Former poker pro Annie Duke and Patrick Basham, the author of Gambling: A Healthy Bet, appeared on Fox Business on January 31st,. The two discussed gambling with John Stossel, the host of the show, and pointed out several reasons why online gambling should be legalised in the U.S., and Duke stressed that less than 1 percent of the people have gambling problems compared to alcohol, where 7-9 percent of the people have alcohol related problems.
Sister Mary Anne Rapp, a nun in Orleans County, N.Y. was ordered to court last Monday. Reason? She is being accused of stealing $128,000 from two churches between 2006 and 2010. According to The Buffalo News, the authorities believe the money was spent gambling. According to another news site, Rapp has spent 9 1/2 months receiving in-patient treatment for a gambling addiction and is still in recovery, but she still faces a criminal charge of grand larceny following her thefts from St. Mary and St. Mark congregations.
"This is a difficult time for all of us," Sister Edith Wyss, a minister who knows the defendant, told the Associated Press, "especially those of us who have lived and worked with Sister Mary Anne for her nearly 50 years in our community."
Reuters, an international news agancy, reports that a group of 6 Buddhist monks have resigned after a video filmed secretly showed them playing high-stakes poker, drinking and smoking at a memorial event for dead Zen master. Seongho, a senior monk, said that about $875,000 was on the table during the cash game that lasted for about 13 hours.
A report posted yesterday morning by EgamingReview is suggesting that Facebook is looking to lunch real-money gambling in the UK. According to the report, Facebook has spoken with up to 20 online gaming experts and potential facilitators over the last 6 months and will try to get 8 licenses for UK operators to offer real-money gambling apps. If it works out fine in the UK, Facebook are then planning on getting licenses for the rest of Europe as well.
If Facebook get the necessary licenses to operate in the UK, and maybe the rest of Europe, it might be a real industry changer as Facebok has such a huge customer base. However, the future will tell whether or not people actually wanna play poker for real-money through a Facebook application.
A high court in the state of North Gauteng, South Africa has in a sentence come to the conclusion that all types of online games with money involved are forbidden. The decision will take affect immediately all over South Africa. The new law means, for example, that's is no longer possible for anyone in South Africa to play poker or organize poker tournaments online.
People who break against the new law will get huge fines and also risk time behind bars. The max penalty, however, is a R10 million fine and up to 10 years in jail, or both.
Very good news for poker players in Florida. On June 1, 2010, a new state law went into effect. The new law allows card rooms across the state to extend the opening hours and raise the buy-ins for no-limit poker games, as well. High stakes games will now be legal at 23 poker rooms run by horse and dog tracks and jai alai frontons. The new law also will let the Seminole Tribe to lift limits at its seven casinos, including the Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. Poker tournaments were held to a $1,000 maximum buy-in before, but now that limit has been removed plus that cardrooms at parimutuel facilities can now be open for 18 hours Sunday-Thursday, and 24 hours on Friday and Saturday.
Many poker analysts believe that the new law will open the door for televised tournaments played by pros to take place in the state of Florida.
Danish Poker magazine "Ace" has announced that Ace #50, scheduled to hit the streets May 20th, will not be released and the company will shut down the printed version of their magazine.
The reason can be found in the new gambling law in Denmark, looking to be effective as of July 2010. The law will make it impossible for many foreign gambling providers to operate within Denmark, without a license. Such a license, cannot be obtained until January 2011, but nobody seems to know the exact requirements for a license yet. Without foreign gambling providers and their advertising budgets, "Ace" will be unable to continue with an acceptable economy.
Douglas Rennick said in federal court yesterday, “I had business that transferred money from offshore gaming sites to American players within the Southern District of New York,” as he pleaded guilty towards a single count of dealing offshore bets.
Rennick is a Canadian who is alleged to be behind quite a few online poker payment processing companies. He will be sentenced on September 15. Rennick’s lawyer said that his client’s plea will mean the forfeiture of $17.1 million as well as 6 to 12 months incarceration.
This is far less from what he could have faced if he had not pled guilty and then found to be guilty of all charges he is facing in federal court.
Aside from being charged of processing offshore bets, Rennick was also indicted last August for bank fraud conspiracy, gambling conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Should he be convicted of all the charges, he would be facing up to 55 years of imprisonment.Read more » Poker Processor Pleads Guilty in New York
Joseph R. "Joe" Francis is an American entrepreneur known as the founder of Mantra Films, Inc., which produces the Girls Gone Wild and Guys Gone Wild DVD series. A while ago, he went to the police and told them that Steve Wynn, a billionaire who owns a huge part of Las Vegas and also been voted one of the worlds most influential persons by Time Magazine, has threatened to kill him and bury him in the desert.
It wasn't long ago since MasterCard announced that they are going to block Americans from making transactions to online gambling sites. Now, MasterCards biggest opponent VISA follows and block their American customers as well. That both the credit card giants VISA and MasterCard have decided to block Americans from making transactions to gambling sites is a clear sign that UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) will soon come into effect (1 June 2010).
We will have to wait and see how effective the UIGEA law will be since there are a lot of problems which the american authorities need to solve before the law will be effective - in other words, stop americans from finding other ways of transferring money.
A few days ago, at a meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, it was discussed whether to ban online gambling in the EU. At the meeting were experts on internet gambling and the EU's president of Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The outcome of this meeting is something that pokerplayers in EU should be really worried about.
