The site boasts over 280 Las Vegas-style casino games including 180 slots such as the popular Tomb Raider game as well as 30 variations of blackjack, 8 different roulette games, baccarat, video poker and craps.

There are progressive jackpots on the site whose combined total is currently rising close to the $8 million mark.

However, the site is a download only casino and players may find problems with downloading and installing the casino software.  To get round this, players can order the casino software on CD if they have trouble downloading it from the Prime casino website.

There is also a 24 hour helpline for players experiencing problems or who have any queries about the site and an email address that can be contacted with a customer support team on hand to reply to your queries by email swiftly.

Prime casino claim they have over 2 million players signed up to play at their online casino, proving the site’s popularity.

Poker lessons are also available for beginners and players wanting to brush up on their poker strategy.

The lounge was officially opened in a ceremony by WSOP legend Doyle Brunson and the Mayor of Las Vegas, who cut the ribbon and declared the new lounge open.

Also on the launch night some poker pros including Doyle Brunson and his daughter Pam and son Todd played in a special VIP poker game to celebrate the launch.

Doyle’s daughter Pam won the game and received a Hard Rock motorbike as reward.

A stay at the Hard Rock Hotel is expensive as it is but the owners of the place are also allowing people to hire out the Poker Lounge.  It is likely to attract bachelor parties and stag nights for those who can afford to spend a huge amount on hiring out the swanky lounge for the evening.

The 35 qualifiers will join 65 poker professionals and 8 celebrities in the tournament to compete for a prize fund of over £350,000 with the first prize being over £136,000.

Snooker world champion Ronnie ‘The Rocket’ O’Sullivan and former Aussie cricketer Shane Warne are just two of the celebrity players that will be competing in Maidstone. Poker professionals who have also confirmed they will be in attendance include, Andy Black, Neil Channing and Roland De Wolfe.

The pacific Poker site is holding online national poker tournaments on Thursday nights in the seven weeks leading up to the Poker Open V. The top 5 players from each country will progress to a weekly international final which will take place on Saturdays at 10am with the top players from this final booking their place at the Maidstone event.

As well as the UK the national tournaments are for, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the Rest of the World.

The 888 Poker Open V will be broadcast on Sky Sports.

Bronshtein won event 14 of the series by defeating a field including Bryan “badbeatninja” Devonshire and Steve Zolotow. His first place in this H.O.R.S.E event gave him a reward of $70,413.

It was a busy night of online poker for Bronshtein as he entered event 15 – a $200 buy-in no limit hold’em turbo tournament. A total of 2,417 online players entered this event and Bronshtein managed to claim his second FTOPS title in the space of a few hours and add an extra $101,975 to the $70,413 he had won earlier.

These two wins follow on from his first FTOPS victory late last year when he won $17,000 as a result of his first place in event 6.

Bronshtein is a mean professional player offline as well as online. He has reached the final table at both the World Series of Poker and World Series of Poker Europe.

This was closely followed by Intertops Casino and then the Gaming Club whose owners had already launched the first online sports betting website.  These are all US based websites.

The first website to offer casino games based in the UK was called Atlantis.  This was the first online casino to offer a VIP club to its punters.

In the 1990s many small time online casino operators popped up and the industry wasn’t as well regulated.  This meant there were several dodgy casino operators.

Technology has strongly advanced online casinos now with much better graphics, sound, player security and swifter payouts.  In the first three years or so of online casinos, if you won some money you would have to wait about two weeks to receive your payout.

Since these first few years online casinos really took off big time.  In 1997, worldwide online gambling revenue was $1 billion, this jumped to $3 billion in 2001 and five years later the industry had expanded so much that the figure was $15 billion!

Today there is much choice for the internet casino player.  There is a huge list of reputable online casinos offering 24 hour customer support, high levels of player security, bonuses and regular promotions.