Promotions
PartyCasino.com Marvel slots website PartyCasino.com website $3000 sign up bonus PartyPoker.com website $500 sign up bonus VirginCasino.com website Media Man promotions
News
PartyCasino.com Wins Media Man 'Online Casino of the Month'
PartyPoker And PartyCasino Owner bwin.party Digital Entertainment Plans Return to US Market
Marvel Entertainment - The Avengers Boosting Marvel Slots Popularity; Media Agency
The Avengers breaks box office record, Scarlett Johansson interview, Paramount Pictures wins
Worldwide Satellite Trailer Debut: “The Great Gatsby”; YouTube Warner Bros. Pictures
Australian Government may legalise live online gambling; NRL, Crown Limited; The Star, Marvel Games
Packer pushes for Kennett to head company behind the Star
Packer calls for Echo chairman to go
Packer casino bid to give Kennett a Star role
SPOTTED: Erin McNaught Celebrates 30th Birthday In Sydney
Danzig accuses Hugh Jackman of playing Wolverine gay
CeBIT Australia; CeBIT platforms NSW tech projects; Award Winners - Sydney, Australia
Avengers smash $1 billion mark; Marvel Entertainment: The Avengers video game in the works...
Update On Ric Flair Leaving TNA & Possibly Returning To WWE
Bikie Wars struggles for top 10 status
We're addicted to Facebook
Bieber tweets Aussie visit
Large Trades In Echo Entertainment Executed Worth A$30.4 Million
Spinning Its Web: The Top Five Best Spider-Man Games
Shane McMahon's company to join NASDAQ for public trading
WWE's video game partner being restructured following losses
Vidgame publisher THQ shuffles execs
The secrets of Sin City
Bikie Wars skids to under 1m for Ten
ABC, Star casino go to court over TV news report
Kerry Packer is Nine’s secret weapon
Casino Stocks Worth The Gamble
Labor and Communication Minister Stephen Conroy under attack over internet gamble
Russell Crowe Feared He Was Target of 'Hit'
Your Guide to 'Mad Men' and Advertising History
TNA claims WWE tried to poach its wrestlers
Worst Comic Book Ever!
Spotify Launches Down Under
News On Rock's New Movie, Legend At Comic-Con This Weekend, Brooke Hogan On FOX & Friends
WWE Attorney Responds To TNA Lawsuit, Says They Did The Right Thing
‘Marvel Heroes’ Online Game Gets First Preview (Video)
Resort experts welcome more non-gaming business
Hollywood action hero news: Stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Expendables 2, The Tomb
An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical Plays Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star
Fightin' Fanboys: Dolph Ziggler
Business Matters: Bono Will Make Maybe $10 Million, Not $1.5 Billion, From Facebook's IPO
Facebook could kill the internet: Wolff
Naples Museum of Art to feature costumes from famous science-fiction movies, TV shows
TNA Files Lawsuit Against WWE, Ric Flair Mentioned In Suit
WWE News: Jericho "suspended indefinitely" following flag incident at Brazil house show, WWE issues statement
WWE STAR CHRIS JERICHO Suspended for Desecrating Brazilian Flag
JOHN CENA'S WIFE You Can't Divorce Me... Yet
A Much Closer Look At The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man
Mashable’s Exclusive Q&A With Stan Lee: Here’s a Teaser [VIDEO]
bwin.party gets answer to Schleswig-Holstein question
Australian tourism can be saved by Chinese middle class to large casinos; Melbourne, Perth, Sydney
Wrestling with face paint, bodyart and human statues; Ultimate Warrior, Sting, Jeff Hardy...
What the Media has said about wrestling over the years
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Wrestling News Media
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The gambler who hasn't made the list - yet; A serious man; When the crowd funds a flop, what next?
Profiles
Gaming Gambling Casinos Art Racing Entrepreneurs Celebrities Promotions Global Gaming Directory
The gambler who hasn't made the list - yet - 24th May 2012
An honorarble mention in this year’s Rich 200 must go to David Walsh. While his estimated wealth falls short of the $210 million cut-off in this year’s ranking, the Taswegian stands out this year for his ability to make Australians feel uneasy.
It’s not just the contents of his Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), perched on the banks of the Derwent River just outside Hobart, with its excrement-producing Cloaca exhibit, display of human ashes and artist Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary depicting the mother of Jesus surrounded by female genitalia and including elephant dung that will discomfort some.
