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The website development company Hudson Horizons has made imaginative and innovative use of online slots gambling and auction techniques to enhance a retail client’s offering, recently launching a custom-made Flash casino game to accompany a designer label e-commerce store, RentMeAHandBag.

The team of Web 2.0 developers at Hudson Horizons designed, hand-coded and launched RentMeAHandBag for the client back in May, 2008. The e-commerce gambling site allows shoppers to rent, buy, or purchase designer apparel and accessories on layaway; RentMeAHandBag underwent several renovations over the months, giving shoppers the chance to place bids on items of their choice, and win them through an interactive, live auction.

The recently-launched Flash game is an extension of previous interactive additions to the fashionable e-commerce website.

Members registered with Rent Me A Hang Bag can log in and play the new Flash slot game for a chance to win products.

After pulling the virtual lever, three reels spin at random; if the reels stop on matching icons, members can instantly win exciting prizes such as a designer purse, high-end shoes, or point credits that can be redeemed through the online store and used towards a future purchase.

Hudson Horizons VP of Technology Matt Mayernik said of the new Flash game: “We used CS3 Flash technology to develop the application, utilizing ASP.net web services.”

Noting that social networking websites have swept the world by storm, Hudson Horizons founder, president and CEO, Daryl H. Bryant said: “That’s why our team has built this Flash game to be fully integrated with Facebook’s social community.”

Through dynamic oAuth technology, an open protocol that allows secure API authorization, Facebook members can access the game directly through the social platform with their regular login information.

Likewise, shoppers registered with RentMeAHandBag.com can play the Flash game directly through the e-commerce website, using their customer login information.

As with many of their custom-designed projects, Mayernik and his team of Web 2.0 developers integrated their dynamic SEO-friendly Content Management System. This unique CMS gives site owners the ability to manage every aspect of the Flash game, including prize values, reel icons, and winning odds.

Controversy and doubt are swirling around Brit illusionist Derren Brown’s explanation of how he managed to correctly predict the internet casinos winning numbers in Wednesday night’s draw of the UK National Lottery. But if publicity was his main aim in ‘revealing’ his secret Friday, it’s worked well - hardly a online casinos newspaper in the UK has not reported on it. And a television audience of 2.7 million watched him pull the sleight of hand off.

Brown left viewers with more questions than answers after he revealed how he apparently managed casino bonuses to beat odds of 14 million to one in guessing the winning numbers 2, 11, 23, 28, 35, 39 prior to the draw and without resorting to television trickery.

But when it came to detailing how he had done it, observers seemed to feel that there was more showmanship than detail, leaving viewers confused about how he achieved the right prediction.

On the one hand, he implied that a combination of “deep maths” and averaging out the subconscious predictions of 24 people was the technique he used - apparently an old “country fair” trick. But then Brown concluded by examining other ways in which he might have succeeded, such as using a lottery insider, putting weighted balls in the machine and hypnotising the security man who guards it. But he emphasised that he had done none of those things, and the Lottery authorities would be outraged at any suggestion that he could have done it that [highly illegal] way in any case.

Expanding on his ‘country fair’ averaging method, Brown said he had gathered a panel of 24 people who wrote down their predictions after studying last year’s winning numbers.

Then they added up all the guesses for each ball and divided it by 24 to get the average guess.

On the first go they only got one number right, on the second attempt they managed three and on the third they guessed four.

By the time of last week’s draw they had honed their technique to get six correct guesses, and these were the numbers shown on the Wednesday night program, Brown said.

Brown claims that the predictions were correct because of the “wisdom of the crowd” theory which suggests that a large group of people making average guesses will come up with the correct figure as an average of all their attempts.

He also suggested that if the people were motivated by money, it may not work.

Brown said: “That concludes the tale of how we reached Wednesday night. All of my 24 people who were there know what happened and the success they had.

“But it’s quite possible that many of you simply won’t believe it. So you may choose not to believe any of what I’ve told you. Maybe you’ll still believe that it was some sort of ’super technology’, What you choose to believe is up to you.”

But, reported the Telegraph newspaper, Brown’s alleged method was rubbished by mathematicians.

David Spiegelhalter, professor of public understanding of risk at Cambridge University, said: “There is a difference between guessing between the weight of an ox and guessing lottery balls, which is unguessable.

“This is just a clear wind-up and complete nonsense.”

Roger Heath-Brown, professor of pure mathematics at Oxford University, said: “Mathematically it is complete rubbish. It is a bluff on his part, he is doing it in some other way.”

Alan Forsyth, an at times successful 36-year-old online poker player who nevertheless continued to draw government health benefits in the UK, faced his comeuppance this week in a Norwich court.

The magistrate was told that the benefits fraudster had cheated the taxpayer out of thousands of pounds, and had six secret bank accounts loaded with online casino games winnings from online poker.

Forsyth once won $49 000 in a single day gambling online - yet was claiming he could not afford to pay his council tax. Last week he pleaded guilty to seven charges of benefit fraud dating from October 2003 when he first claimed to have no financial reserves, although he actually had two bank accounts that he did not declare.

