May 2004 Archives

IN THE EVER expanding world of Indian gaming, landless tribes are not necessarily casino-less. The division between on-reservation and off- reservation is blurred. The line separating Nevada and Indian gambling interests has been forever lost.

The reason: a slippery concept known as "reservation shopping,'' whereby tribes are setting up casinos far from their historic lands or seeking property where they can cash in on the gambling craze. Of all the unintended consequences of the voters' desire to legalize gambling on Indian tribal lands in California, no issue is more controversial than "reservation shopping" -- in part because cash-strapped cities are trying now to court Indian tribes to open casinos as a way to boost sagging tax revenues.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- The soft-spoken patent lawyer from Connecticut knew exactly what to do with his monstrous stack of chips at the final table of the 35th annual World Series of Poker.

Greg "Fossilman" Raymer wielded it like a Flintstones club, knocking down opponent after opponent. He saved his greatest drubbing for the end, beating David Anthony Williams in an epic showdown Friday night, seven hours after the finale began.

In head-to-head play, Raymer had a stack worth $17.1 million compared with the $8.2 million owned by Williams. On the seventh hand, Williams pushed all his chips into the pot and Raymer matched him.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Two players were quickly knocked out of the World Series of Poker on Friday, leaving seven players vying for a record $5 million and the right to be crowned poker king.

Mike McLain, 39, of Lemoore, Calif., was eliminated shortly after nine finalists began play at Binion's Horseshoe Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas. He was followed minutes later by Mattias Andersson, a 24-year-old Swede and the only foreigner to make the final table.

Both fell victim to Greg Raymer, a 39-year-old patent attorney from Stonington, Conn., who started the day as the chip leader with $8.2 million.

The firm has signed an agreement with the Digital Interactive Television Group to launch the station, which will allow William Hill customers to place bets and play games directly via their television. The new service will also show 'live' sports events and provide editorial sports content.

This initiative gives William Hill access to the growing Sky Digital platform that currently reaches more than seven million homes in the UK. There is also potential for the channel to be made available in licensed betting offices. David Harding, chief executive of William Hill, said: "This initiative places William Hill at the forefront of the UK betting industry in exploiting interactive television, which is gaining growing acceptance as a transactional platform. "Our well known and trusted brand, ability to cross-promote the service to customers in other parts of our business, and choice of partner in DITG, a proven operator in this field, should provide us with significant advantages in pursuing this new profit stream," he said.

By William Spain

CHICAGO (CBS.MW) -- Americans may have turned more risk-averse in their investing, but the nation's appetite for gambling grew at a steady pace last year, according to a study released Thursday.

In its annual survey of casino revenue, visitation and demographics, the American Gaming Association trade group found that 53.4 million people visited U.S. gambling halls in 2003, a jump of about 2 million from the year before.

by I. Nelson Rose

Picture this: You put in three dollars into a progressive jackpot slot machine in Biloxi, Mississippi. You pull the handle and the reels spin. Suddenly they stop, with jackpot symbols lined up on the payline. Bells ring and lights flash. The machine freezes, with a scale showing the progressive jackpot is $509,000. Other players are congratulating you.

What a feeling! You just won the jackpot. Right?

By Matthew Carrigan

When I read the headline in The Dartmouth on May 19 ("Police consider pressing online gambling charges"), I was shocked at the ignorance displayed by the Hanover Police Department. There is a not a single state in this country that has a specific law against playing online poker for money, and for good reasons.
First, although gambling may be a misdemeanor in New Hampshire, poker should not be categorized in the same way as other "games of chance." Such a view is already codified in those states, such as California, that have legal card-rooms even though other forms of gambling are prohibited. The reasoning behind such policies is that card games are primarily games of skill, not chance, in which there are no odds stacked against the participants. Rather, the card-room makes money by essentially taxing every hand that is played (known as a "rake"), while the participants compete only against one another. Because poker and other card games are games of skill, and not chance, they should not be classified as "gambling" in the usual sense of the word, because the outcome of the game does not depend on blind luck.

By Bob Tedeschi

FOR United States companies locked out of the lucrative global industry in Internet gambling, there is still money to be made - as long as they don't call it gambling.