It is the fact that in a year when arguments about gambling reforms have drawn vicious lobbying from the pubs and clubs industry and threatened to bring the machinery of parliament to a halt and when there’s growing concern about gambling generally that Walsh has so overtly used a fortune accrued from wagering to build a temple to art – celebrated by many of the same people who decry gambling.
In fact, the country’s largest private museum, which opened early last year, has contemporary Australian art fans salivating. Its contents include Sidney Nolan’s Snake, a 46-metre-long, nine-metre-high collation of 1620 different painted panels, and works by Brett Whiteley, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and Russell Drysdale. Mona also treads solidly into ancient territory with the mummy and coffin of Pausiris and a cast bronze votive figure of Isis and the Infant Horus, from 600-300BC.
The public loves it. Mona drew more than 330,000 visitors last year – almost half from outside Tasmania. The collection is doing great things for tourism to the Apple Isle and for Australia as a whole.
“The only time I can think of in recent history that [we had] something this big, audacious, generous and gifted was probably in America,” Edinburgh Festival director Jonathan Mills gushed last year. “It’s the Getty, the Guggenheim, it’s on that level.”
And yet, revelations that Walsh’s $175 million project was funded in part by his friend and fellow gambler Zeljko Ranogajec, whose gambling syndicate makes money out of the rebates that totalisers give in exchange for placing large bets – reducing the pool of winnings for ordinary punters placing smaller bets – only adds to the unease.
It’s no doubt a contradiction the private Walsh enjoys. If he were a miner or industrialist, his generosity would be unambiguously celebrated. That’s the sort of background Australia has come to expect of its arts patrons. Still, taking from the poor and giving to middle-class causes is something state-owned lotteries have always done. Walsh could argue he is doing the redistribution more directly, by cutting out the need for a lot of grant applications. Or he might not.
“I invent a gambling system,” Walsh writes in the introduction to his book Monanisms. “Make a money mine. Turns out it ain’t so great getting rich using someone else’s idea. Particularly before he had it. What to do? Better build a museum; make myself famous. That will get the chicks.”
The extent of Walsh’s own fortune is unclear. He has a collection of properties in and around Hobart, one of which he co-owns with Ranogajec, along with the premium Moorilla Estate winery and vineyard and Moo Brew brewery.
It remains to be seen how Walsh views his own cash flow. Is Mona, with its stated $100 million worth of artworks, simply vanity spending? Is Walsh a patron in the traditional sense or should this be seen as an initial investment into a new realm of money-making ventures?
Features of the museum, with its iPod-based self-guide system, which explains exhibits while simultaneously collecting useful data for curators on what visitors are viewing and the length of time they spend at each artwork, along with a bar in the museum selling Moo Brew beers and Moorilla wines lend themselves to replication. A side project is the 10-day Mona Foma (Festival of music and art), which this year ran for the fourth time.
It may all be just another investment. The 50-year-old Walsh has already said in interviews he intends to exploit his high-profile attraction.
“I want to use Mona as a marketing tool to drive some products that I hope will make some serious money.” (Fairfax Media)
A serious man - 28th May 2012...
Tom Waterhouse just lost $400,000. It's 2.25pm on a Saturday in Melbourne and Waterhouse is working, with 20 of his staff, in his weekend "office", a gloomy bunker at Moonee Valley Racecourse. The course itself is a ghost town - there are no races here today - but the bunker, a low-ceilinged and exceedingly unglamorous space, is animated by the kind of urgency you see in a termite colony that has just been kicked. There are lots of computers, screens, mobiles, TVs tuned to six race meetings, and young guys with fashionable facial hair - Waterhouse's "wagering officers" - who yell out stuff like "The eight in Sydney to win $5000" or "$4000 each way on Top Fluc One!"
At the centre, meanwhile, is Waterhouse, standing at a high table, sucking on a vitamin C tablet. He is dressed in a dark-blue suit and mint-green tie. His eyes are blue, his skin pale, his teeth ruler straight and pearly white. On the table before him are four computer screens and 10 mobile phones, the numbers of which are known only to VIP clients, 100 "high net worth individuals" whose minimum bet is $1000. He won't tell me their names or, in fact, anything about them, except that all but one are men.
