This is a breakthrough victory for Cajelais, a 27-year-old professional poker player from Montreal who has come close to a major tournament win on several occasions. His best previous finish was second place in the US$5K Pot-Limit Omaha event at the 2007 WSOP.

WSOPE Event 2, a half Pot-Limit Hold ‘em and half Pot-Limit Omaha tournament with a buy-in of GBP2,500, attracted 158 of the world’s best players to the Empire Casino in London. Day one of the tournament was played at a rapid pace, especially during the action-packed Pot-Limit Omaha rounds. Cajelais dominated the early action, ending the day as the overall chip leader.

Day two continued at the same break-neck speed, culminating with an early start to the final table. Cajelais entered the final table seventh in chips after making his way through the tough day two field. The stacked final table featured four former WSOP bracelet winners, including Team Full Tilt’s Howard “The Professor” Lederer, along with Men Nguyen and Hoyt Corkins. Lederer was the first player to bust out from the final table, heading to the rail after his pocket 3s did not hold up against his opponent’s A-K.

The tournament was suspended for the night when five-handed play was reached, at which time Cajelais was the short stack and appeared headed for a fifth-place finish. This all changed when play resumed the next afternoon, as Cajelais won a series of big pots to reclaim the chip lead for the first time since the end of day one.

Cajelais dominated the final hour of play, completely taking over the table after busting Nguyen in fourth place. When heads-up play began, Cajelais held an almost 10-to-1 chip lead over Mats Gavatin, a professional poker player from Sweden.

Shortly into their heads-up battle, Cajelais made a full house in a Pot-Limit Omaha hand to eliminated Gavatin and claim his first WSOP bracelet. With this win, Cajelais has earned nearly US$1.7 million playing live tournaments throughout the world.

In celebration of his tremendous victory, Cajelais sprinted down the hall to claim his seat in WSOPE Event 3, the GBP5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha championship, which had started earlier in the afternoon.

He placed a million-dollar bet on the 1989 Super Bowl game and won. (Insiders say he quietly hedged his bet by also putting money on the other team.) He had the vision to build a futuristic space-themed casino and the ego to call it “Bob Stupak’s Vegas World.” He is credited with offering the first million-dollar slot machine jackpot, and redefined the Las Vegas skyline, literally, by erecting the tallest observation tower in the country — and topping it with carnival rides. And then he talked about building a casino fashioned after the Titanic — only bigger, with condo time shares nestled in the four towering smokestacks and a casino that would dominate the adjoining iceberg.

Former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones, who in 1996 was among Las Vegas City Council members who signed a proclamation naming Stupak “Mr. Las Vegas,” said, “There was only one Bob Stupak.”

“Right or wrong, Bob Stupak stood behind what he believed,” Jones, a Harrah’s Entertainment executive, said Friday. “He would not compromise for better or worse. He never apologized for himself, nor should he have.”

Robert E. “Bob” Stupak died Friday after a long battle with leukemia. He was 67.

Always the independent (his nickname was “the Polish Maverick”), he was more aggravating than charming, but always a topic of conversation, which pleased him.

“He thought of himself as larger than he was and could often come off as gruff and angry, especially if you disagreed with him,” said Howard Schwartz, operator of the Gamblers Book Shop. “Bob Stupak liked being controversial — he swam upstream. It was almost overkill how he tried to earn people’s respect, which he never truly got. People would smile and shake his hand then talk about him behind his back.”

Said Jones: “If Bob was wrong, he’d admit he was wrong. If he were right he’d tell you 10 times he was right.”

And longtime Las Vegas journalist Myram Borders, who covered Stupak during the years of his greatest contributions to local history, said Stupak “was always playing it right to the edge — good, bad or indifferent.”

Stupak was sometimes the survivor — like after a horrific motorcycle crash that crushed every bone in his face and left him in a coma 14 years ago — and sometimes the loser, running unsuccessfully to be the Las Vegas mayor, a Clark County commissioner and the Nevada lieutenant governor.

What he did win at was poker. A fixture at the old World Series of Poker at what is now Binion’s, in 1989 he won a $139,500 purse in the $5,000 buy-in no-limit deuce-to-7 world championship. He made the final table of that event three more times during his career.