So-called games of skill like Spades, 8-ball, and Solitaire are attracting more players online than ever, thanks partly to the growing pool of prize money available to winners and the tightening noose of federal regulation around online games of chance. Although revenues are small compared to those reaped by pure gambling sites, some in the industry believe that could change.

"This will continue to be a larger part of the online gambling market, although since there's skill involved you can't really call it gambling," said Sebastian Sinclair, president of Christiansen Capital Advisors, a gambling industry consultancy. "These games are better suited to the medium than casino games, because they're more entertaining, and money is secondary."

MINISTERS are set to give the go-ahead to unregulated, untaxed online gambling, rejecting calls by MPs to curb controversial betting websites, reports the Sunday Times.

While angering the racing industry and bookmakers by ruling out tax or regulation, the move will also pit Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, against Gordon Brown, the chancellor, who said in his budget that he would study ways of raising revenue from the websites.

The net 'betting exchanges' have been at the centre of claims of race-fixing, including one incident in which a jockey was accused of jumping off his horse to throw a race.

Julian Dickinson

Mark Blandford, executive director of Sportingbet, must have known he might never get another chance like this.

He had one of the NFL’s top attorneys in the room for a discussion about the relationship between sports entertainment and sports betting at the Global Interactive Gaming Summit and Expo in Toronto.

Blandford cut to the chase.

“What would you say if I offered you $5 million dollars,” he asked NFL attorney Derrick Crawford, “to make Sportingbet the official sportsbook of the NFL?”

SINGAPORE (AFP) - US-based gaming giant Las Vegas Sands is ready to bet two billion dollars on a super casino in Singapore if the city-state legalises the industry, a media report said.

"Given the wealth of Singaporeans, the diversified business base here and the value of the country's tourism assets, Singapore would be a natural place for a casino," the Straits Times quoted the company's president and chief operating officer, William Weidner, as saying.

Las Vegas Sands, which is injecting the same amount of money into a second venture in Macau, is willing to develop a casino in Singapore by itself, take an equity stake or pair up with a local company, the newspaper reported.

Casino Robots today announced Blackjack Robot for Microsoft Windows. The product is available in two editions, Basic and Advanced. Both are compatible with the most popular Internet Casinos and can operate in real money or practice modes, for profit or pleasure. A similar software robot is rumoured to be responsible for a recent US$1.3M win at an online Casino.

The Basic edition is a useful training aid for those new to the game of Blackjack. Connections made to online Casinos are automatically detected and monitored. After every card dealt Blackjack Robot Basic will suggest the best possible move for the player to make according to established Basic Strategy for Blackjack.

Washington, DC, May. 18 (UPI) -- At least 24 states are looking at expanding gambling or lotteries to beef up revenue in place of higher taxes, Stateline.org reported Tuesday.

Iowa, Maine, New York and Oklahoma already have expanded gambling this year, and voters in California, Nebraska, Ohio and Oklahoma could get to decide this November whether they want more games.

Fifteen years ago, gamblers had to go to Atlantic City, N.J., or Nevada to find legalized casino gambling. Today, 11 states allow commercial casinos; six have riverboat or dockside casinos; and 23 states have casinos that are owned and operated by American Indian tribes.

TOKYO -- Sammy Corp., Japan's biggest maker of gambling machines, said it will buy the three quarters of Sega Corp. it doesn't own for about 165 billion yen ($1.45 billion) in stock, resurrecting a takeover that collapsed in May last year.

Sammy President Hajime Satomi will head a new holding company that will buy all shares of Sega, the maker of "Sonic the Hedgehog" video games and Sammy, its biggest shareholder, in October, according to a joint statement. Sammy shareholders will control 72 percent of the new company, which will have combined annual sales of about 501 billion yen this fiscal year.

by Matt Richtel

Toronto's tourism Web site promises warm spring weather and hundreds of great restaurants. But for a group of Internet gambling executives who were gathering Monday in Toronto, the absence of U.S. law enforcement authorities may also be a big draw.

Operators of overseas online casinos - an industry with millions of American customers - are under threat of prosecution because much of what they do is illegal in the United States. According to legal experts and the organizers of the conference, called the Global Interactive Gaming Summit and Expo, the operators could face arrest if they entered the United States.

Manuel Joaquim das Neves, Macau's Gaming Control Board director, is struggling with numbers. He has a four-page list of new gambling rules that need to be passed and a stack of plans for as many as 24 new casinos.

