Responsible -- UK Gambling charity group GamCare has awarded PartyGaming the responsible gaming certification for the second consecutive year. This means PartyGaming has for another year complied fully with GamCare's Code of Practice for Remote Gambling and has remained committed to providing a secure, responsible and trusted online gaming environment.
Concurrent Outages -- British online betting sites BetDirect and UKBetting were simultaneously hit by brief outages of between 45 minutes and two hours on Tuesday. The cause is unknown, but experts are looking at a few possible explanations, including a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and heavy traffic due to World Cup betting.
Leaving Camelot -- Camelot Group plc IT Director Tim Newing is leaving the company to join discount airline EasyJet as IT director beginning Aug. 21. Newing has played a major role in the development of the U.K. National Lottery, for which Camelot is the sole license holder, over the last 10 years. He was a technical manager for IT at Camelot's technical supplier, GTECH UK, before joining Camelot as head of projects and networks in December 2000 (shortly after the company was awarded the second license to operate the lottery). He became IT director of Camelot in March 2002. "I’ve had a fascinating and stimulating time at Camelot and it has been an enormous pleasure to introduce so much innovation into the National Lottery," Newing said. "I hope I’ve helped to put Camelot in a strong position as it prepares to bid for the third lottery license. But now it's time for a new challenge."
Blackjack Strategy Tool -- Online-Casinos.com this week launched its no-download Blackjack Basic Strategy Calculator, a tool that enables players to create perfect strategy cards based on any combination of playing rules and decks. Development of the tool took five years and cost over $25,000. The site recently unveiled an interactive keno odds generator that enables players to interactively calculate the exact odds of any keno bet.
Backgammon -- Online backgammon company TrueMoneygames (TMG) is sponsoring the 31st Annual World Backgammon Championship, to be held July 10-16 in Monte Carlo. The world's greatest players will compete for the title and 300,000- euros in prizes. TMG is offering full entry packages to the 12 winners of its online qualifiers running throughout June. The group will broadcast the big tournament in real time on the Internet and will provide real-time transmission of the semi-finals and the finals with automated live match analysis, as well as daily news and tournament results.
Dream Trip -- In an effort to draw more customers this summer, payment processing company Neteller is offering the chance to win a dream trip to either Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, plus thousands of other prizes. Only three drawings will be held and other prizes include two years' unlimited use of a convertible BMW Z4 or Mitsubishi Evolution, or a stadium tour in Italy or Brazil.