The first thing you notice about Waterhouse is that he is the exact opposite of what you expect. He doesn't drink alcohol or coffee, nor does he smoke or swear. Instead, he says "Oh, gosh". He is distractingly, almost distressingly polite: "When I first met him he was so nice I thought he was taking the piss," his marketing manager, Warren Hebard, tells me. Above all, he does not get ruffled. Getting ruffled would indicate either a lack of control, which he has in spades, or a surfeit of emotion, which he hasn't. And yet, like his mega-risk-taking grandfather, Bill, Waterhouse is known for taking on the biggest punters, for winning and losing bathtubs full of money in the course of an afternoon. In 2008, he lost $1.175 million in 10 minutes, only to make it all back by sundown. Not long after, he lost a further $2 million (for good, this time). When, this afternoon, it becomes apparent that he has just done $400,000 on one race, he issues only the slightest wince, pops another vitamin C and returns to his screens.
Waterhouse, who turns 30 this June, is the managing director of www.tomwaterhouse.com, one of Australia's largest corporate bookmakers. The company, which has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin, offers odds on not only thoroughbreds, harness racing and greyhounds but also on rugby league and rugby union, cricket, tennis, Australian rules and, as Hebard puts it, "every other sport you can think of, from Swedish handball to two flies crawling up a wall".
Waterhouse makes the most of his family name, which has been intimately associated with bookmaking and horse racing for 112 years. (His father, Robbie, still works as a bookie; his mother, Gai, is a celebrated trainer.) But his real business is in creating as many markets as possible for punters to wager on: Waterhouse now offers odds on everything from who will win Dancing with the Stars and the Miles Franklin Literary Award to the final sale price of painter Edvard Munch's masterpiece, The Scream. "As long as it meets my licensing conditions and it passes the smell test, meaning it's not too weird, I will bet on anything," he says.
Perhaps more than any other bookie, Waterhouse embodies the changes that have recently transformed Australian gaming. Ever since the easing, in 2008, of regulations governing cross-border betting and gambling advertisements, overseas and domestic bookmakers have been battling each other for a piece of the local market, where punters wager more than $20 billion a year. Corporate bookmakers such as the foreign-owned SportingBet and SportsBet barrelled in, going toe to toe with on-course operators, including Waterhouse, who had been working "on the rails" since 2003, building his VIP business under the tutelage of father Robbie and grandfather Bill. By 2008, Tom was Australia's biggest on-track bookie; at the Melbourne Cup that year, he held more than $20 million over four days, more than all the other bookies combined.
But there is only one Melbourne Cup a year. Thanks to the advent of pay TV and online gambling, normal race-day attendances plummeted throughout the 2000s. "I haven't been to the races in three years," Waterhouse says. "It's dead. At the same time, I realised people still want to have a punt, they just wanted to do it from their couch or on their iPhone."
And so, in 2010, Waterhouse launched his online business, which he promoted in a multi-million-dollar campaign of free-to-air, print and online advertisements, including paying $70,000 to have his face plastered on a Melbourne tram. The company now has 80,000 clients, boosted by the purchase last year of the databases of two corporate bookmakers who had recently gone bust. Waterhouse employs 60 staff, and is recruiting overseas for 40 more. Robbie Waterhouse calls the strategy "growing broke", explaining, "The business is expanding at such a rate that it requires every dollar Tom has."
According to Warren Hebard, the marketing spend is now $20 million a year, a mere fraction of company turnover, which he puts in the "hundreds and hundreds of millions".
Recently I had dinner with Waterhouse at Nobu, a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne's Crown complex, where he lives in a $1900-a-night villa apartment on the 31st floor. Waterhouse has a perfectly acceptable home in Sydney - an apartment in Balmoral on Middle Harbour, just around the corner from his parents, that he bought in 2009 for $3.5 million. But Victoria's more favourable gambling laws mean he spends half his life south of the border, necessitating a yoyo-like schedule of at least three business-class flights to Melbourne and back a week. Such an arrangement is fine for now - he and wife Hoda Vakili, whom he married last year, don't have any children, a situation Waterhouse plans to remedy.
"I want to have six kids," he says. "As soon as possible."
"Seriously?" I ask.
"Seriously," he says.