“Bob was a decathlon gambler — sports bets, propositions, poker — everything at once,” said Las Vegas oddsmaker and gambler Lem Banker, who gave Stupak the advice to take Cincinnati plus 6 1/2 points in the 1989 Super Bowl against San Francisco for Stupak’s legendary $1 million winning bet. “He had a lot of heart and a lot of brains.”

But Banker and others say that bet was a publicity stunt, as Stupak also made another sizable bet at the same now-defunct gaming hall Little Caesar’s Sports Book.

“He was phenomenal at bringing attention to himself and his casino,” high-stakes poker player Mike Sexton said. “Once while flying home on the Concorde, he challenged Alaska gambler Perry Green to a heads-up poker game. When Stupak got back to Las Vegas he announced that he had just played in the highest poker game of all time.”

Stupak was born April 6, 1942, in Pittsburgh, the son of longtime illegal floating craps game operator Chester Stupak and his wife Florence.

At 22, Stupak, who didn’t attend school beyond eighth grade, arrived in Las Vegas, selling 2-for-1 coupon books for restaurants. He moved to Australia to operate the same business and a telemarketing firm, but was evicted from the country amid allegations of questionable business practices.

With about $300,000 in his bank account, Stupak returned to Las Vegas in 1971, bought a restaurant, discovered that wasn’t his calling and got a state gaming license. On March 31, 1974, he opened Bob Stupak’s World Famous Historic Gambling Museum on the Strip, just north of Sahara Avenue in a seedier part of town.

One of his quarter slots offered a $250,000 jackpot, and a nickel machine teased a $50,000 payout.

The place burned down two months later, and on the site he built his space-themed Vegas World — which he promoted around the world as a high-end resort, only to disappoint tourists who on the occasional rainy day would find buckets catching drips from the leaky roof.

Next door to Vegas World, Stupak built his 1,149-foot-tall Stratosphere — shorter than the 1,800-footer he wanted because the Federal Aviation Administration said any taller would interfere with planes delivering gamblers to Las Vegas.

The Stratosphere seemed a metaphor for Stupak’s life struggles: Its construction was stalled by a dramatic fire high in its pedestal that rained embers onto the street, and three months after its 1996 opening — and a year after he nearly died in a motorcycle crash — he resigned as chairman as the property was falling into bankruptcy.

It was after that when he pitched his Titanic casino, which Las Vegas city officials rejected.

Stupak’s bickering with city and county politicians, and his contention that he could do a better job, led to several blustery runs for public office and a stint at publishing his own maverick weekly newspaper, the Las Vegas Bullet.

In his inaugural run for mayor in 1987, he sent gift fruit baskets to potential voters. Stupak also financed the unsuccessful Las Vegas City Council campaigns of his daughter Nicole in 1991 and his son, Nevada, in 1999.

Stupak also was credited with helping to get his nurse-turned-girlfriend, Janet Moncrief, elected to Las Vegas City Council in 2003. She wound up being the only council member ever to be recalled from office. Stupak tossed his hat into the political arena for the last time in 2006, making a run for lieutenant governor of Nevada. He finished third, garnering 17 percent of the statewide vote.

In the late 1990s Stupak began helping charitable causes through his foundation, including opening a community center in one of the poorest areas of town.

For his philanthropic efforts, the Las Vegas City Council on Feb. 23, 1996, issued a proclamation citing Stupak for his “valuable pioneering efforts” and “his outstanding generosity … in answering the call of children, the homeless and the underprivileged.”

In more recent years, a seemingly mellower Stupak kept a much lower profile, content to play in high stakes poker games at the Bellagio and other major Strip resort card rooms and shirking the limelight he once sought with much fervor. He also was seen occasionally on televised poker events, including a final table during the first season of the World Poker Tour.

Besides children Nevada and Nicole, Stupak is survived by another daughter, Summer; two sisters, Linda Phillips and Nancy O’Conner, and two former wives, Sandra Blumen and Annette Hatton.

No funeral services were planned.

Sun reporter Mary Manning contributed to this story.

However, we did not go so far to officially blacklist Lucky 18, thereby giving them an acclaimed place on our updated Online Casinos Blacklist. As is the policy here at OCS, only those online casinos that hold the proper accreditations, including licensing, ongoing regulation, compliant software and efficient customer service, are considered for a review and consequent listing on our Online Casino Reviews page.