Then there are 3.75 million tourists, more than half from China, who visited in the first quarter -- a 25 percent increase over last year. About 40,000 are in town now, awaiting today's opening of the Sands Macau casino, the first slice of Las Vegas to arrive on the South China coast.

``Last year, if someone told me that growth would be so fast, I wouldn't have believed them,'' said das Neves, 44.

Action Online Casino recently launched its new online casino powered by Playtech software at www.actiononline.com. Action Online, with its worldwide network of gaming agents, brings years of land-based gaming experience to the Internet.

"Action Online is excited about our ability to deliver hospitality and experience not previously available to Internet gamers," said David Belfiore, Founder and CEO of Action Online. "Our team's experience in the land-based casino industry provides us with the knowledge and experience to know what players want, which is cutting-edge games, fairness, and recognition" said Belfiore.

Playtech is pleased to announce the launch of its most recent casino partnership. "Action Online management brings a unique marketing concept to the Internet gaming industry, establishing a worldwide network of players. When players register at the casino, they will experience everything from classic Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, & Baccarat to Keno, Video Poker, and the greatest selection of slot machines on the Internet," said Danna Ziv, Marketing Director for Playtech.

By Tom Alexander (tom@scoresdaily.com)
A new study emerged yesterday saying 35 percent of male and 10 percent of female collegiate athletes have gambled on sports. 1.1 percent of football players admitted taking money to perform poorly and try and affect the outcome of games, and 2.3 percent of football players actually acknowledged that they’d been asked to do that.

In a related story, 100 percent of NCAA officials expressed shock and dismay at these findings, led by the moral champion of the Midwest, Myles Brand.

Okay, okay, I’m kidding about the second study, but for however shocking it is that college kids gamble, it’s as least as un-shocking that the NCAA is having a ridiculous overreaction. Before we start with them, though, let’s break down the numbers a little bit.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association -- which found that 35 percent of male college athletes bet on sports last year -- is forming a task force to cut sports wagering among athletes before it reaches ``crisis proportions.''

The governing body made the decision after getting results from a study of 21,000 male and female college athletes, NCAA President Myles Brand said in a press release. NCAA athletes are forbidden from betting on college sports.

``The scope of sports wagering among intercollegiate student- athletes is startling and disturbing,'' Brand said. ``Sports wagering is a double-threat because it harms the well-being of student-athletes and the integrity of college sports.''

By Christina Hoag

Floridians love to gamble.

In fact, Sunshine State residents rank ninth in the country when it comes to visiting casinos, ''a surprise, given the lack of convenient gaming destinations for Florida residents,'' according to a 2003 study by Harrah's Entertainment.

It's also a surprise since Florida voters have defeated three referendums since 1979 to bring casino gambling to the state, the last one in 1994.

by Martin Wainwright

Attempts are being made to prevent the flight to Bangladesh of a teenage girl allegedly committed to marriage by her father in exchange for a £15,000 settlement of his gambling debts. The 15-year-old girl has contacted West Yorkshire police and social services in an attempt to avoid the private arrangement, although it does not appear to contravene any specific British law.

Urgent calls for a change in legislation to cope with the situation were made yesterday by Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley, who has also been asked to help the distraught teenager. Mrs Cryer said the case was an extreme example of a growing problem.

By Jane Wooldridge

A new addition for your Hard Rock T-shirt collection: Hard Rock Café Hollywood, on sale at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, a new gambling palace in Broward just off the Turnpike and just north of Stirling Road that opens Tuesday.

A 50-foot neon guitar modeled after one played by Jimi Hendrix adorns the entrance to the 500-room resort, set on 100 acres of the Seminole Hollywood Reservation. Facilities include a 130,000-square-foot casino, Hard Rock Cafe, spa, four-acre lagoon pool area and a 5,600-seat live-music venue.

By Tracy Kurtinitis

Students shooting craps between classes or during lunch at Desert Ridge High School in Mesa is a common occurrence, students say.
"They throw dice right in the halls," said Ian Stong, a Desert Ridge sophomore. "It’s mostly ninth-graders."

Assistant principal William Santiago acknowledged there’s been an increase in discipline for gambling on the Gilbert Unified School District campus but said he wasn’t overly concerned.