Thanks to his 2006 appearance on Dancing with the Stars (he was knocked out in the third round), and his frequent partying with the likes of Charlotte Dawson and Tim Holmes à Court, Waterhouse has become known as something of a red-carpet junkie. He certainly knows how to spend his money: there are the skiing trips to Aspen, the holidays in Italy and, of course, the yearly pilgrimage to London, where he attends Royal Ascot and picks up a new suit from his father's tailor in Savile Row. His marriage last year was similarly five-star: bucks' and hens' nights in London, ceremony in the Sicilian seaside town of Taormina, followed by, as one newspaper put it, "lunch in Switzerland" and the honeymoon in Monte Carlo.
Not surprisingly, plenty of people don't like Waterhouse. The consensus is that he is too rich, too young and too lucky. Others don't like the fact he's a bookie. "Self promoter, making $ off the misery of others," one tabloid newspaper reader commented after an article on him last year. When news emerged that Vakili had undergone emergency surgery in January after injuring herself in Aspen, readers responded with an outpouring of indifference: "Should wipe the smug smile off their faces for a few weeks at least," one wrote.
I'm as jealous as the next guy, but "smug" isn't the right word for Waterhouse, who, in person at least, is self-effacing to the point of invisibility. He is softly spoken and reflexively formal. "Mum thinks I dress very boringly," he says. "Always in a dark suit and white shirt." When he was nominated for the Cleo Bachelor of the Year Awards in 2005, he was one of only two people out of 50 who opted to keep their shirts on for the photo. (The other was Guy Sebastian.) For now, he says, his life is defined by work: he goes to bed at midnight and rises at 7am, and takes only one day off a week. "Until I was married I worked seven days a week," he says. "Even when I'm on holidays I'm on my computer six or seven hours a day."
He is partial to fast cars: he has owned a Porsche 911 and currently drives a silver Mercedes SLS Gullwing (retail price: $496,000). But to picture him driving it fast, let alone crashing it, is to picture the Pope smoking crack. His optimum mode of relaxation is going to the movies with Vakili, which he does at least once a week. "We'll get the choc tops, a Slurpee," he says. "It's really great."
He also likes tennis, though playing him requires a certain kind of patience. "This is the problem with Tom at tennis: he is so formulaic and robotic," friend Jason Dundas says. "He never goes for a winner, because he knows the formula is that whoever can hold the rally longest wins. And so he plays the game to never hit a foul, and just hits these lollipops; he never goes for that Rafael Nadal cross-court winner because he knows that the chance it will go out is higher than it will go in, and he calculates that all in his head and wins the game every time. It's so annoying."
It's impossible to separate Waterhouse from his family, which has, since the First Fleet, shown a Flashman-like knack for controversy. When Governor Arthur Phillip was speared by Aborigines at Manly in 1790, it was Lieutenant Henry Waterhouse who was there to pull out the spear; Henry also brought the first thoroughbred racehorse to the colony, along with the first merino sheep. Later the family operated a Sydney ferry service, ran pubs and a sly-grog operation, even dabbled in opium smuggling.
The first bookmaker in the family was Charles Waterhouse, who got his licence in 1898, but it was his son, Bill, who would take it to another level. Through a combination of brains, balls and ruthlessness, Bill, who had initially practised as a barrister, became arguably the world's biggest gambler, a "leviathan bookie" who in the 1960s took on high-stakes punters like "Filipino Fireball" Felipe Ysmael and "Hong Kong Tiger" Frank Duval in million-dollar betting duels.
With his suit, hat, tote bag and cigarettes - 100 a day at one stage - Bill, who turned 90 this year, epitomised the old-style bookie. In his autobiography What Are the Odds?, he writes about arming himself with a .38 Smith & Wesson in the 1970s, and about his various entanglements with gangster George Freeman, "marijuana salesman" Robert Trimbole and the late Kerry Packer, who apparently died owing him $1 million. ("You can go and get f...ed and whistle for it," Packer reportedly told him. "You'll get nothing from me.")
"I don't pretend to be Simon Pure," Bill Waterhouse writes. "I have sometimes cut corners to get what I needed, but I am certainly no crook." Yet his name has been associated with virtually every scandal in horse racing bar the death of Phar Lap. Chief among these was, of course, the Fine Cotton affair of 1984, in which a handy sprinter named Bold Personality was painted with Clairol hair dye and substituted for a weaker horse called Fine Cotton. Bill and son Robbie, who had put money on the horse, were both charged by the Australian Jockey Club with "prior knowledge" - something they have always denied - and banned from racetracks for 14 years.