The best of the best casinos simply make it to our homepage, and fittingly enough, our Best Online Casinos page. Those online casinos which are not transparent enough and/or operate on unknown software platforms don’t even get a second look. But those online casinos which really screw up – and there is evidence to back it up – will certainly earn a place on our Blacklist.

Indeed, Lucky 18 had at one time been given our “Best Online Casino” status. One of the primary reasons was because of an amazing bonus offer they were giving to new players, including that forgotten bunch on the other side of the pond – Uncle Sam’s banished children. And perhaps Lucky 18 just got too liberal with giving away money, because it now seems like they can’t afford to pay it back.

Recently, the Casino Complaints Department here at OCS [complaints at onlinecasinosuite.com] received two emails from players who said they were attempting to cash out their winnings (legitimate winnings, mind you), but that Lucky 18 was not answering the phone lines, nor returning emails. Both players are owed funds in the thousands, and it is ridiculous that Lucky 18 wouldn’t even attempt communicating with the players and advising them of any setbacks or delays. Management has also failed to respond to emails sent from OCS, which simply points to an operation that is on the verge of going under.

Regardless, OCS has vowed to not give up fighting for the rightful earnings owed to these players. If Lucky 18 wants to keep what’s left of reputation (although it’s pretty shot at this point), or at least attempt some damage control, the owners will respond as they should. If, however, they are hoping these incidents will turn into water under the bridge (poised to do it again when another player wins big and/or their cash flow is running low), Lucky 18 has another thing coming. If you are an online gambler and reading this – Do not gamble at Lucky 18. You’re money will really be on the line if you do.

Reportedly contravention of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 forms the basis of the investigation. The investigation’s task force is said to have approached U.S. Customers of the Golden Casino as well as small banks who were approached to process online gambling transactions. New customer jurisdictional issues are also said to form part of the investigation. It is not clear what U.S. Customs role is in the investigation.

“Developments are likely soon in this ongoing investigation”, said sources close to Gambling 911.

The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada by a national law firm on behalf of a shareholder named Robert Lowinger, but is seeking other shareholders to join into the case that will seek class action certification.

The lawsuit names MGM Mirage, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lanni, current Chairman and CEO Jim Murren, Chief Financial Officer Dan D’Arrigo and CityCenter CEO Bobby Baldwin as defendants.

The case covers shareholders who owned stock in MGM Mirage between Aug. 2, 2007, when the company’s closing price on the New York Stock Exchange was $74.89, and March 5, when shares closed at $1.89.

On Wednesday, shares of MGM Mirage closed at $8.44, down 12 cents, or 1.4 percent.

During the lawsuit’s time period MGM Mirage executives made positive statements about the company’s revenues and earnings, according to the complaint.

However, during that same time, the complaint alleges that MGM Mirage put out a series of “false and misleading statements” concerning the company’s liquidity and the prospects for CityCenter, the $8.5 billion Strip complex the company is developing with Dubai World.

The complaint also discloses that MGM Mirage executives and board members sold almost $91 million in company stock during the lawsuit’s time period.

Among the executives listed in the lawsuit are Baldwin, who sold 502,962 shares of MGM Mirage stock between Aug. 30, 2007 and Dec. 14, 2007 for $43.84 million; Murren, who sold 200,000 shares between Sept. 4, 2007 and Dec. 6, 2007 for $17.47 million; Lanni, who sold 50,000 shares on Dec. 7, 2007 for $4.58 million; Senior Vice President Gary Jacobs, who sold 150,000 shares between Aug. 24, 2007 and Dec. 10, 2007 for $13.26 million; and board member Alexis Herman, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor, who sold 19,800 shares on Dec. 14, 2007 for $1.75 million.

“We have not been served with the lawsuit so I can’t comment on it directly,” MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said. “I can tell you that we have never made any false or misleading statements about our company’s positions or CityCenter.”

Earlier this year, MGM Mirage completed two complicated financial transactions covering CityCenter and the corporation.

MGM Mirage and Dubai World reached a new agreement that fully funded CityCenter, a move that kept the project, which had been on the brink of bankruptcy, alive and headed toward a scheduled opening in December.

The other move was a $2.6 billion corporate restructuring effort that resolved MGM Mirage’s leveraging issues and helped the company avoid a bankruptcy filing.

MGM Mirage, as with much of the gaming industry, has been hampered by the sagging economy which has zapped gaming revenues for the past 18 months. In the second quarter, MGM Mirage suffered a $212.6 million loss.

