Gambling Facts

Typically, when news spreads of a big progressive jackpot win, the jackpot paid out through an online slot game. Slots are more popular and more prevalent than other types of online jackpot games, so their jackpots tend to grow larger and to be won more often.

This week, however, things have been turned on their head with a pair of impressive payouts from progressive jackpot table & card games.

The first happened at an unknown casino running on Vegas Technology software. Their Progressive Blackjack game hit for an astonishing $191,643.

Around the same time, a big poker jackpot was won at Bodog Casino. Their progressive game Let ‘Em Ride paid out $190,205. These two big jackpots were actually won within an hour of one another – an impressive feat for online jackpots not related to slots!

Bodog actually had a few other large progressive wins on table and card games this week. A few days ago their Caribbean Poker game paid $95,697.

These wins are exciting, but progressive jackpot slots still take the cake as the biggest payers. Right now, the biggest prize is the WagerWorks casino jackpot, which is sitting at nearly $2.8 million. This jackpot is connected to three excellent games: Cleopatra, Cluedo, and Monopoly.

Most people never have the opportunity to participate in a Formula 1 race. Of course those who can haven’t usually don’t place significantly. However, German Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel evidently wasn’t one to believe that trying again is for losers. He won last year and this year, on October 10th, he won again, beating fellow Red Bull driver, Mark Webber, by merely 0.9 seconds.

Singing praise of the Japanese Grand Prix circuit, 23-year old Vettel stated “This track is like it has been drawn for us with all the high-speed corners. It’s always a pleasure (to drive). When the car was getting lighter and lighter (with fuel) at the end, it was more and more fun,” said the 23-year old.

Three races remain within the Grand Prix Competition. Webber leads 220 points to Alonso’s 206. Vettel, in third, also has 206 points, but has won fewer races than Alonso.

Going into the race, Bodog favoured Webber at 11/4 over Alonso’s 3/1. In fact, Bet365 carried 40/1 odds of Alonso retiring early owing to his reaching the Grand Prix’ cap of eight burned-out engines.

Bet365 is currently offering 9/4 that Sebastian Vettel will win Formula 1 Drivers Champs 2010, and Mark Webber is still favoured at 11/10. Jenson Button is considered a long-shot at 50/1. For the Formula 1 Constructors Champs 2010, Red Bull is now favoured 1/50, as opposed to Ferrari’s 50/1. Bet365 closes the book for these bets at on the 22nd of October 2am. Unibet is offering similar odds.

Garina Fearon is a single mother living in Brooklyn, New York. She works as a prison guard, a job that isn’t much fun when inmates get unruly and decide to assault the guards. Despite these hardships, a lucky mistake last month changed Fearon’s life forever.

Fearson is not a gambler. She said she buys lottery tickets maybe twice a year. Last month she went to her local deli to buy a Powerball ticket, but wound up buying a Mega Millions ticket by mistake. She put the ticket in her pocket, went home, and didn’t even pay attention when the winning numbers were announced that evening.

Two days later, Fearson was at work when she looked up the winning numbers in a newspaper. She soon realized that by buying the wrong ticket, she had won 54 million dollars.

For now, Fearson has stepped away from her job as a guard at Rikers Island while she figures out what to do with her new-found fortune. One thing is certain – she will be sending plenty of money back to her mother in Jamaica.

Lottery winners are often faced with a choice – take a big cut in their prize and collect the remainder right away, or get the whole amount in small payments for years and years. Fearson went for the lump sum option, taking home a fat $33 million.

A record $23.9 million prize fund has been organized for the Australian Open Tennis Championships. This is the greatest prize since the event started, 105 years ago. Both the men’s singles champion and the women’s singles champion will walk away with $2.2 million. The defeated finalists won’t need too many tissues, as they’ll each receive $1 million checks with which to wipe away their tears.

During January, the Australian Open is the most popular sporting event anywhere in the entire world. Moreover, it is the most prevalent yearly event throughout the southern hemisphere. To prepare for this event, Melbourne Park in Victoria is being redeveloped at a cost of $348 million. This is expected to benefit not only the Open, but the complete sport of tennis.

In the first part of 2011, Rafael Nadal will have a rare opportunity to win all four grand-slam titles with a year’s period, a feat previously achieved only by Rod Laver and Don Budge. He will be up against Roger Federer, the previous number one. Meanwhile, Serena Williams will be out to reclaim the woman’s title. Top online sport betting sites are already beginning to lay odds and collect wagers for this big tennis event.