Tom insists he can't remember much about it: "I was two years old!" he tells me. Nor did it feature much in conversation. "It's a little bit like religion; I try not to bring it up."
It's tempting to see in the younger Waterhouse a reaction, conscious or otherwise, to the family's picaresque backstory. But it seems Tom has always been serious. Like his father before him, he attended the elite Sydney private school Shore. But where Robbie had gained a name for running a student betting ring, Tom became a senior prefect and house captain. "He is a seriously, like very, very, very ambitious guy," long-time friend David Chambers says. "He controls his emotions, he doesn't let them control him."
Chambers, who grew up around the corner from Waterhouse, says "Tom was always super competitive ... and a little bit bizarre. One day he came to school and said, 'You guys are all taking sick days: that's soft. I am never going to take a sick day.' He just thought it would be fun. And we were all like, 'Yeah, whatever.' But he never did, the whole time we were at school."
Horse racing dominated the Waterhouse home. "It was always discussed around the dinner table," Robbie says. "Every aspect of it." Tom got his first horse, a Shetland pony, for Christmas when he was five. Yet he had no interest in an on-course career. Instead, after school, he started a commerce degree, majoring in finance and marketing, at Sydney University. "I wanted to go into finance," he says. "It seemed like a good industry to be in."
Then one day in 2001, Robbie asked him if he'd come and "help out on the bag" at Rosehill. "Within about 20 minutes I was hooked," he says. Waterhouse was only six months into his course, but he immediately rearranged his timetable, moving his classes to Monday and Tuesday so that he could attend the races for the rest of the week. He got his licence for the dogs, then for thoroughbreds. Coming from racing royalty had its advantages. Gai, daughter of legendary trainer Tommy J. Smith, taught him horses; Robbie taught him analysis. ("Dad still gets up every day at 3am so he can do seven hours studying all the results and times.") And Bill showed him how to gamble. (Bet bigger if you're winning, smaller if you're losing, and always keep an eye on cash flow.)
Yet there were mishaps. In 2007, one of Waterhouse's biggest punters, the CEO of a big listed company in the US, placed a bet with him of $1.2 million. As he had never taken a bet that big, Waterhouse laid off the risk by "betting back" $800,000 with other bookies. When the CEO's horse lost, "I thought, 'Oh gosh, I've won $400,000! I'm going to buy a Ferrari!' But come Monday I had to pay $800,000 to those other bookies while my guy took the knock [refused to pay]."
Waterhouse pursued the debt through the courts, but has never got all of it back. (Courts are a recurring motif with bookies. In 2010, Waterhouse was in the Federal Magistrates Court chasing $2.6 million that he said Sydney businessman Andrew Sigalla owed him. And in January this year he placed a caveat over brothel-owner Eddie Hayson's Parramatta Road business, Stiletto, as security for $1 million in gambling debts.)
The movement of money away from the track and onto the internet has done much to sanitise racing. "In the days of the SPs, if you took the knock they'd come round and cut your toes off," veteran race writer Max Presnell says wistfully.
The perils of 21st-century gambling are more prosaic. Addiction. Bankruptcy. Family break-up. Waterhouse was raised in a religious household. "We went to church every Saturday night," he says. "I still pray occasionally, just to reflect on family and loved ones." But the moral dimension of his business doesn't trouble him. "I always say to people who bet with me, 'Anything in excess is bad for you: shopping, eating, gambling.' "
When in doubt, he invokes what he calls The Toilet Test: "If you feel uneasy about the bet, if you need to duck off to the toilet all the time, then you're betting too much. It's like anything else - if you feel uncomfortable doing it, chances are it's not a great thing to be doing."
The boardroom of Waterhouse's North Sydney office is an impressive space: there's a giant antique table, a cabinet full of trophies and a life-sized portrait of Bill Waterhouse, form guide folded under his arm, standing beneath the Harbour Bridge. Tom is explaining how he prices his odds when I spot, high up in the cabinet, Bill's original white leather tote bag.
