Well, that certainly qualifies as news...

Not for most people, but for me anyway.

I meant to write about this a little earlier, but I wanted to digest the news a little bit before posting.

In the halcyon days before I cared about things like dividends, value investing, and staying in for the long haul, when all I really wanted was to get rich quick on the next big tech-stock darling, I bought a handful of shares in Parlay Entertainment, a TSX-listed on-line bingo software provider, hoping it would be my ticket to riches.

The rocket-to-the-top never really materialized for me, but I've held on to my shares mainly because the company was actually managing to consistenly post growing quarterly profits. Still, I was confused because while the findamental numbers were getting consistently better, the stock was basically languishing, even somewhat regressing.

I never really had an exit strategy for the stock, but I was just on the verge of selling the shares on the grounds that the market didn't appear to give a crap about what the company was doing, when Parlay made legitimate news last week.

Management has signed a letter of intent to merge with better-known on-line gaming company Chartwell Technologies.

The whole deal is going to a shareholders vote in October, but the gist of it is that if it goes through, I'll be the proud new owner of 0.75 Chartwell shares for every Parlay share I own -- 650 to be exact.

Chartwell's currently hovering around $2.50. A quick number crunching reveals that my initial Parlay investment would be in line for about a 25-30 % gain if I were to immediately flip my Chartwell shares for cash. Not too shabby.

I haven't really done my homework yet on Chartwell, but I'd consider holding on to the shares if i thought they had long-term potential. I'm a little concerned about the U.S. crackdown on Internet gambling, but I still need to take a closer look at their last few quarterly reports to see if i think they're a solid company in an industry going through a rough patch.

Any thoughts, Chartwell shareholders?