"About to bluff. About to raise," read the tagline for a series of advertisements from the gambling website Bodog.com that recently ran in Esquire, the US men's magazine. The same could be said of the hesitant dance between the booming online gambling industry and US authorities bent on keeping it in check.

Until recently, mainstream US media have largely avoided taking ads from online gaming companies. But it is becoming harder to do as publishers with sluggish ad sales are wooed by gambling websites flush with cash.