"Do you want to see it?" Tom asks excitedly.
"Yes," I reply, imagining it to be full of interesting stuff: betting stubs, track programs, old pencils worn to the nub. But when Tom opens it up, it's empty. "Oh," I say, disappointed.
"It's basically just like a big purse," Tom says. "That's the way it worked." (Fairfax Media)
When the crowd funds a flop, what next? - 29th May 2012
Backers of high-tech video glasses have had enough of waiting for their crowdfunded returns.
Crowdfunding website Kickstarter was used to raise $US340,000 for a project to build a pair of HD-video recording glasses, but almost a year on, people who invested in the project have not received their products and the project creators have seemingly disappeared.
Kickstarter has denied responsibility for a growing number of apparently failed crowdfunding projects, but donors who claim to have been ripped-off are fighting back.
Crowdfunding is a way for individuals to make their dreams a reality, as touted by websites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo which provide the social media tools to tap friends, family, and their extended networks for the capital needed to build a product.
In the embryonic stages the quirkier ideas garner media attention and are oversubscribed, often raising more money than initially requested.
While the success stories are well-documented, there is a growing list of stillborn projects where money has been collected by the project owner (95 per cent) and by Kickstarter (five per cent) but donors haven't received their promised returns.
The websites stress the responsibility rests with the project owner and the donor - they shy away from calling them "investors" as this would attract different regulatory compliance - but some frustrated donors are taking action.
The ZionEyez project trajectory is typical other Kickstarter consumer tech product success stories, but so far it doesn't feature the same happy ending.
The four founders asked for $US55,000 to build Eyez, a pair of glasses that could record HD video. After extensive media coverage (including by Engadget, Mashable, Forbes and Rolling Stone) it raised $US343,415 from 2106 backers when the funding round closed on July 31.
Since then the founders have missed the original delivery deadline of the northern "Winter 2011" and donors' growing concerns over product delivery are not being directly addressed.
There are more than 850 comments on the project page, some asking for a class action, and including one donor's correspondence with ZionEyez.
"Thanks for reaching out to us. We will be releasing another engineering update for our KS Backers in the near future. Thanks for your patience and support!"
Bill Walker was one of the donors who committed the $US150 required to secure a pair of the glasses.
In an attempt to claw back the donations he built the site zionkick.com to organise legal action against the founders of the ZionEyez project.
They must provide a reasonable time for the product to be delivered, he said.
"At the present time we (interested backers) are playing the waiting game," Walker wrote via email. "We have to give them a period of time in which to perform before filing fraud charges. When a period of time elapses that would satisfy the legal eagles...then we attack. Until then we bide our time."
"Their attorney CEO knows the heat is on so he might be insisting they produce something, even if it's on the level of the $US59.95 products currently on the market. Produce anything that will satisfy the spirit of what they said they were going to produce.
"In the meantime Kickstarter takes their 5 per cent and insists the backer is totally responsible for vetting the money grubbers."
Kickstarter did not respond to specific questions about whether it would intervene in the ZionEyez project, and pointed to their frequently asked questions (FAQ) page which says the creator is responsible for fulfilling a project's promise.
"Kickstarter doesn't issue refunds since transactions are between backers and creators, but we're prepared to work with backers as well as law enforcement in the prosecution of any fraudulent activity. Scammers are bad news for everyone, and we'll defend the goodwill of our community."
ZionEyez did not respond to requests for comment.
Crowdfunding projects fall outside the general consumer protections afforded by the Australian Consumer Law and NSW Fair Trading's jurisdiction, according to a Fair Trading spokesperson.
This is because the project is not a form of business trading, and a consumer-supplier relationship does not exist. The risk is amplified when dealing with international sites, the spokesperson said.
"Whenever dealing with an entity that is from outside Australia, consumers should be aware that should something go wrong, redress can be much more difficult to achieve than when the trader is domestically-based," the spokesperson said.
Donors do have some avenues for legal recourse but this could be expensive, according to Rouse Lawyers special counsel Kurt Falkenstein, who specialises in start-ups and has helped some raise money via crowdfunding.
The crowdfunding websites should take responsibility, he said.
"The principles of contract law still apply to crowdfunding – and if you misrepresent or falsify information that induces someone to enter a contract, you are liable – so the terms and conditions of the crowdfunding platform are vital," Falkenstein said.