The latest big progressive jackpot winner in the online casino world is Vernon S. from Maryland, United States. Vernon was playing his favorite real-series video slot Aztec’s Treasure at Bodog Casino when he won a massive $136,499 prize.

Aztec’s Treasure is a 5-reel 20-payline video slot from RealTime Gaming that is themed around the mysteries of the ancient Aztec culture. This slot comes packed with special features, including wilds, scatters, free spins and multipliers, plus a random progressive jackpot that can pay out on any spin. The game’s graphics are not the best around, but gameplay is excellent, and as Vernon’s big win demonstrates, it can pay out very well.

Other big winners at Bodog this week got their money playing blackjack card games. Adam K. of Ohio won $23,924, Frank L. of California won $16,766, and RJ Y. of Virginia won $14,910 playing blackjack. These US players find Bodog to be a convenient place to play, since it is one of the best online casino accepting US players.

Ladbrokes, known for their online sportsbook and their internet poker room, took their gaming activities offline to host the Ladbrokes Irish Poker Festival in Killarney, Ireland. 632 players came from both local Irish poker rooms and around the world to compete for the top prize. By the third day, all but ten were eliminated.

Of the ten men at the final table, almost all were Irish nationals, though two foreigners made it into the melee, Richard Connoly (from the Isle of Man) and Lars Torngren (a London-based Swedish expat). Bankrolls ranged from Richard Connoly’s 360k to John Kalmer’s 1.8 million, and as well as being the chip leader, “Skalie” was the early favourite. Unfortunately for him, his Ace-Jack couldn’t hold up against Lar’s Pocket Queens, as the Ace he hit on the flop couldn’t withstand the Queen on the turn.

In the end, it was Lars Torngren who carried off the €75,000 grand prize. Lars possessed pocket sixes which he managed to hold up in the three-way all-in against a pair of Irishmen, Paul Lucey, with his Jack and five, and Barry McGleenon, holding an Ace and a seven.

Lars has been playing poker for about 8 years and is “absolutely delighted” about his first big tournament win. He is already pleasantly anticipating competing in the Ladbrokes poker festival next year. Till then he is likely to be found practicing at online poker sites in Sweden.

American online poker champ Tyson Marks of Montana won the largest poker prize in online gambling history last week, scooping up an incredible $2.25 million win in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) main event.

Marks, who goes by the online handle POTTERPOKER, beat out more than two thousand other hopefuls who entered the two-day final event. This massive collection of players gave the tournament a $12,215,000 prize pool, making it the richest internet poker tournament in online gaming history.

By the time Marks hit the final table, he had an incredible 30 million chip lead over the competition, and he pushed through to take the win. Of course, the other two finalists didn’t walk away empty-handed. Both took home more than $1 million in prize money.

“Being able to say: “I’m online poker world champion” is something that still doesn’t feel real to say” Marks commented. “I don’t feel like it’s going to change who I am at all. I have an amazing girl and friends and family who are amazing….this money is really just gravy.”

The $2,278,097.50 poker prize makes a nice addition to Marks’ $1.3 million in career online poker tournament earnings.

There must be some strange alignment of the planets going on, because Microgaming progressive jackpots have been paying out all week long.

These are not the huge multi-million-dollar jackpot wins that usually make headlines, but there has been a steady stream of five-figure wins that have caused players to flock to the casinos looking to grab their share of the cash.

The Mega Moolah jackpot has been paying out like crazy. This week it was won five times, handing out jackpots to the amount of $15,000, $22,000, $36,000 and $40,000 over the course of just six days.

Progressive jackpots were won on a few other Microgaming slots as well. Fruit Fiesta paid out almost $38,000 and WowPot hit for over $17,000. Lotsa Loot paid out $35,500 and Cash Splash earned one lucky player more than $53,000.

A pair Microgaming video poker jackpots also hit this week. Jackpot Deuces gave out over $33,000 while SupaJax paid an impressive $37,000.

All added up, that makes close to $300,000 in Microgaming progressive jackpot wins over the last 7 days. Microgaming runs one of the largest networks of progressive jackpot games on the net, and is responsible for producing the largest single jackpot win in online gambling history: €6.3 million, won in 2009 on Mega Moolah.