accused of being a Ponzi scheme and the quote from Preet Bharara who serves as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York is showing up everywhere. Now, online gambling blogs that follow casino and poker news have been covering the Full Tilt news for months, but the term “Ponzi scheme” has suddenly catapulted the news to the main stream media. Now the question that some are asking is — is it an accurate term?

Probably not. Oh, there’s no doubt that Full Tilt suffered from some massively bad management decisions and that they’ve passed that suffering on to the players. But a misuse of funds doesn’t make something a Ponzi scheme. Though I can see where some of Full Tilt’s actions are confusing. So, first, let’s look at what a real Ponzi scheme is. A Ponzi scheme generally starts with the decision to commit a fraud. An investment scheme is set up and investors talked into putting money into it. Money from new investors is used to pay dividends to early investors and everyone gets statements showing how great the “investments” are going. But there’s seldom anything actually happening behind the Ponzi to really generate revenue. Look, say I tell you I have a diamond mine on the moon and we’ll make millions but I need investment money. So, you give me money. And I get money from other people. They I give everyone part of that money back because our moon diamond mine is doing well, but there’s still room for more investors. So, you tell your friends about this great investment. And they tell their friends. And as long as new people are coming in, I can give out money. Once that stops, well, the problem is that I really don’t have a diamond mine on the moon.

Full Tilt Poker really did have a poker room. And players weren’t investors being led to believe they’d make an easy profit. They could and did lose money. The problem was that Full Tilt mingled player funds and operating funds. The result was a crash sort of like what happens in a Ponzi scheme. Once new money stopped coming in, it turned out the player’s funds weren’t sitting in protected accounts like players believed they were. Bad management decisions. Not necessarily a Ponzi scheme.

Are you considering signing up for an account at an online casino? Before you take that first step, there’s a lot of information you’ll want to sort through to determine the best places to play and to understand how an online casino works. Now, the more of this information that you come to understand, the more reassured you’ll be about playing at an online casino, but how much time do you have in your day to do intense research? For example, if you want to know how a casino works, you could find a wiki on the web and research information on random number generators. It’s a great idea. After all, I’ve done it. I have to know what I’m writing about because I’m providing information to others on where and how to spend their money. So, yes, I’ll look up and read what some might consider the “boring” parts.

After you’ve searched information on how casinos work, you’ll still need to find places to play. So, what you do is make a list of online casinos and then start going through that list ranking them all based on whether or not they offer play in your area, are they certified as fair and safe by a reputable organization, who are they licensed through, what gaming platform do they use … What, you don’t want to do that? You’d rather just start playing? Well, you can take a short cut and let someone else do the work and just look for a site that offers the best Canadian online casino advice if you’re Canadian or US casino play if you’re American.

If you were in need of medical advice, you’d go to an expert who already has a wealth of knowledge to pull from. You can follow the same process when it comes to online casinos. Let the experts who’ve done the research help you find the best place to play. That’s what we’re here for.

Have you check out the Crewpon over at Silver Oak Casino? This is possibly one of the best casino bonus offers out there — but only if we all work together. Because the more of us who play the Crewpon the more the casino will pay on the Crewpon.

So, here’s how it works. Every month Silver Oak offers a 200% bonus on any deposit of $50 or more made with the bonus code CREW200. Now this offer is good for slots and keno only, but it’s also only the start of the bonus offer. If you claim the CREW200 bonus offer you become part of the crew going after the Crewpon. Silver Oak tracks how many players redeem the CREW200 offer each month and at the end of the month gives EVERY player who claimed the bonus offer a free chip. Yep, every player. I’ve seen other casinos make similar promises but those are usually for the top 5 depositors meaning that the lower money folks get left out of the fun. Not so at Silver Oak. Here if you make a minimum $50 deposit for the month, you qualify for the CREWPON free chip which means the other players are helping you win free money. Because the more claims, the bigger the payout.

