In its roadshow presentation released online today, the Vegas-based company, which manages 42,000 hotel rooms, said one of the biggest opportunities it had going forward was on the Internet, including social games and real-money gaming.

Mitch Garber, the CEO of the company’s interactive division, said it recently launched Caesars Casino in beta on Facebook, making it the first time that a brand name was used to compete in the casino genre.

Garber believes that the game, which includes video slots, blackjack and roulette, will displace Double Down Casino as one of the category leaders. The developer of Double Down Casino, Double Down Interactive, was recently acquired by video poker giant International Game Technology for $500 million.

Garber said over the past 13 months, so much of the business has changed.

With the sale of Double Down, and the visibility into social games leader Zynga, which went public in December, and the release of more information this week by Facebook in its public filing, there are lots of verifiable signs that this is a big business.

For instance, on Wednesday, Facebook revealed that Zynga made up 12 percent of its overall revenues. Zynga’s Poker game is the leading casino-based game on Facebook, and more recently, it launched Bingo as part of a casino series.

Over the past two days, Zynga’s stock price has soared based on the Facebook news, rising 8.11 percent today alone to close at $13.39 a share.

Caesars said yesterday it was applying to be listed on the Nasdaq market under the symbol “CZR,” and that it was planning to sell 1.8 million shares between $8 and $10 apiece.

Caesars Chairman, CEO and President Gary Loveman was positive about a number of aspects of the business, as he should be in a presentation to potential investors, but one of the highlights was online gaming.

“This is a big deal for us,” he said, calling out the opportunity for gambling online, across both mobile and social networks and across multiple languages.

In addition to launching Caesars Casino on Facebook, the company has been building up its online gaming chops for some time.

Garber said this past year the company purchased Israel-based Playtika, which operates Slotomania, a very popular slots game on Facebook, iPhone and iPad. It also has two software partners that will enable it to expand into online gambling in the U.S. as soon as it becomes legal.

“We aren’t aware of any other bricks and mortar company that has the online experience that is preparing themselves as we are,” he said.

However, Zynga told All Things D it was currently seeking partnerships to pursue real-money gaming, and MGM Resorts also recently unveiled a plan to partner with online poker company Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment.

Of course, the big driver for everyone is that the laws are changing in the U.S., which makes it nearly a foregone conclusion that online gambling — at least some games — will become legal over the next year.

Late last year, the Department of Justice issued a new interpretation of the Wire Act of 1961. Under the new ruling, it interprets the act as only outlawing bets on sporting events — not all events and contests.

With that clarification in place, it will now be up to every state to pass legislation outlining operating procedures.

“We see the odds being close to 100 percent,” Garber said. “It’s just a matter of whether it will be federally regulated or state by state. The states are already doing it, but the federal government is getting their act together, too.”

Last week, Zynga confirmed to All Things D that it was actively investigating online gambling opportunities and is in talks with several partners.

The San Francisco social games company said Bingo is launching today in closed beta, and in the coming weeks will be available to everyone on Facebook. The game will become part of a larger franchise called Zynga Casino, which was announced in October.

Zynga’s version of the game is similar to the classic version found in bingo halls, where players watch for numbers as they pop up and mark them off on their scorecard. The first player to spell out B-I-N-G-O wins. In Zynga’s version of the game, players can compete against friends.

But for now, the closest the game gets to gambling is the casino theme.

Zynga dominates Facebook’s game chart today, but if it is able to get its toe in the door to online gambling — just as the laws change in the U.S. — it could be a big opportunity.

The casino genre has also been quietly racking up big numbers on Facebook for areas such as slots, card games and roulette. In particular, Zynga has been phenomenally successful with poker. Five years ago, it launched Texas HoldEm Poker, which continues to attract close to seven million users a day and is one of the company’s top three revenue-generating titles.

Zynga is not the only one investigating how to enter online gambling, potentially leveraging the popularity of social networks.

Video poker giant International Game Technology recently purchased Seattle-based Double Down Interactive for 500 million; Double Down develops games, including blackjack, slots, video poker and roulette. Caesars Entertainment also entered the space when it purchased Playtika, an Israeli game company known for its Facebook title, Slotomania.

Zynga’s Bingo game is not dissimilar to versions already on Facebook, such as BitRhymes’ Bingo Bash and Buffalo Studios’ Bingo Blitz.

