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After overhauling its online casino platform, Doyles Casino has completed its online casino refresh project with a brand new casino information website.

The new casino destination completes the company’s year-long Internet casino enhancement project, which was managed on a consulting basis by industry marketing veteran and former 32Red and Stan James marketing expert Lee Simmonds.

The new design echoes the simplicity that has made DoylesRoom.com a favorite online destination for poker players. The contemporary RTG-powered DoylesCasino.com website features a slick, modern interface that’s been designed to showcase new promotions and get players onto the casino floor as quickly as possible, Simmonds explains.

DoylesCasino.com players are greeted by large icons that highlight the most popular promotions of the day so that punters don’t have to go searching for the information they need. A live jackpot ticker shows the running jackpot totals for all progressive jackpot games, letting players instantly know how much money is up for grabs at any given time.

The new website design completes the renovation process undertaken at DoylesCasino.com. Earlier this year, the online casino site overhauled its casino software, switching to the Realtime Gaming platform, which gives access to players in the United States.

Over $5 million in progressive jackpots makes the new-look site worth visiting, and players who deposit this (November) month will qualify for a $1 000 bonus on their first deposit.

Endorsed by poker legend Doyle Brunson, the new casino site is a sister to DoylesRoom.com, a major online poker destination.

It’s back to the corporate world for Simmonds in the near future; he has been snapped up by French gambling giant PMU and will be handling that company’s sportsbetting ventures from Paris.

Virtue Fusion Alderney is to supply Mecca Bingo with its new online gambling feature challenge, Snakes and Ladders, exclusively the provider announced today (Wednesday).

The 1 To Go game will be rolled out across the online casinos network of Mecca Bingo’s parent company Rank Group plc, which includes Mecca Bingo, Mecca Games, Blue Square and Bingo Universal among its subsidiaries.

The latest Virtue Fusion Alderney product licensed by the group sees players left on 1 To Go transferred to Snakes and Ladders for a chance to win a GBP 500 jackpot.

“Virtue Fusion Alderney is privileged to enjoy a fantastic working relationship with Mecca Bingo and Rank Group plc,” Virtue CEO Bob McCulloch said.

“It is with great pleasure that we enter this latest partnership with one of the biggest names in online and offline bingo, especially as it comes so quickly after our recent exclusive agreement with Endemol, another prestigious household internet casinos name.”

Angus Nisbet, Director of Gaming at Rank Interactive Development said: “This is an exciting time for Mecca Bingo. Virtue Fusion Alderney’s ‘Deal or No Deal’ bingo is proving a real hit and we’re delighted with the early progress of ‘Snakes and Ladders’, our exclusive 1 To Go game which gives our customers more chances to win when they play.”

Virtue Fusion Alderney has additionally announced the release of three more exciting new games, all of which are available to Virtue Fusion’s licensees.

Bouncy Balls is a new type of game developed by the company; a slot hybrid where customers match characters before they explode. An initially seeded GBP 50 000 progressive jackpot is available to a player matching 8 or more adjacent ‘Fireball’ characters.

Last Chance Saloon is a new feature available to losing players in all bingo variants across the Virtue Fusion network. Losing players are given the option to activate a free scratchcard where they can win up to GBP 10.

Clover Countdown is an evolution of Virtue Fusion’s hugely successful Clover Rollover slots game. The multiplayer action is taken to another level with more focus on the reels and games schedule so games can be set up paying either 1, 3, 5 or 10 players.

The latest edition - the fourteenth - in the popular Full Tilt Online Poker Series of internet poker tournaments has just kicked off, offering 25 events and over $16 million in prizemoney to online gambling pokerheads around the world. With buy-ins ranging from $100 to $2 500, there are possibilities for a wide range of bankrolls.

The first event in FTOPS XIV is a $1 million guaranteed $200+$16 No-Limit Hold ‘em tournament that started Wednesday night, hosted by poker pro Allen Cunningham.

Joining the list of events this time are two innovations - a 7-Game tournament scheduled for November 5th, and a cashout casinos tournament on November 12th, giving players the option to check out the latest upgrade to Full Tilt software that allows cash outs while the tournament is in progress.

Million dollar guaranteed prizepools abound in FTOPS XIV - there are six events offering million dollar or more prizepools, including the main event, which takes place November 15th and has a whopping $2.5 million ready for action.

FTOPS XIV will again be followed - between December 9th and 20th - by the more recently introduced MiniFTOPS featuring the same 25 events at a tenth of the buy-in. This mini-series will have around $3 million available in guaranteed prizepools.

The Pokerstars UK and Ireland Poker Tour is currently being set up and will comprise nine online gambling events across Britain and Ireland, commencing with the Euro 2 000 buy-in Galway tourney at the Radisson Hotel in December.

This will be followed by the first of the English venues, at the online casino in Manchester on February 11th.

Winners in each tourney will compete in the PokerStars European Poker Tour London Main Event in October 2010 in addition to collecting their individual winner payouts.

Full details can be found on the casino website.

The consulting and research firm MECN has combined with the Horten law group to compile a new report that offers an in-depth analysis of Denmark’s online gambling market, currently the subject of liberalisation moves that will take it out of the realm of state monopolised casino gambling.

In a statement this week the MECN Horten team advise that Denmark is one of the first to liberalise its gambling market, with the government one of the first in both the EU and Scandinavia to respond to the growing market share of internet gambling operators and to the increasing pressure of the European Commission.

In addition to liberalising the online gambling sector, the Danish government plans to open up the retail/land-based betting market, too.

The team say it is still not clear how developments in Denmark will influence the other, more protectionist, Scandinavian states, but it opines that Denmark will certainly be closely watched by these other interested parties to see how it approaches key issues such as private operator actions, taxation and levies and the impact on problem gambling.

MECN believes that private operators with a focus on Scandinavia should definitely participate in Denmark’s liberalised market. They could not only gather valuable experience but also present themselves as trustworthy partners for gambling operations throughout all of Scandinavia by doing so, the company explains.

The MECN-Horten report includes detailed analyses of relevant aspects, including an overview of the liberalisation process and content of the draft law, with insights into key details, along with an assessment of all sectors of the Danish gambling market: interactive/online gambling, betting, lottery, gambling machines, and casinos.

Current market statistics - up to 2008 - are included, together with legal, regulatory and tax information.

Social gaming may be the popular trend, but it doesn’t always deliver the goods from top online casinos, it appears from a Tech Crunch report this week.

The publication Tech Crunch this week noted the quiet demise of online betting venture Dotblu, perhaps better known as BetBlu in its early years, when it was formed by high profile Silicon Valley angel investors back in 2007.

Investors included Youtube co-founder Jawed Karim, Kevin Hartz (co-founder of Xoom and Eventbrite), Flixster co-founder and CEO Joe Greenstein and Keith Rabois (Former PayPal and LinkedIn Executive, Tech Crunch reports. A later $2 million round was funded by Maples Investments and DE Shaw.

The company first launched as an online betting service and then changed its name and focus to social gaming. But on October 16 2009 the company shut everything down with a brief note to users that said: “Dear dotblu members: dotblu.com is down indefinitely. A big thanks to each of you for being part of our community for the past two and a half years.”

The note also asks users to stay in touch via their Facebook fan page.

“Most startups die, so this isn’t any particular slam on the founders or investors. They tried and they failed, and that’s the way of Silicon Valley,” is Tech Crunch’s succinct epitaph.