How big? Well, the largest possible free chip bonus is $1000 if 1500 people claim the offer. The smallest possible bonus is $25 if just 10 people claim the bonus. But it’s only the first half of September at the Crewpon already sits at 557 claims and a $300 bonus for players. That money won’t go down and if it hits 1000 claims, that’ll be $500 per player. Last month the Crewpon bonus was $300 to 900 players. So if you play slots, check the Crewpon at Silver Oak out today and win some free money!

Welcome to September! I always head out to check out the newest bonus offers waiting for us at our favorite online casinos. So today I’m checking out Club USA online casino because I know I can always depend on them for a great bonus offer or two. And they’re starting September off with a new month bonus now through September 4^th. All you have to do to take part in this bonus offer is to deposit $100 and Club USA Casino will give you $100 in bonus money. Now, keep in mind that this bonus is only to play slots with, but slot fans will want to use the coupon code EXTRA100 and remember — you only have until Sunday to claim the bonus!

Now, if you don’t play slots, don’t worry, Club USA hasn’t forgotten about you. In addition to their standard bonus offers of 65% on slots, keno and scratch cards using the coupon code SLOTS65 or their offer for 55% to play table games, blackjack and video poker using the code OTHERGAMES55, they’ll be offer a free chip starting Monday, September 5^th. All you have to do is claim a deposit bonus using either SLOTS65 or OTHERGAMES55 between Monday, September 5^th and Wednesday, September 7^th. Now, you do have to claim the same coupon 5 times, so choose whether you want to spend some time playing slots, keno and scratch cards or whether you want to enjoy the strategy offered by blackjack, video poker and other games. Either way, Club USA casino has a bonus offer for you this month.

I’ll be checking in with the online casino again next week to see what else they have planned and of course I’ll be writing about their bonus offers and other bonus offers as I find them. So stay tuned to the blog!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of unregulated online poker in the US. And the FBI looked out on the scene, shook their heads and said “this just won’t do.” So, a massive sting operation was devised that snared four online poker rooms in its net. This is a tale of two of those online poker rooms and where they stand today.

First, let’s take PokerStars. PokerStars was a top site for players in the US and doing well in the EU and UK, though PartyPoker (not available in the US) reigned in the EU markets. When the FBI seized their domain names and bank accounts, PokerStars was quick to enter negotiations to be able to pay out on money owed to US players. By doing so, they kept the trust of their UK and EU markets. The PokerStars news today - well, they’re just a few days from the 2011 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). Now, with US players unable to play (unless they go out of the country for the tournament) PokerStars is offering lower buy-ins for the tournament than they have in the past, but the tournament is a sign that the poker room is still in a healthy state.

No so for Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt was a force to be reckoned with until the FBI shut down. After that, the sites true problems showed up. Eventually the Alderney Gambling Control Commission suspended their license because they weren’t paying out money owed to player. Though Full Tilt seems to want to blame these problems on everyone else. So far this week I’ve heard the following: Players actually owe Full Tilt money because they essentially gave loans to players by making deposit money available before checks cleared the banks. But the site neglected to claim the money after the checks cleared. So, players still owe money to Full Tilt. Full Tilt lost money because a payment processor stole $42 million from them. True and unfortunately they can’t report it to the FBI because they’re blaming the FBI for shutting down their worldwide operations. Now that one isn’t quite true. While the FBI did seize the domain Full Tilt used worldwide, we know they were up and operating under another domain name shortly after that, just as PokerStars was.

Here’s what it comes down to for me. The FBI doesn’t seem to have done anything different to Full Tilt Poker than they did to PokerStars. PokerStars survived. Full Tilt is in serious trouble. So it would seem that the problems have to be internal to Full Tilt’s operations. Now the poker room says it’s still committed to paying money it owes to players. Perhaps because the poker world has made one thing clear — pay what you owe or you don’t survive. That’s always been the one main rule of poker.

It’s a bit of an unusual take on regulations. The Nevada Gaming Control Board is already reviewing a draft of potential guidelines to regulate online poker in the state. The proposed rules will be discussed in public meetings and revisions made before they are well… not put in place? See, that’s where the story takes a twist. Nevada isn’t working to regulate online poker within the state on its own. Instead, the state is preparing regulation in advance of potential federal regulations licensing online poker. So, the rules proposed by the Nevada Gaming Control Board won’t be put in place unless we see federally legalized online poker.