While at the time they had “relatively little” in terms of a positive balance, he used the accounts to deposit the winnings from his online poker efforts, continuing to claim the benefit fraudulently until June 2007, by which time his number of undeclared accounts had reached six, with two accounts opened in 2005, one in 2006 and another in 2007.

Throughout this period, Forsyth was registered as unable to work with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, with which he was diagnosed with in 1997. Forsyth claimed that his medical condition had militated against him filling in the benefit claim forms properly, but prosecutor Yvonne Blake suggested to him: “If you have the concentration to play poker to the extent that you can win $49 000 in a single day, you have the concentration to fill out a form.”

In total, Forsyth is alleged to have fraudulently claimed GBP 3 706 in council tax benefits, a figure he has since paid back in full.

In mitigation, it was pointed out that Forsyth stayed in work for five years after his initial diagnosis, and was described as “hard working.”

Forsyth’s legal representative said that he was not a well man, suffering greatly from fatigue and pain, and was without the ability to work again.

“He got stuck in his own web of deceit. He did start winning money and more accounts were opened. He was scared it would be backtracked to the original offence.”

Magistrates ordered Forsyth to pay a total of GBP 1 400 in fines - GBP 200 for each offence, as well as GBP 15 surcharge and GBP 150 towards prosecution costs.

Presiding Magistrate Howard Gill said: “You’ve got seven charges of making a false statement. This took place over a long period of time and was premeditated. There was a risk of substantial loss of money to the tax payer.”

World Poker Tour stands to gain substantially from casino gaming a late second takeover bid which was announced Monday, identifying the origin of a second bid that WPT revealed in a online bonuses mandatory SEC disclosure last week.

Peerless Media Limited, a subsidiary of the online gambling giant Party Gaming, is the new bidder…and it’s offering $12.3 million for the company’s assets and 5 percent of future gaming and other revenues - a significant improvement on the previous officer from Gamynia Limited. This was made three weeks back and reported in earlier InfoPowa bulletins. The deal includes all elements agreed in the Gamynia offer, which now falls away.

In early August Gamynia’s offer of $9 075 000 and a percentage of future revenues was accepted by WPT management, subject to shareholder approval (a step yet to be taken). At the time some 39 percent of the stock was committed to the Gamynia deal by shareholders, with more support expected. This support has been refocused on the Peerless offer.

“The Board of Directors has determined that PartyGaming’s acquisition proposal is financially superior and we look forward to working with one of the pioneers and leaders in the poker and online gaming markets to provide a strong vehicle for the WPT brand to continue its global expansion and return to online gaming,” a WPT statement from CEO and president Steve Lipscomb read, advising that any agreement would have to be approved by a majority of the stockholders, and that with this in mind completion could take as long as the last quarter of the [2009] year.

“PartyGaming has been an important partner for a number of years and we are confident that they will be an excellent manager of our brands in the future,” Lipscomb added.

The net cash proceeds from the asset sale will be retained by WPTE which plans to use the cash to develop or acquire a non-poker related business. WPTE does not currently intend to distribute any proceeds from the asset sale to its stockholders.

ElectraWorks Ltd is guarantor for Peerless Media.

Prime Table Games, a casino games commercial entity, has been criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for not identifying itself in launching an internet gambling advertising campaign attacking betting shop terminals.

The online gaming company said in defence of its actions that it would not benefit commercially from the campaign, an argument rejected by the ASA on grounds that it might derive benefit from the advertising activity and because consumers have a right to know who is behind the messages they are exposed to, which could be misleading.

The company’s advert in a magazine called for readers to “terminate the terminals,” a reference to the fixed-odds betting machines in betting shops. The company’s rationale for this was that betting terminals gave inferior odds compared to casino games such as those that the company offered, and that the fast gaming style of the machines lent itself to problem gambling.

“Prime Table considered that terminals were more accessible to vulnerable people than other forms of gambling, such as casino gambling,” the ASA report reads, pointing out that the company had claimed to have conducted its own research by playing terminals and watching and talking to other players.

The firm had concluded from this research that the table game content on the terminals, along with the sort of player typically found playing them, had the potential to generate problem gambling. However, the firm did not submit a copy of their research report.

Furthermore, the advertisement alleged that betting shop terminals “flout” Gambling Act requirements for socially responsible gambling, and claimed that such terminals were wholly unfair when compared to their casino equivalents because “the probability that players lose all their available cash on a session is higher”.

These statements implying factual accuracy needed to be backed by firm evidence, said the ASA report, and Prime Table had not done so. This primarily anecdotal claim therefore created a potential to mislead.

Prime Table’s claim that terminals offered poorer odds than casino games and were therefore unfair was also rejected by the ASA.

&”We considered, however, that poorer odds did not equate to unfair gambling and concluded that the description of fixed odds betting terminals as wholly unfair when compared to their casino equivalents was inaccurate and misleading,” the ASA adjudicator observed.