Pub Poker a Goer
The 2005 Gambling Act, which is due to become law midway through 2007, is likely to permit the playing of poker in the UK's pubs. This will come as good news to RiverCard.com and various other organisations that have been trying to set up national pub poker leagues. However, the proposed reforms have clearly been drafted by wholeheartedly naive officials, as the new laws are unlikely to allow punters to lose more than £10 a night.
The Labour party's latest liberalisation of the laws on drinking and gaming will not include controls to stop poker games involving drunken players or prevent them from running on for many hours, even around-the-clock. But landlords will have had to ask special permission from magistrates before they can stage games of chance such as bingo, poker, and bridge, while they will not be allowed to profit from them.
A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which is supervising the introduction of the Gambling Act, said the new pub rules comply with the requirement that laws should protect the vulnerable while allowing people more choice in their leisure time. Adding, "To ban poker from pubs would risk encouraging unlawful games, which would be difficult to control."
Sick Gamblers
Gamblers are more likely to have serious health problems, including liver disease and heart complaints, scientists have declared. An American survey of 43,000 men and women found those addicted to betting, lotteries, or playing the stock market were odds-on to have life-threatening conditions. This was still the case even when researchers took into account factors such as smoking and alcohol consumption by the participants.
Three More Years for Hills?
Canadian-based poker and gaming software developer CryptoLogic has said its subsidiary WaterLogic is renegotiating a possible three-year contract with Leeds-based William Hill.
Another Tour to Debut
Blue Square and Grosvenor casinos have joined forces to create the
Grosvenor UK Poker Tour, a series of £1,000 tournaments throughout the UK, culminating with a £3,000 buy-in event in December.
Organisers are boasting £4 million in prize money throughout the 11-leg tour, including £50,000 added to the main-event final in December.
Furthermore, production company Sunset & Vine will be capturing the action for broadcast on
Channel 4 television.
SunPoker for the Sickos
SunPoker.com has launched its
One Sick Promo, which will give away 100
World Series of Poker packages to the top point earners between December 2006 and May 31, 2007.
"Keeping in tune with the name and theme of the promotion, the top five finishers of SunPoker's
One Sick Promo will be flying to the 2007
WSOP on a Gulfstream IV.
"In layman's terms, a Gulfstream IV is the
sickest private jet you could imagine. And as if this wasn't enough, SunPoker has also let its top five finishers invite a friend on the trip to Vegas, where they will enjoy three weeks in the SunPoker.com luxury mansion during the
World Series," said a company spokesman.
£252 Million Losing "Bet"
Sportingbet PLC, the British online gambling business whose chairman, Peter Dicks, was arrested in the U.S. in September, said it will incur a one-time charge of £252.4 million ($492.4 million) after selling off its American operations.
The company, which owns the ParadisePoker brand, posted a loss of £241.4 million ($470.9 million) in the three months ending Oct. 31, compared with a profit of £14.3 million in the same period a year earlier. Sportingbet said revenue for the period rose 2.3 percent to £491.5 million ($958.8 million).
Record WSOP Field Size? You Can Bet on It
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power has opened its book on the number of entrants set to play in the 2007
WSOP main event.
Since the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed late last year, speculation on how it will affect numbers at this year's
WSOP has been frenzied.
Many poker companies have pulled out of the U.S. market, and with more than half the 2006 main-event field believed to have been online qualifiers, this could have a drastic impact on the field.
WSOP owner Harrah's is not accepting third-party registrations in 2007 from a number of online poker sites, and it is widely believed that the record number of 8,773 players who battled it out for a prize pool of more than $87 million last year may not be bettered in 2007.
The odds offered on the official number of players in the 2007
WSOP main event are:
Ladbrokes Cruises Again
Ladbrokes, the only major poker site offering poker cruises, has announced details of its third cruise scheduled to depart in January 2008.
New York to the Caribbean will be the route taken by the Explorer of the Seas luxury liner, which, for Ladbrokes customers only, features cabins boasting their own balcony and in-room Wi-Fi Internet connection.
Stopovers include Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, the Dominican Republic, and Labadee.
The main event will be a $2,500 no-limit Texas hold'em freezeout, and side events will include a $10,000 ladies freeroll. Qualifiers are taking place on-site now.