"It’s something that may have become popular, and it’s fair to say it’s more fashionable now," he said, "but it’s not causing a lot of problems."

Media contact: Melanie Catania

Researchers, using a new combination of techniques, have discovered that dopamine levels in our brains vary the most in situations where we are unsure if we are going to be rewarded, such as when we are gambling or playing the lottery. The research results, "Dopamine Transmission in the Human Striatum during Monetary Reward Tasks," were published online April 28 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Dopamine has long been known to play an important role in how we experience rewards from a variety of natural sources, including food and sex, as well as from drugs such as cocaine and heroin, but pinning down the precise conditions that cause its release has been difficult.

DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2004--

An Updated Review of the Legal and Political Climate for Internet Gambling Throughout the World

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com) has announced the addition of Internet Gambling Report - Sixth Edition to their offering.

Internet Gambling Report VI:

It was prevalent from the time of the First Fleet, which brought Australia its first European settlers, and without it the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge might never have been built.

Yet Australia's powerful gambling industry, one of the largest in the world, is under assault as never before. It has been put on notice by a new generation of political leaders and is being attacked by an increasingly broad cross-section of society.

Both Mark Latham, leader of the opposition Labor party, and Peter Costello, heir apparent to prime minister John Howard as head of the Liberal party, have signalled a firmer approach to tackling what has become one of Australia's biggest social problems. "I want an assurance that in the future the states aren't relying excessively on gaming revenue," said Mr Latham. "I want to talk to the states and work with them constructively to get on top of the problem."

by Kate Kaye

Despite Google's ban on accepting online gambling ads, Web wagering outfits are evading the search king's sentries. In recent days, searches on Google for terms including "online gambling"--and, just in time for last weekend's Kentucky Derby, "horse racing"--resulted in Google AdWords ads for online gambling sites. Google last month said it would ban online gambling ads. Unauthorized sponsored links to gambling sites are also showing up on About.com through its partnership with Google.

Google and Yahoo! on April 2 announced decisions to eliminate online gambling ads. Industry insiders point to legal threats from the U.S. Department of Justice to other media companies as the impetus for the search firms' new restrictions. Both companies declined to comment on whether they have received specific legal notices regarding the issue.

By Terrence Dopp

TRENTON -- Legalized sports betting in Atlantic City would be a financial windfall for New Jersey and would allow the city's casinos to compete with flashier Las Vegas counterparts, industry executives testified on Monday.

But, according to detractors of a plan to allow the wagering, it would also be a corrupting influence on professional sports such as baseball, football, basketball and hockey.

The two views clashed as the Assembly's tourism and gaming committee held hearings on whether to move ahead with plans to legalize sports books in New Jersey casinos.

Card Player magazine's Barry Shulman talks about why the game is seeing unprecedented popularity, especially online.

The Travel Channel's World Poker Tour is to card-game enthusiasts what Fox's American Idol is to wannabe pop music stars: The stakes are large, and the competition can be intoxicating. Even celebrities such as Ben Affleck have been bluffing on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. "The word is out -- poker is fun," says Barry Shulman, champion player and publisher of Card Player magazine, grinning as if he's holding a royal flush. (A video interview with Shulman is also available.)

Shulman began playing poker while in college in the 1960s, but he didn't have much time to hone his skills while working for the next 25 years as a real estate developer in the Seattle area. It wasn't until the mid-1990s, when he retired to Las Vegas and started playing more that he caught the "poker bug."

By Bill Bradley

Schwarzenegger at the big table: State antes up to major expansion of gambling

Arnold Schwarzenegger has the hottest hand in California politics in many years. The ex-Mr. Universe's carefully brokered deal on workers compensation reform is just the latest in a string of political victories for a man who one year ago was focused almost entirely on opening a movie about a killer cyborg from the future, the governorship a dream he was just beginning to talk about with a few people.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny Antigua and Barbuda have successfully challenged a U.S. ban on Internet gambling, dealing the United States another setback at the World Trade Organisation.

A U.S. trade official, speaking on condition that she not be identified, confirmed on Friday that a WTO panel had issued a final report that was "largely unchanged" from its preliminary ruling against the U.S. ban one month ago.

"We intend to appeal and will argue vigorously that this deeply flawed panel report must be corrected by the (WTO) appellate body," the trade official said, echoing comments made last month by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.