So, why is Nevada working on legislation for an industry that technically (despite the obvious existing online poker rooms) doesn’t exist in the United States? Well, they want to be ahead of the game if and when we see legal online poker. It’s potentially a wise business move since it would leave casinos in Las Vegas poised to take advantage of newly legalized online poker before other locations could get up to speed. And Nevada isn’t shy about wanting to cash in on the name recognition that the big casinos will have. Essentially this could be a big boost to the Las Vegas market even without a surge in tourism, and we all know that Nevada will want to collect taxes on any newly established online poker rooms.

It’s plans like these that have many in the online gambling world speculating that the recent crackdown on online gambling sites was planned to force some businesses out of the US market and clear the way for US casinos. After all, if we do get federally regulated online poker, the Vegas casinos won’t have to compete with names like Full Tilt, PokerStars, PartyPoker, Absolute Poker and others who either left or were forced out of the market.

Welcome back! How was your weekend? If you’re on the east coast of the US, I hope you made it through the storms all right. I’m in Florida and we were lucky this time, but I know I have friends in Virginia and further north who lost power and are going thru some flooding. Stay safe, gang!

But it’s a new week and I have good news. Lucky Red Casino is going to have another round of their Super Size Me bonus. Now, some things to keep in mind for this bonus. It’s specifically for slots games and keno games. (They don’t mention scratch cards so I’m checking on that). Ah, wait yes, according to the Terms page, the Super Size Me bonus is also good for scratch cards. (They seem to have a little problem with their text display right now. For some reason, they’ve got black text on a black background. To get around this just use your mouse to highlight the text. Lucky Red - you need to pay a little more attention to what you actually have on the site.)

So, back to the Super Size Me coupon. The coupon code is SUPERSIZE (something else in black on black) and this is a bonus geared to larger deposits. For the first $100 you deposit, you get Lucky Red’s standard 65% bonus offer. But for every dollar over $100, you get a 130% bonus deposit. Now, keep in mind that to take advantage of this, you have to deposit more than $100 in one deposit, and you have from Tuesday, August 30^th to Thursday, September 1^st to take advantage of this offer. So, if you were planning on making a couple of smaller deposits, you might want to consider making one larger deposit instead. You can redeem the SUPERSIZE coupon a total of 5 times during the promotion period.

If you miss the promotion this week, keep an eye on the Coffee Gambling Blog because I check for Lucky Red offers on a regular basis.

Happy Thursday and we’re almost to the weekend. Now, if you live along the Southeast coast like I do, you know you’re going to be spending a fair amount of time indoors this weekend. I’m in Florida and we’re already waiting for the first bands of Hurricane Irene to tap our shores. We’re lucky - she’s going to stay off shore from us, but we’re still expecting lots of rain. My friends up in the Carolinas are already battening the hatches for the big wind. Having been through oh, about 5 hurricanes, I know to prepare for long stretches of time indoors. So I’m already checking out the casino news because this weekend I could really use some extra playing money. And Lucky Red Casino may be my lucky casino this weekend.

Beginning tomorrow, Friday, August 26^th Lucky Red Casino will be offering 5 bonuses worth up to $5000 which means plenty of bonus money to spend on spinning the slot reels. Now, this is one of their high roller bonuses which means that you must deposit at least $100 to qualify for the 100% match bonus up to $1000. The coupon code for the bonus is GIFTS4U1 and you can use it 5 times for a total of $5000. Keep in mind that this bonus is to play slots, keno and scratch cards.

If you want to play blackjack, Video Poker or table games, you can take advantage of the ongoing 55% bonus offer by using the code OTHERGAMES55. Or if you want to play slots, keno or scratch cards but don’t want to deposit $100, you can still take advantage of the SLOTS65 offer for 65% back on your deposit starting at $25. But remember, if you deposit more, you can get more with the GIFTS4U1 offer.