"The hard thing with contract law is enforcement – are you going to go to court over tens or hundreds of dollars?
"Consumer law may apply where goods or services are promised but not delivered – you can't promise to provide something and not do it – but then you are relying on the ACCC.
"For me, if hundreds or thousands of people are ripped off, the platform should help those people band together and enforce their rights."
There is always a risk that these websites can be exploited, according to Alan Crabbe, co-founder of local crowdfunding website Pozible. He did not respond to a question whether the site had any undelivered projects.
There are safeguards against this, including filtering projects based on national/state investment laws, checking the project creator and holding photo ID, and tracking unusual activity on projects, he said.
Crowdfunding websites are not legally responsible for failed projects, according to StartSomeGood.com co-founder Tom Dawkins, but this does not mean they won't be judged in the court of public opinion.
The key is to curate the projects , he said, so the sites, project creators, and donors are ensured of the greatest chance of success.
"We don't believe we are legally or functionally responsible but, after the project concludes, we know people will hold us responsible anyway."
"We reject a lot of projects because they're too fantastic and unachievable. We try and make sure that we do feel proud of every project on our site, that we feel comfortable and stand by it."
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Gaming Gambling Casinos Art Racing Entrepreneurs Celebrities Promotions Global Gaming Directory
The gambler who hasn't made the list - yet - 24th May 2012
An honorarble mention in this year’s Rich 200 must go to David Walsh. While his estimated wealth falls short of the $210 million cut-off in this year’s ranking, the Taswegian stands out this year for his ability to make Australians feel uneasy.
It’s not just the contents of his Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), perched on the banks of the Derwent River just outside Hobart, with its excrement-producing Cloaca exhibit, display of human ashes and artist Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary depicting the mother of Jesus surrounded by female genitalia and including elephant dung that will discomfort some.
It is the fact that in a year when arguments about gambling reforms have drawn vicious lobbying from the pubs and clubs industry and threatened to bring the machinery of parliament to a halt and when there’s growing concern about gambling generally that Walsh has so overtly used a fortune accrued from wagering to build a temple to art – celebrated by many of the same people who decry gambling.
In fact, the country’s largest private museum, which opened early last year, has contemporary Australian art fans salivating. Its contents include Sidney Nolan’s Snake, a 46-metre-long, nine-metre-high collation of 1620 different painted panels, and works by Brett Whiteley, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and Russell Drysdale. Mona also treads solidly into ancient territory with the mummy and coffin of Pausiris and a cast bronze votive figure of Isis and the Infant Horus, from 600-300BC.
The public loves it. Mona drew more than 330,000 visitors last year – almost half from outside Tasmania. The collection is doing great things for tourism to the Apple Isle and for Australia as a whole.
“The only time I can think of in recent history that [we had] something this big, audacious, generous and gifted was probably in America,” Edinburgh Festival director Jonathan Mills gushed last year. “It’s the Getty, the Guggenheim, it’s on that level.”
And yet, revelations that Walsh’s $175 million project was funded in part by his friend and fellow gambler Zeljko Ranogajec, whose gambling syndicate makes money out of the rebates that totalisers give in exchange for placing large bets – reducing the pool of winnings for ordinary punters placing smaller bets – only adds to the unease.
It’s no doubt a contradiction the private Walsh enjoys. If he were a miner or industrialist, his generosity would be unambiguously celebrated. That’s the sort of background Australia has come to expect of its arts patrons. Still, taking from the poor and giving to middle-class causes is something state-owned lotteries have always done. Walsh could argue he is doing the redistribution more directly, by cutting out the need for a lot of grant applications. Or he might not.
“I invent a gambling system,” Walsh writes in the introduction to his book Monanisms. “Make a money mine. Turns out it ain’t so great getting rich using someone else’s idea. Particularly before he had it. What to do? Better build a museum; make myself famous. That will get the chicks.”
The extent of Walsh’s own fortune is unclear. He has a collection of properties in and around Hobart, one of which he co-owns with Ranogajec, along with the premium Moorilla Estate winery and vineyard and Moo Brew brewery.
It remains to be seen how Walsh views his own cash flow. Is Mona, with its stated $100 million worth of artworks, simply vanity spending? Is Walsh a patron in the traditional sense or should this be seen as an initial investment into a new realm of money-making ventures?
