London Swings Again

The recent World Series of Poker Europe and European Poker Tour festivals in London (featured in this issue of Card Player) threw up a host of big winners who will be familiar to devotees of the game.
Phil Laak, Jeff Lisandro, Gus Hansen, and Annette Obrestad feature regularly on TV, in print, and online but two new names took down the main events at each festival and both were British — James Bord and David Vamplew.
Both events saw an increase in the number of players participating which will be music to the ears of organisers Harrah’s and PokerStars.
The popularity of live poker shows no signs of abating, and London, long a relative backwater for major poker tournaments, has been transformed in the last couple of years into an electric destination for both the poker elite and aspiring stars.
Well done to Harrah’s and PokerStars for helping to make this happen and congratulations to our two new champions.
Busy on the Business Front
It’s been an interesting month for the online gaming and poker industry with lots of business activity that flies under the radar of most players but is significant from many perspectives — not least of all the fact that the operations of these businesses should be something all poker players with bankrolls online keep a wary eye on.
Online betting exchange, Betfair, which owns Betfair Poker, announced it was going public with an Initial Public Offering which would value it at between £1.2 and £1.5 billion — placing it up with the big boys such as Ladbrokes, William Hill, and Party Gaming.
Betfair Poker recently moved to the Ongame network which itself will most likely merge with Party Poker when its parent company, bwin, and Party Gaming merge next year.
Elsewhere Devilfish Gaming Plc looked to be pulling down the shutters — temporarily at least — on two years of business when its shares were suspended after it announced it was looking for a buyer.
And just as this was happening, UK horseracing TV channel announced it was launching its own poker site ATRpoker.com on Genting’s network.
Tell Gaming and Diamond Bet announced they were merging operations under the Diamond Bet brand, and Entraction and Potraiser.com engaged in a war of words after the former kicked the latter off its network (or the latter left the former’s network depending on which story is to be believed.)
Make sure you know who is holding your hard earned online bankroll and take nothing for granted when dealing with online sites. Reputation is everything but checks and balances and a high level of public scrutiny is even better.
Check the Euro section at Cardplayer.com regularly for up-to-the-minute news of what’s going on in the poker business. ♠