Online Poker

Nevada Commission approves Bally’s for Online Licensing

 The first corporate entity to clear a questioning hearing before Nevada’s  State Gaming Control Board as it seeks licensure to do online-poker  business in Nevada is established gaming manufacturer, Bally’s. Bally’s,  which acquired online network, ChiliGaming, in April, has already rolled  out a free-play poker site for downtown Vegas’ Golden Nugget casino.  A real-money Golden Nugget online poker site is likely to be one of the  first offerings, provided to Nevada residents, several months down the  road.

Illinois Casino measure passes assembly, Faces Threatened Veto

by Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire

California is broke and struggling to pay its bills on time. Many of its politicians would rather “kick the can down the road” than risk losing their foothold on power by introducing unpopular legislation, cutting back services, or raising taxes. But right now, a few politicians are turning to gambling to help solve a colossal $9 billion budget deficit. After all, at the height of the poker boom, it was estimated that more than 2 million California residents played online poker, wagering over $13 billion annually.

by Haley Hintze 

NEW JERSEY ONLINE-POKER BILL CLEARS COMMITTEE

 A reworked online-poker bill is back on the legislative agenda for New Jersey politicians, and the latest edition recently cleared New Jersey’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee by a 12-0 vote. The bill joins numerous measures up for general budget debate, and will face votes before New Jersey’s full House and Senate before moving on to a possible signing by Gov. Chris Christie, who vetoed an earlier measure. The latest bill is sponsored by state Senators Raymond Lesniak and James Whelan, who fronted earlier attempts to expand gambling in the state.

by Wendeen H. Eolis

 No sooner than Laurent Tapie hit the send button on an email to employees of Pocket Kings (a Full Tilt Poker company) explaining that discussions to acquire FTP had gone down in flames, word began to spread like wildfire of another suitor for the online poker site—FTP’s longtime arch rival, PokerStars.

Tapie Deal Goes South

 As previously reported, Tapie’s repayment plan to refund non U.S. “Rest Of World” (ROW) customers was a bone of contention in Group Bernard Tapie’s negotiations with the DOJ during the past few months.

Enter PokerStars

by Paul ‘Dr. Pauly’ McGuire

 Poker is getting positive press from the mainstream media for the first time in nearly a year, thanks to the opening of a new documentary titled All In: The Poker Movie. Glowing reviews of the film, directed by Douglas Tirola and produced by 4th Row Films, have been hitting the intertubes since the film’s limited release this past March.

 All In is a survey course about poker, focusing on its rising popularity over the last two centuries. Tirola chronicles poker’s highwatermark, and its glorious boom, fueled by Chris Moneymaker’s stunning victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker’s Main Event. Unfortunately, the film also covers the eventual downfall of the online poker industry, when the Department of Justice shut down major online sites on April 15, 2011, which has been dubbed “Black Friday” in the poker community.

We've received several copies of the 2+2 forum server outage e-mail, which reads:

On April 26th at approximately 11:20 AM pacific time, the Two Plus Two Forums were closed as a result of a hacker who has displayed the ability to access e-mail addresses and encrypted passwords.  He also indicated the ability to decrypt passwords.

by Wendeen H. Eolis

No sooner than Group Bernard Tapie announced its failure to acquire the Full Tilt brand--after months of up and down negotiations with the United States Department of Justice--word spread across the internet of another suitor for the online site, its arch rival Poker Stars.

As previously detailed, first, in Poker Player Newspaper, the credibility and timeliness of Tapie's repayment plan to refund ROW customers became a bone of contention in  its negotiations with the DOJ  during the past few months.
 
According to Behn Dayanmim, however, the DOJ did not show its hand--other negotiations in progress--while pushing Tapie to make full repayment of  foreign "ROW" player account balances faster than desired by the company. In early April--at the eleventh hour, the DOJ brought down the hammer on Tapie's recalcitrance in ponying up full  refunds to all ROW players-- within ninety days of consummation of the acquisition.  
 
Dayanim was plainly annoyed by the DOJ's sudden hard-nosed position on the timing of refunds to players, explaining, "Most former FTP customers would have seen their monies fully refunded almost immediately." On questioning, Dayanim acknowledged  "Players with larger balances would likely not have received full repayment for an extended period." Could it have been more than two years? Dayanim said, "Yes." 
 
"The timetable for repayment of ROW funds had been a critical of concern to the DOJ for months," say lawyers familiar with with the wrangling over this point between Tapie and DOJ.   "Tapie ultimately showed its colors when push came to shove," according to one lawyer close to multiple protagonists involved in the final weeks of the deal making process. 

by Haley Hintze

NEW JERSEY ONLINE-POKER BILL  NEW JERSEY ONLINE-POKER BILL CLEARS COMMITTEE

 A reworked online-poker bill is back on the legislative agenda for New Jersey politicians, and the latest edition recently cleared New Jersey’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee by a 12-0 vote. The bill joins numerous measures up for general budget debate, and will face votes before New Jersey’s full House and Senate before moving on to a possible signing by Gov. Chris Christie, who vetoed an earlier measure. The latest bill is sponsored by state Senators Raymond Lesniak and James Whelan, who fronted earlier attempts to expand gambling in the state.

 THIRTY CONFIRMED FOR WSOP’S BIG ONE FOR ONEDROP

by Paul 'Dr. Pauly' McGuire

 I moved to San Francisco, the epicenter of hipster geekdom, and played in a home game with an eclectic gaggle of tech-savvy poker enthusiasts. The weekly gathering epitomized binge-drinking and cardslinging, but unfortunately, the more intoxicated everyone became, the more the action slowed down. A few bored players killed idle time by playing Zynga Poker on their iPhones.

 Zynga Poker became the most popular version of online poker played in America, because of its partnership with the social media behemoth, Facebook. Bored housewives, college students, and cubicle slaves, battled it out on the virtual felt through Zynga Poker, a free app readily available on Facebook.

Devoted on-line poker players have seen their options steadily diminish with site after site disappearing or being shut down over the last year. But now they may have a good reason to rejoice, as new entrant, Face-Up Gaming (www.faceupgaming.com) gets set to make its debut.