I just HAVE to say that you don’t HAVE to have the key words in the domain name – it helps a wee bit, but it isn’t the end-all.
I’m doing rather well in the Texas Holdem arena on google, although the site is casinogeek.net……….as well as other key phrases whose words are not in my domain name.
For $175,000.00 i could BUY more traffic than I’d know what to do with.
For that matter, for $175,000, I could take joespizza.com and get to the top of google for “online casino” and whatever other search phrases I like many times over, by hiring people to do grunt work.
For $175,000.00 I could buy an established portal with decent traffic, built-in revenue and have money left over to market it very effectively.
For $8.95 i can get a decent casino domain name and blow the rest on marketing and be way ahead of just a domain name alone.
Maybe whoever has been making offers is a nasty dipshit who’s yankin your chains.