Category: Gambling and Casinos

I like many other fans were frustrated with the less then inspired by the play of the Edmonton Oilers early in the NHL season and that both veterans Mike Peca and Chris Pronger were grossly underachieving. The team was struggling to make the playoffs and as usual the inconsistent play of the goalies between the pipes, forced Edmonton management to make a move.

My how a season can turn around! In walks former Minnesota Wild veteran Dwayne Roloson and two months later the Oilers are in the Stanley Cup finals. Last night in Raleigh, North Carolina the Western Canadian team thoroughly dominated the Carolina Hurricanes for almost 50 minutes and then the roof caved in.

Up 3-0 the Oiler defensemen and forwards became lackadaisical in their defensive end and the Canes surged back to tie and then take the lead. Carolina matched the biggest comeback in finals history, equaling five other teams that came from three goals down to win. Pronger scored the first penalty shot goal in finals history. The Hurricanes surged ahead with three goals in the third, grabbing their first lead on a shorthanded breakaway by Justin Williams. The Oilers tied it back up on a power-play goal by Ales Hemsky.

With the score tied at 4 and about six minutes remaining, Carolina’s Andrew Ladd carried the puck into the Edmonton zone, cut across in the front of the net and was met there by Bergeron, who unloaded a big hit from behind that drove Ladd into Roloson and knocked the net off its moorings.

The goalie remained on the ice for several minutes, and then skated slowly to the locker room with an injured right knee.

Ty Conklin, who played only 18 games during the regular season, took over for Roloson and made the game-deciding blunder with less than a minute to go.

Conklin wandered out of the net to stop a dump in by the Canes and when captain Jason Smith came back to retrieve it, they collided and Rod Brind’Amour stripped them of the puck and stuffed it in the empty cage.

Now the Oilers are down 1-0 and their MVP of the playoffs Roloson is gone for the season and Edmonton has suggested many times, that he is the only reason why they have made the finals.

Me thinks it’s time for some other players to step up!

Bob Acton

Online Sports Betting

NHL Hockey Betting lines for 2006 Playoffs

The Preakness Stakes, along with the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes, is the second race of the coveted Thoroughbred Triple Crown. The race is often referred to as the run for the Black Eyed Susan’s. This is because the winner of the race will be draped with flower wreath of Black Eyed Susan’s. The race is always run on the third Saturday in May at the historical Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore Maryland. The race is open to both fillies and colts; however, the fillies will usually compete in the Triple Crown races that are not open to the colts. Fillies that do choose to run in the race will be required to carry a weight of 121 pounds, while the colts will have to carry 126 pounds.

The Preakness Stakes will almost always attract the winner of the Kentucky Derby because that is the only horse that will be able to win the Triple Crown. There will often be some of the other horses that were entered in the Kentucky Derby, along with a few horses that did not run in the Kentucky Derby. The Preakness Stakes is the shortest of the three Triple Crown races at a length of nine furlongs. The Kentucky Derby is ten furlongs, while the Belmont is the longest of the three races at twelve furlongs.

The Preakness Stakes was first run in 1873 and is named after a Thoroughbred race horse named Preakness. This horse won the Dinner Party Stakes on October 25, 1870, which was the day that Pimlico Race Course opened. The former Governor of Maryland named the race in honor of the colt.

The first Preakness Stakes that was held in 1873 only had seven starters; however, the horse that won the race, Survivor, set a record that would stand until the year of 2004. The record that Survivor set was the largest margin of victory, which was ten lengths. This record was broken in 2004 by Smarty Jones when he won the race by eleven lengths.

One of the oldest traditions surrounding the Preakness Stakes is the changing of the colors on the weather vane at the top of the cupola in the infield. As soon as the results of the race are official, a painter will apply the colors of silks of the winning jockey to the jockey atop the weather vane, were they will remain until the next year’s winner of the Preakness Stakes is crowned.