Phil's Film
Phil Hellmuth's life story goes before feature film cameras in the spring in a $6 million to $8 million production with a working title of
The Madison Kid.
Tech Takes Over Tribeca
Playtech has announced that it has acquired certain assets and undertakings of Tribeca Tables Europe Ltd. (Tribeca), a privately held company that, like Playtech, develops software for operating and managing online poker games.
Playtech said that it would calculate the price for Tribeca according to a formula based on Playtech's earnings from the acquired assets. Assuming that the company will generate around $16 million over the coming year from the acquistion date, the price for Tribeca will be around $75 million.
Playtech CEO Avigur Zmora said: "This is a landmark deal for Playtech, which in one move transforms the company into the world's leading poker network that excludes U.S. players."
Giants Come Together and Go Online
Colossal U.S. outfit Las Vegas Sands Corp. has made an agreement with Cantor Gaming, an affiliate of Cantor Fitzgerald, to launch an online casino and poker site aimed at serving the UK market.
Cantor Gaming will provide an online casino featuring Las Vegas Sands brands and casino games, such as blackjack, roulette, baccarat, video poker, slots, and online poker.
The site is expected to be launched during the second quarter of 2007, operating out of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands. It will not accept U.S. customers.
More U.S. Fallout
CYOP Systems International, whose range of products and services include financial transaction platforms for online casinos, online gaming software, gaming websites, poker portals, and integrated e-commerce transaction technology for online merchants, has announced that it has moved its headquarters to the United Kingdom and its operations to Costa Rica.
Given the changes in the laws in the United States regarding iGaming payment processing and the impending licensing of iGaming companies in the UK, CYOP has clearly decided that the most prudent course of action is to establish a strong European base; after all, the EU's gambling market is valued at about $70 billion.
In a similar move, Bodog.com Entertainment has announced that it plans to pull all of its U.S. gaming-related advertising, mostly for its free-play and educational site, Bodog.net.
The advertising pullback, which is quite extensive, includes television, radio, magazines, and newspapers in the U.S. market, as the online gaming giant has chosen instead to focus its gaming and educational site advertising efforts on European and Asian markets.
European Poker Awards
The 2006
European Poker Awards, sponsored by UpperClassPoker.com, took place in Paris' Aviation Club during December.
The destination of the awards in the past has been cause for some controversial debate, with previous winners becoming members of the voting panel the following year, possibly resulting in some of the unlikely nominations and winners.
Finland and Russia had fared particularly well in recent years, supplying a preponderance of award winners. However, this time around, numerous English players were in the running for the Notable Tournament Performance and Player of the Year categories, and few could dispute the eventual winners.
The Notable Tournament Perfor-mance winner was writer Vicky Coren, who became the first-ever female winner of a
European Poker Tour event when she won £500,000 in the London leg of the series. John Gale, the sole English winner of a title at this year's
World Series of Poker, and Roland De Wolfe, the first person to win both an
EPT and a
World Poker Tour competition, were amongst the unsuccessful nominations in this category.
Gale was to miss out again, but De Wolfe's exploits were deemed worthy of the Player of the Year title, as he also saw off veteran Dave Colclough and Arshad Hussain, who was to become the winner of the European Rankings.
No British player has ever won the Rookie of the Year category since the awards were initiated in 2001; it has gone to two Russians and three Finns, who have enjoyed considerable success since. However, with none of those three countries having a representative this time around, a new country was sure to have a champion, and it was Sweden's Mats Iremark, who took the award on the strength of three European wins in Vienna, London, and Deauville. The latter event was worth a mere €480,000.
English poker manager Roy Houghton landed the Casino Staff Person award. Roy, from London, has been on the poker scene for about three decades, and is credited with inventing the "double-chance" system for tournaments.
The final award of the evening was the Lifetime Achievement Award; in the early days, this was the Personality of the Year prize, but that was scrapped after Liam Flood won it! Sorry, Liam. The winner of the inaugural
Poker Million and creator of the hugely successful
European Poker Tour, John Duthie, was a worthy and most popular winner of this Lifetime Achievement accolade.
In an acceptance speech that outlined poker's unimaginable growth and hinted that things "were a bit more fun in the old days," Duthie rightly heaped lavish praise on organisers, while refusing to take all of the glory for the
EPT's incredible growth, pointing out that a number of events that make up the series were in place long before they joined the televised tour.