“We’ve built the system and had it on a shelf waiting for more legal certainty,” said Gordon Medenica, the director of the New York lottery, which is planning to start selling lottery tickets on the Internet next year. “We’re pleased for the opportunity this gives us.”

A number of statehouses and lotteries in search of new revenue have recently considered proposals to allow some form of online gambling. Washington, D.C., voted this year to allow its lottery to operate online poker, but the law hasn’t yet been implemented. Five state lotteries already offer modest Internet-based subscriptions for lottery drawings. Both Illinois and New York have drawn up more expansive plans to sell tickets online to their lottery drawings.

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So what happens if you cut directly to the chase and build true casino games like slots, poker or bingo?

It turns out that rings up a pretty healthy business, too. The best part is that because of U.S. gambling laws, game players don’t ever get to cash out their winnings.

In other words, the house always wins.

In July, Sean Ryan, the director of game partnerships at Facebook, said the casino category is creating “unbelievable monsters,” and is still largely untapped by developers. “It turns out that people are completely okay winning virtual currency that they can never cash out,” he said.

But the category giant is no longer sleeping.

Earlier this year, Playtika, the developer behind popular Slotomania, was acquired by Caesars Entertainment Corp. for $80 million, and others are scrambling to keep up.

Today, Berlin-based Crowdpark has announced that it has raised $6 million in capital to help fuel its concept of social betting, where people can bet with friends on everything from who will win a football game to whether Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are getting married.

“This is just an entertainment product. You pay with Facebook Credits, so the players do know they don’t get any money back,” said Crowdpark’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer Ingo Hinterding. “It’s 100 percent legal.”

And there are many other players in the space, too.

Arguably, the first to establish the category was industry leader Zynga. In 2007, it launched Texas HoldEm Poker, a game that continues to attract close to 6.4 million users a day and is one of the company’s Top 3 revenue-generating titles. Two weeks ago, Zynga said it was expanding its casino games with an upcoming launch of Bingo.

Meanwhile, a number of lesser-known companies are literally hearing bells and whistles going off.

Seattle-based DoubleDown Casino, which has slots, video poker, blackjack and roulette in the same app, today launched a new game called Photo Booth Friends.

It falls under the “slots” category, which means you click to replicate the effect of pulling down the handle to see the reels spin on the screen. Photo Booth Friends lets you customize the reels with photos of your friends.

DoubleDown recently celebrated achieving one million daily active users, and has eclipsed other popular games like Zynga’s Mafia Wars, based on monthly active users.

Ryan name-dropped DoubleDown as one of the unbelievable monsters, and according to sources familiar with the company’s financials, we hear the game is now generating $140,000 a day in revenue. For reasons of competition reasons, the company declined to comment.

Others exploring the casino category include RealNetwork’s GameHouse and Electronic Arts through its recent acquisition of PopCap Games.

Here’s an infographic from Crowdpark, breaking down the social betting opportunity on Facebook:

Casino photo credit: FreeRishad.

That’s where Playhem enters the picture.

This week, New York-based start-up Playhem officially launched its gaming platform, which allows friends to compete against each other for cash or prizes or compete in tournament-style games.

In recent months, the federal government has cracked down on several foreign companies operating online gambling sites in the U.S. But Playhem co-founder Ryan DeSanto says what Playhem is doing is legal, except in about a dozen states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Maryland, South Carolina, Illinois and Vermont.

He says you purchase credits, you wager them, and then you can redeem them for cash and prizes.

While technically they could wager cash, he said, “We removed wagering with dollars because people are used to dealing with virtual currency and people like that more. It’s a softer entry point as well with our partners, publishers and media companies.”

The site went into beta in February, but is now live, allowing anyone to sign up and compete.

So far, it is allowing people to play console games, like Tiger Woods, FIFA or Madden, or online games, like StarCraft.

DeSanto compares it to Fantasy Football, except with videogames. “We sat down to build this so groups of friends can compete with each other,” he said. “I have friends across the country, and this is safe, secure and it’s actually legal.”

In the states where it’s not legal, people can still play — just not for cash.

In addition to catering to the guys on the living room couch, Playhem is also leveraging the platform it built for tournament-style games played by professional videogame players (Yes, they are real).