“As the true facts about MGM Mirage and the CityCenter leaked into the market, the inflation in the price of MGM Mirage stock was removed, causing plaintiff and the members of the Class damages,” according to a statement released by Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, the law firm handling the case.

After the initial case was announced, at least three more similar class action lawsuits against MGM Mirage were announced Wednesday by national law firms.

In July, a similar class action case was filed against slot machine giant International Game Technology.

A few million dollars a year, according to the old owners of the Tropicana.

Tropicana Las Vegas Inc., which acquired the Strip resort this month, doesn’t see it that way, though.

The new owners of the resort filed a lawsuit Monday in Clark County District Court claiming that they shouldn’t have to pay for rights to use the Tropicana name because they acquired the property, which has used the Tropicana since its opening in 1957, in bankruptcy court.

The new owners filed the lawsuit against Tropicana Entertainment and Aztar Corp., the two previous owners of the 34-acre property, asking the court to declare “that the Tropicana is entitled to continue operating under the name it used” for more than 50 years.

In its lawsuit, the company said past owners of the Tropicana have “always had the unquestioned right to use its own name.”

The new owners filed a similar motion in Delaware bankruptcy court on Monday seeking to block an automatic stay to use the name requested by the old owners.

Las Vegas-based Tropicana Entertainment claims it did not lose the rights to the Tropicana name in its bankruptcy case.

Tropicana Entertainment spokesman Hud Englehart on Tuesday said the lawsuit is without merit.

“We have offered the Tropicana property in Las Vegas an opportunity to license the use of the name on reasonable terms and they thus far have refused to agree,” Englehart said.

He declined to discuss the details of the proposed licensing agreement.

Tropicana Entertainment, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2008 in Delaware, seeks regulatory approval of its new ownership group from the gaming jurisdictions in which the company operates.

The company owns three hotel-casinos in Nevada — including the Tropicana Laughlin — and five riverboat casinos in Louisiana, Mississippi and Indiana. After emerging from bankruptcy, the company will be owned by an investors group led by billionaire Carl Icahn.

The Tropicana Las Vegas is owned by an investment group led by Toronto-based Onex Corp.

In the lawsuit, the new owners of the Strip resort said they were “expressly promised … they would have all the rights they needed to continue operating in the same manner” as the previous owner, “a right that obviously included” the Tropicana name.

Icahn and the other investors “now claim that they have the exclusive right to the Tropicana name (and) have stated their intention to deny the original Tropicana the right to continue to operate” under the name unless “millions of dollars are paid” in annual licensing fees, the lawsuit says.

Tropicana Las Vegas officials declined to comment.

While actors like Zayed Khan, Lara Dutta and Riteish Deshmukh have already hit the casinos, others like Amitabh Bachchan and Javed Akhtar preferred to stay away from the stalls at the lavish Venetian Macau-Resort here. Australian singer Peter Andre also stayed away.

Genelia D’Souza and Ashutosh Gowariker who arrived Thursday are waiting to try their luck.

Some roulette sound bytes of the stars:

Amitabh Bachchan: I don’t gamble.

Lara Dutta: I played a little bit last night. Riteish (Deshmukh) taught me how to gamble – that is going to come handy for both of us later, but it’s fun and exciting. I even won though I don’t usually gamble because I don’t know how to play.

Peter Andre: I don’t know if I will play at the casino or not. Actually my dad doesn’t like it.

Genelia D’Souza: I am definitely going to be visiting the casinos here… Life is all about fun. I don’t know how to play at the casino, but I am hoping to take some tips from here.

R. Madhavan: We go there (casinos) and pay our dues. I am not very good at it. I just play on slot machines and hope I hit the jackpot – that’s all.

Neil Nitin Mukesh: No casinos for me.

Javed Akhtar: I have more interest in going to see the old churches – they are very beautiful. Today I saw very old churches – almost 400 years old – they were lovely.

Sushmita Sen: I will hopefully try my luck at the casino a little bit because I suppose this place (Venetian Macau-Resort) has the world’s largest casino.

Kabir Bedi: I play poker and I don’t find many places in the world where I can play it in a lovely atmosphere. So when I am here, I am sure I will play. I usually win some, lose some, but I don’t play by the extremes.

