All online casinos would want their customers wagering with them during the Halloween weekend. Hence many online casinos have come out with attractive promotions and bonuses for this period. Rushmore Online Casino is not to be left behind. It too has offered a number of casino bonuses for wagering on online slot games and on other casino games.

These bonuses go by the name of Halloween Weekend Bonanza. Slots players can avail of bonuses of 200% of their deposits subject to an upper limit of $2000. These bonuses can be used to wager on keno games and scratch cards as well. There are five bonus coupons available for each of the different payment methods. Each coupon can be availed of only once by a player. There are separate coupon codes for deposits using credit cards or gift cards, UseMyWallet, eWalletExpress and Click2Pay. No bonuses will be available if any other payment option is used to make the deposit. Another eligibility criterion for the bonus is that each deposit has to be of at least $25. The coupons have to be redeemed before making the deposit otherwise the bonuses will not be given. At the time of the cash out the bonus amount would be withdrawn and only the winnings from the bonus will be remitted to the player. There is also a wagering requirement of 20 times the bonus and deposit before requesting a withdrawal.

The blackjack bonuses are slightly smaller. They are 150% of the deposits subject to a maximum of $1000. As in the earlier bonuses there are five coupons available for each payment method and the allowed payment methods are also the same as in the earlier case. The second set of bonuses in the Halloween Weekend Bonanza is structured similarly as the first set except for two differences. The bonuses can be wagered on blackjack and other games except for roulette, craps, baccarat and Pai Gow poker. The wagering requirement on these bonuses is 50 times the bonus and the deposit.

New players who want to take advantage of the Halloween Weekend Bonanza at Rushmore Casino will have to first register at the online casino. In that event they can also avail of the fantastic sign-up bonus that is on offer at Rushmore Casino. This is 100% match bonus that is spread over the first two deposits. Players can avail of up to $400 on the first deposit and $488 on the second deposit. This makes a total of $888 that the players can use for wagering during Halloween. Rushmore Online Casino is powered by software from Realtime Gaming and is licensed in the gambling jurisdiction of Cyprus.

Jennings Bet is an online gambling portal based in the United Kingdom that is popular for its sports betting and poker services. Last month it has added an online casino to complete the entire range of online gambling products. The casino goes by the name of Jennings Casino. Jennings Casino has licensed the software from the industry’s leading online gaming software provider, Microgaming. The casino is licensed by the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission. It has also been certified as “Safe & Fair” by independent auditor eCOGRA.

The lobby of Jennings Casino has been done up in a glitzy style with streaming banners announcing the best of the Microgaming online games. These include Tomb Raider Secret of the Sword, Hitman, The Great Galaxy Grab and the latest release Kung Fu Monkey Goes to Chinatown. The largest Microgaming progressive jackpot games are also displayed in the lobby along with their continuous tickers. Needless to add, that Jennings Casino offers the entire range of over 400 Microgaming online casino games.

As is the usual practice with online casinos, Jennings Casino offers an attractive sign up bonus to new players. This bonus is 100% of the first deposit subject to a maximum of £250. A minimum deposit of £10 needs to be made in order to avail of this bonus. The bonus carries a wagering requirement of 30 times before a withdrawal can be requested. Jennings Casino has adopted the popular Microgaming Clear Play bonus system that allows players to withdraw the bonuses incrementally as they meet part of the wagering requirements. Being a new online casino, Jennings Casino will need word-of-mouth publicity and therefore offers an attractive Refer a Friend bonus. For every friend referred by the player, the player is entitled to a bonus of £10 provided the friend deposits and wagers £25 within one month of being referred.

Jennings Casino offers a loyalty points scheme that is linked to a five tier VIP club. For every £10 wagered by the player at the online casino, he earns 1 Loyalty Point. 1000 Loyalty Points can then be redeemed for £10 in free casino credits. Depending on the loyalty points earned in a month players are placed in one of the five VIP levels, which are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Krypton. Players in higher VIP levels earn increasingly higher additional bonuses.