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The Messenger Stakes has a long history of tradition and is the third and final race of the Triple Crown of Harness Racing for Pacers. The Messenger Stakes was first started in 1956 and was immediately paired with the Little Brown Jug and the Cane Pace to form the Triple Crown. The Messenger Stakes was named to honor that great pacing sire Messenger. The horse was born in 1780 in England and was later sent to the United States. Messenger proved to be one of the greatest sires of pacing race horses and virtually all the pacers seen in today’s sport can be traced back to this magnificent stallion.

When the Messenger stakes was first created, it was hosted by Roosevelt Raceway. The race remained at Roosevelt raceway from 1956 until 1988, when it was forced to change locations due to the closure of the track. For the next several years, the Messenger Stakes was hosted by several different racetracks. For six years between 1989 and 1994, the Messenger Stakes was hosted by several different racetracks including Yonkers Raceway in Yonkers, New York, Freestate Raceway in Maryland and Rosecroft Raceway, also in Maryland. In 1995, the Messenger Stakes move to The Meadows in the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania area. The Messenger Stakes was supposed to move back to Yonkers Raceway in 2004; however, the track was undergoing major renovations and the Messenger Stakes was held at Harrington Raceway in Delaware for the 2004 and 2005 racing season. In 2006, the Messenger Stakes returned to Yonkers Raceway. The great thing about the Messenger Stakes being hosted by Yonkers Raceway is that the race is run on the same night at the final leg of the trotting Triple Crown, which means that there is the potential for harness racing fans to see the crowning of two Triple Crown winners on the same day.

The Messenger Stakes follows the same racing format as the Little Brown Jug, and other harness racing stakes events, in that the race is run in heats. For a horse to be crowned the winner of the Messenger Stakes it will have to win an elimination heat and the finals in the same evening; however, in 2006 the format changed where the elimination heats will be run one week prior to the finals. The last winner of the Triple Crown was No Pan Intended in 2003.

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Since its invention, poker has rapidly become one of the favorite gambling past times for many Americans, due to the ease with which it can be played. There is perhaps no other game of chance for which so many different variations have been created- there are literally hundreds of versions of poker.

Poker is intrinsically caught up in the history of America and American expansions. It is thought to have originated in New Orleans, where players would use a 20 card deck and bet on whose hand was the most valuable. As American settlement spread West up river systems, poker went along, including on riverboat passages up major waterways such as the Mississippi on river boats. Its expansion during this period has meant that it is an integral part of the popular telling of the history of the American West, and can be found in works of fiction and non-fiction, works of history and religion, documentaries and movies alike.

The full 52-card deck was introduced to the game after the expansion period, along with the idea of the flush. Variants of the game began to emerge during the American Civil War, and the game continued to be an integral part of the military, just as it had the development of the West. It is thought that it was the American military that spread the game throughout much of the rest of the world, especially in Asia.

Poker began to receive a lot of public attention when the World Series of Poker began in 1970. During this period, a heightened interest in the game meant that the market was ripe for development, in the form of poker rooms in major casinos as well as the development of strategy books and tips.

Poker experienced a down turn in the mid 1980s that continued right through to the new millennium. Many casinos shut down their poker rooms during this time in favor of more lucrative games which favored house odds (poker offers very little returns for a casino aside for a cut of the pot).

A return in popularity came in the development of several more tournaments for poker, mainly the brainchild of Stephen Lipscomb who developed the idea of the World Tour of Poker. Since the beginning of that show, with its reliance on innovative camera technology which allows viewers to see the cards of the players, poker popularity throughout the world has taken on astronomical proportions, particularly the Texas Hole “Em variation. Online poker sites have also contributed to the increased popularity of the game which has been described as “Every Man’s Game”. Professional poker players have become celebrities in their own right, and many celebrities are also turning to the game as their preferred method of entertainment. Some players, such as Jennifer Tilly, seem to have given up their former careers in order to play the game.