Ashutosh Gowariker: I want to go to the casinos. I want to go there with 1,000 dollars and probably end up with 10,000 dollars by the end of the night.

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra: I am not so lucky in gambling – so I don’t really know, but I guess I must check it out.

Randhir Kapoor: I think I will go to the casinos here. Please wish me luck.

David Dhawan: I did go to the casino yesterday and I lost. But no worries. Tonight I will recover it all.

The basic strategy explained at the website will act like a base and help you in learning advanced strategies more effectively.

Blackjack basic strategy is an advantage-play method that can help you gain an edge over the casino. It is actually a chart that tells you how to play almost every possible hand by comparing your hand total with the dealer’s up card (the card that is visible). The Blackjack basic strategy can end your dilemma of splitting pairs as well. It may not serve as a good blackjack insurance strategy, but you can certainly benefit from it when it comes to play different hands, and pairs.

Unlike other advantage-play techniques like card counting and shuffle tracking, Blackjack basic strategy is relatively easy to understand and implement. It does not require mathematical skills, rather it requires sharp memory skills. It is a long chart and you may have to spend a lot of time memorizing it. But the effort will be worth it.

“There is so much hypocrisy that goes on within the world of gambling, from the laws, to the casino operations, right down to state lotteries,” said Craps Online spokesman, Billy Humbert, “we felt it was time to bring some of that hypocrisy into the light, and combined with our talented writers, it has made for some hysterical stories so far.”

Craps Online takes current news and puts a spin on them that would seem as illogical as the actual stories themselves. In addition to covering current events, there is also many stories that are completely fictional and meant to entertain.

Within the gambling industry, the news becomes redundant, with many states examining the same theories involving their laws. Crapsonline.org was created to break up the monotony of the same, boring old casino gaming news.

New casinos are being built almost on a daily basis, and it has created a competition for customers. That has led to some of the most outrageous promotions ever offered, and that is another sector we take an obtuse angle on. We take those promotions, and make them even more ridiculous in our ‘Holy Craps’ section.

Our ‘Crapped Out’ section was created for gamblers who are down on their luck. Some of the stories in this section make even the gambler with the worst story look like they are walking around with a four leaf clover in their pocket.

‘Legal Crap’ is a section dedicated to just that, legal gambling news. Whether it is a lawmaker in Ohio promoting weekly board member trips to Las Vegas on the public’s dime, or a casino being sued by a Pig Farm, it is all covered here.

Craps Online also has a resident loser. Cranky Carl has been around the casino block once or twice, and has never played at a poker table where he did not believe he had the best hand. His journeys are chronicled and are hilarious for any poker player to read. The Cranky Carl files, as well as other poker related gambling news articles, are found in the ‘Crappy Hands’ section.

Overall, Capsonline.org is an attempt to poke fun at one of the most up-and-coming industries in the world.

“Come and see what all the buzz is about, and we guarantee when you check in once, you will become a regular visitor,” said Humbert.

Adding to their portfolio of top tier gaming merchants including Unibet and Expekt, the Betsson deal consolidates IVOBANK’s position as a leading payment solution for online gamblers across Scandinavia. By increasing credit card acceptance IVOBANK are able to increase the number of paying and playing customers for their merchants.

Betsson’s customers will also enjoy the incremental benefits of opening an IVOBANK account, which include:

• Secure, instant and discreet means of depositing into their gaming account
• 0% loading fees on credit and debit card deposits until 30 August 2009
• Interest on their gaming funds in their IVOBANK Account
• Quick and simple online account opening
• Fast and free withdrawals
• A tailored VIP Service for high rollers
• Government protected funds up to £50,000

IVOBANK was launched in 2008 as a specialist online bank designed with the gaming industry in mind. Since then the bank has created an unrivalled position as the only FSA regulated bank to cater specifically for the needs of the online gaming industry.

Neil Cauldwell, Director of Business Development at IVOBANK says:

“Signing up Betsson as a merchant is a great win for IVOBANK. They are one of the world’s leading gaming operators and their customer base is one of the largest in Europe. We’re looking forward to working with them in a mutually profitable partnership”.

Hans Martin Nakkim, Director of Sales and Marketing at Betsson says:

“We are very happy our customers can now open an IVOBANK account through Betsson. The ability is there for customers across Europe to manage their entertainment budget via a specialised bank account which charges no transfer fees, offers excellent value and unrivalled security”.