All the usual banking options are being accepted by Jennings Casino. These include Moneybookers, Neteller, Western Union, checks, bank transfers, credit cards and United Kingdom debit cards. The customer support at Jennings Casino is a bit below par as compared with the standard in the industry. The FAQs section provides only minimal help. Customer support is available via e-mail and over telephone but for practical purposes functions between 9 AM and 10:30 PM GMT.

Cherry Red online casino is popular for the blackjack tournaments that it offers to its players. Over the Halloween weekend it is offering some freeroll online blackjack tournaments that novice players would do well to take advantage of. It would enable them to get some experience of playing blackjack tournaments without making any investments.

One of the freeroll online tournaments is named after the popular beer festival Oktoberfest. The blackjack tournament is equally popular and has already drawn more than hundred registrations. The Oktoberfest Freeroll offers a guaranteed prize pool of $25. Another freeroll blackjack tournament that is coming up shortly is the Game Giveaway. This tournament offers a guaranteed prize pool of $30. Not all freeroll tournaments at Cherry Red online casino have miniscule prize pools. On October 31 players can participate in the event known as Bankroller Saturday. This online blackjack tournament is so named because it offers a chance to players for building up a bankroll without putting up any money up front. The guaranteed prize pool for the Bankroller Saturday is an attractive $200.

Cherry Red online casino is currently hosting the BKJK III mega event. Novice players are encouraged to participate in this popular blackjack tournament by entering through freeroll qualifiers. One of these has been scheduled for October 31. This is the Loyalty Draft Lotto tournament, so named because players have to redeem 25 loyalty points in order to participate. This tournament offers five free seats to the next round of the BKJK III blackjack event.

Cherry Red online casino has other online blackjack tournaments lined up that have such a small entry fee that they are as good as freerolls. One such upcoming event is the $101 Dalmatians. This tournament has an entry fee of only $1 and a guaranteed prize pool of $101. Another blackjack tournament that has an entry fee of only $1 is the $1 Shootaround. The guaranteed prize pool is $100. An interesting online blackjack tournament is the Six Shooters $6 Shootout. The event is restricted to the first six players who register. Each player pays an entry fee of $6. Cherry Red online casino takes a house fee of $1 from each player and the balance $30 is taken away entirely by the winner of the tournament.

Cherry Red online casino has two events scheduled for the more experienced blackjack tournament players. These are the Happy Hour and the 5 Dimes events that have entry fees of $22 and $55 respectively. The house takes the fee of 10% from each entry. A minimum pot is guaranteed and the total depends on the number of entries. It is not unusual to find pots greater than $2000 in these events. The schedule of these events can be obtained from the casino website.

Rival Gaming, one of the leading online gaming software providers, and Technical Systems Testing (TST), one of the leading online casino inspection agencies, have come together for the first time in online casino. A press release in the International Business Times stated that Ruby Royal has become the first Rival Gaming powered online casino to have received certification from TST.

This has taken the credibility of Ruby Royal online casino several notches higher. Like other Rival Gaming online casinos, Ruby Royal already carries a certification of fairness from Certain Key Cryptosystems. Also Ruby Royal online casino is a member of the Curacao Internet Gaming Association (CIGA). These two put together indicate to online casino players, particularly new players, that the games are not rigged and that there exists a mechanism that takes care of players’ concerns.

Without discounting the credibility or capability of Certain Key Cryptosystems, it cannot be denied that TST services a much larger section of the online gaming industry and is therefore better known. TST has been around since 1993 and operates from three continents. A large number of leading online casinos powered by Playtech and Realtime Gaming have been certified by TST. One of the key components of TST testing is the random number generator. TST certification confirms that the random number generator has been put through exhaustive statistical tests and that it produces outcomes that are random and unbiased and consistent with land-based casino equipment such as cards, dice and roulette wheels. The TST certification also ensures that the processes at Ruby Royal online casino are fully auditable, transparent and meet the standards set by the licensing agencies.

