I have seen lots of 888.com paid posts on blog websites, with direct links, all of those websites have 0 PR because of the pay-per-post blog entries.
I was surprised to see a casino contracting pay-per-post services in order to have people to blog about them (usually for $5 or less – “great” advertising fee if you ask me heh).
It was around that time when they changed their T&C, so no wonder why they want direct traffic instead of affiliate generated one.