News on January 27th
Appearing to follow America’s stance to prohibit versus regulate online gambling, French authorities recently have taken several measures against online poker in France. Yet in December they legalized the introduction of live poker into French Casinos.
However, the two legislations go hand in hand, sending a message that the French government wants poker played only in live casinos and to leave online gambling to French state- owned companies La Francaise des Jeux (lottery and sports betting) and Le Pari Mutuel Urbain (horses), who have online monopolies. This too follows US protectionism of their online state lotteries and the interests of the entrenched hard-lobbying American horse betting industry, both of which were exempted from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA)… [Read More…]
eCOGRA, the independent regulating body which has given the seal of approval to 112 online gambling sites, released a report this week, detailing its findings about the attitudes and behaviors of online gamblers. The report was developed from surveys of almost 11,000 players from around the world.
According to the survey, this is the profile of a typical internet poker player… [Read More…]
In yet another bizarre World Poker Tour push-fest, Brian Sumner came from the middle of the pack after starting the final table with a stack a quarter of the size of the chip leader’s to win the World Poker Open in Tunica. Sumner took home $913,986 and was awarded a $25,000 seat at the WPT World Championship.
Sumner had a lot of work to do, but he got started early, taking over $400,000 from Daniel Negreanu (who started second in chips with $1.3 million) within the first seven hands. Negreanu made up for it right away, though, as he was able to grab a bunch of chips from the leader, Young Cho. By the time the first break rolled around after an hour, Negreanu had taking over the lead with almost $2 million. [Read More…]
Reuters has reported that the World Trade Organization has again sided with Antigua and Barbuda in its lengthy trade battle with the United States over Internet gambling. The ‘interim report,’ pending the submission of final comments by the U.S. before the WTO’s official publication on the trade dispute in March, rejected the United States position that it was already in compliance with matters original ruled on in an April, 2005 decision.
The narrowly defined appeal focuses on horse racing over the Internet, not touching on online poker or other matters, and it confirmed the WTO’s original finding that foreign betting operations suffer discrimination at the hands of the U.S. [Read More…]