The management at Ruby Royal online casino is proud of the accreditation it has received from TST. It has demonstrated to its customers and the industry alike in that it offers a product whose integrity is beyond question. Ruby Royal online casino, however, excels in other aspects of online casino operation as well. In the competitive industry is not only essential to provide fair games but also to provide new and exciting ones. Ruby Royal online casino offers the best I-slots from Rival Gaming with exciting storylines and interactive bonus rounds. Players can choose from four progressive jackpots that combined offer a payout of over $100,000. In order to attract greater traffic Ruby Royal online casino recently introduced a set of daily bonuses that ensure that players have something extra to wager with every day.

Legalization and taxation of the online gambling industry in America would yield significant taxation revenues. The online gambling industry has been saying this, the online gaming experts have been saying this and the online gaming industry associations have been saying this for more than a year now. However, for the first time an official agency of the United States government has come out in support of the above statement.

The United States agency that has reported this conclusion is the Joint Committee on Taxation. This committee consists of Congressmen from both parties and functions in a nonpartisan manner. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke this news, the Joint Committee reviewed the scenario that would arise after lifting the ban on online gambling and overturning the UIGEA. In making its analysis the Joint Committee assumed that a small fee would be levied by the state on all deposits made by United States residents with online gambling companies. On the estimates of the total value of expected online gambling after legalization, the committee was able to conclude that the tax revenues thus generated over the next 10 years would be in the range of $41.8 billion.

It is too early to say what impact this report would have on the various moves that are being made to legalize and regulate online gambling in the United States. Spearheading the movement is the bill, popularly known as the anti-UIGEA bill, which has been introduced in the House by House Financial Services Chairman Congressman Barney Franks. Though this bill now has over 60 sponsors there is no certainty as to when it will come up for hearing because of the other pressing economic issues. A complementary bill to this one has been introduced by Democrat Representative Jim McDermott from Washington, which focuses on the taxation issues. McDermott has said, “I’m always looking for money to deal with some of the problems I see out there. This looked like a good place to find some revenue.” Now it seems that there is officially realization of this point of view.

There has been another unexpected and unusual news item in connection with legalization of online gambling. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican Representative from Utah, said in an interview to the Desert News that the Congress could pass Barney Frank’s bill in this session itself. His view is that this move will be made in as much haste and secrecy as involved in the passing of the UIGEA. However, Frank is denying any such move and has gone on record stating that he would not sneak his bill through with a whole lot of other paraphernalia, preferring to allow it to stand alone.

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein could be about to break step with the 15 other German states with whom it signed the German Interstate Treaty on online casino games last year.

At the time, it was reported that fiscal imperatives were behind the Schleswig-Holstein decision to join the other states in the ban, despite its previous preference for a wider licensing system.

The initial signs of a possible break occurred last week following political moves that saw agreement between the ruling coalition Christian-Democratic Party (CDU) and the Liberal Party (FDP) in the region, and a statement calling for an end to the Treaty in favour of a regulatory regime more in keeping with European Union requirements for the free movement of goods and services.

Although this is unlikely to go down well due to the state-monopolised nature of the German gambling market, it would relieve determined pressure from the European Commission and trade bodies like EGBA as well as online gambling companies that see the German exclusionary policy as contrary to the principles of the European Union.

Jürgen Koppelin, the leader of the Schleswig-Holstein coalition, made a not-so-veiled threat that if the other parties to the German Treaty found that agreement on switching to a new regulatory system was impossible, the coalition would move toward a change that would see an intrastate licensing system.

Despite being currently in the minority, the Schleswig-Holstein development, which has the potential to liberate both land and online gambling from monopolistic dominance, will concern other signatories to the Treaty. The arrangement is due to expire in January 2012, and in the absence of full compliance by all 16 states, a renewal could be in jeopardy.