It has partnered with IGN Entertainment, a media company, and Caesars Entertainment, to help bring pro leagues to Caesars casinos. Playhem will manage the qualifying rounds that will be played online ahead of a tournament to take place in Atlantic City in October.

Playhem competes head-on against Major League Gaming, a professional video game league, as well as Virgin Gaming. As you might guess by the name, Virgin Gaming is backed by Richard Branson. It too facilitates professional tournaments or just friends playing for money. Virgin Gaming has a partnership with EA’s sports division.

Playhem is financially backed by angel investors and is currently seeking a first round of funding.

U.S. Digital Gaming was founded in 2009 by former casino executive Richard Bronson, who once ran development operations for casino impresario Steve Wynn’s former company, Mirage Resorts, and remains close to Mr. Wynn.

The company, which currently has no revenue stream, is trying to position itself as a provider of all the services other companies would need to run online gambling sites, including software and guidance on laws and licensing rules.

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Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have alleged the poker companies, which are located outside the U.S., tried to sidestep U.S. laws prohibiting banks and credit-card issuers from processing gambling payments by disguising billions of dollars from U.S. gamblers as payments to nonexistent online merchants for golf balls, jewelry, flowers and other merchandise.

After U.S. banks and financial institutions began detecting and shut down bank accounts used by the scheme in late 2009, prosecutors allege, a new strategy was developed in which two online poker websites allegedly persuaded a few small, local banks facing financial difficulties to process their payments in return for multimillion-dollar investments in those banks.

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The first real test of the state efforts comes this week in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie is expected to decide the fate of a bill that would let Atlantic City casino companies run gambling websites for state residents.

The bill would make New Jersey the first state to sanction online gambling. The Republican governor, who has until Thursday to veto or sign the bill, hasn’t publicly stated his stance.

Regardless of Mr. Christie’s decision, gambling experts say momentum is growing behind states’ efforts to legalize online gambling for their own residents, known as intrastate gambling. Last week, Iowa lawmakers introduced a bill to legalize online poker, and California and Florida are among other states considering similar bills.

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A really addictive experience.

Or at least that’s the hope of YooMee Games, which is unveiling a new gaming platform today (yes, another one!) that allows developers to add features to their games, like tournament play and one-on-one challenges.

The San Francisco-based company’s founder, Prita Uppal, jokes it is the Chuck E. Cheese of the Internet because of the tickets.

It starts with players placing wagers or buying tokens for a chance to win money and tickets that can be turned in for prizes. “It’s an arcade. You buy coins and then compete with others in tournaments and get tickets based on the outcome, which can be turned into cash or prizes, based on how many tickets you have.”

Think skee ball, but with better prizes than Tootsie Rolls.

At the start, YooMee will have more than 30 games to choose from, including popular puzzle games, like Bubble Town and Cube Crasher, and word games like WordStone. Prizes include Amazon gift cards, digital cameras and other gadgets.

Uppal said the company is not a casino and people are not gambling on the site, because the games are skill-based and not based on chance. “It’s completely skill-based competition. It’s legal. All the casual games you see and play on the Web are skill games–so you can wager and compete and earn money.”

Still, the business model is complex, having to optimize winnings for the player while also distributing money back to the developer and keeping some for itself.

Users don’t have to pay to play–instead they can play for free and view ads, such as a video pre-roll. That business is doing well, and allowed the 22-employee company to reach profitability in October.

Uppal says YouMee isn’t competing against other companies that are providing developers other services, such as leaderboards, comments or rankings. Rather, it can be used in addition to those services. It also uses Facebook Connect, so friends can easily find one another from their regular social network.

Commonly, a player will be introduced to the “arcade concept,” which Uppal is also “calling social competition,” after playing one of the games. A message will appear that says something like, “If you had paid 50 cents, you would have made $10 with this score. Do you want to enter this competition?”

In founding the company, Uppal placed a few good bets of her own.

She met her first VCs on the ski-lift chair in Park City, Utah. Directly from the ski slopes, U.S. Venture Partners flew her to Silicon Valley–she was without a computer and practically still wearing her ski boots–to give a 45-minute presentation. She had a term sheet two days later.

And she found her second VC after seeing a psychic, who predicted that the letter “A” and foreign money were going to be really important. That led her to take meetings with Altos Ventures, which has roots in Asia. “I wouldn’t have ever spoken to them if it weren’t for the psychic.”