Features of the museum, with its iPod-based self-guide system, which explains exhibits while simultaneously collecting useful data for curators on what visitors are viewing and the length of time they spend at each artwork, along with a bar in the museum selling Moo Brew beers and Moorilla wines lend themselves to replication. A side project is the 10-day Mona Foma (Festival of music and art), which this year ran for the fourth time.
It may all be just another investment. The 50-year-old Walsh has already said in interviews he intends to exploit his high-profile attraction.
“I want to use Mona as a marketing tool to drive some products that I hope will make some serious money.” (Fairfax Media)
A serious man - 28th May 2012...
Tom Waterhouse just lost $400,000. It's 2.25pm on a Saturday in Melbourne and Waterhouse is working, with 20 of his staff, in his weekend "office", a gloomy bunker at Moonee Valley Racecourse. The course itself is a ghost town - there are no races here today - but the bunker, a low-ceilinged and exceedingly unglamorous space, is animated by the kind of urgency you see in a termite colony that has just been kicked. There are lots of computers, screens, mobiles, TVs tuned to six race meetings, and young guys with fashionable facial hair - Waterhouse's "wagering officers" - who yell out stuff like "The eight in Sydney to win $5000" or "$4000 each way on Top Fluc One!"
At the centre, meanwhile, is Waterhouse, standing at a high table, sucking on a vitamin C tablet. He is dressed in a dark-blue suit and mint-green tie. His eyes are blue, his skin pale, his teeth ruler straight and pearly white. On the table before him are four computer screens and 10 mobile phones, the numbers of which are known only to VIP clients, 100 "high net worth individuals" whose minimum bet is $1000. He won't tell me their names or, in fact, anything about them, except that all but one are men.
The first thing you notice about Waterhouse is that he is the exact opposite of what you expect. He doesn't drink alcohol or coffee, nor does he smoke or swear. Instead, he says "Oh, gosh". He is distractingly, almost distressingly polite: "When I first met him he was so nice I thought he was taking the piss," his marketing manager, Warren Hebard, tells me. Above all, he does not get ruffled. Getting ruffled would indicate either a lack of control, which he has in spades, or a surfeit of emotion, which he hasn't. And yet, like his mega-risk-taking grandfather, Bill, Waterhouse is known for taking on the biggest punters, for winning and losing bathtubs full of money in the course of an afternoon. In 2008, he lost $1.175 million in 10 minutes, only to make it all back by sundown. Not long after, he lost a further $2 million (for good, this time). When, this afternoon, it becomes apparent that he has just done $400,000 on one race, he issues only the slightest wince, pops another vitamin C and returns to his screens.
Waterhouse, who turns 30 this June, is the managing director of www.tomwaterhouse.com, one of Australia's largest corporate bookmakers. The company, which has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin, offers odds on not only thoroughbreds, harness racing and greyhounds but also on rugby league and rugby union, cricket, tennis, Australian rules and, as Hebard puts it, "every other sport you can think of, from Swedish handball to two flies crawling up a wall".
Waterhouse makes the most of his family name, which has been intimately associated with bookmaking and horse racing for 112 years. (His father, Robbie, still works as a bookie; his mother, Gai, is a celebrated trainer.) But his real business is in creating as many markets as possible for punters to wager on: Waterhouse now offers odds on everything from who will win Dancing with the Stars and the Miles Franklin Literary Award to the final sale price of painter Edvard Munch's masterpiece, The Scream. "As long as it meets my licensing conditions and it passes the smell test, meaning it's not too weird, I will bet on anything," he says.
Perhaps more than any other bookie, Waterhouse embodies the changes that have recently transformed Australian gaming. Ever since the easing, in 2008, of regulations governing cross-border betting and gambling advertisements, overseas and domestic bookmakers have been battling each other for a piece of the local market, where punters wager more than $20 billion a year. Corporate bookmakers such as the foreign-owned SportingBet and SportsBet barrelled in, going toe to toe with on-course operators, including Waterhouse, who had been working "on the rails" since 2003, building his VIP business under the tutelage of father Robbie and grandfather Bill. By 2008, Tom was Australia's biggest on-track bookie; at the Melbourne Cup that year, he held more than $20 million over four days, more than all the other bookies combined.
But there is only one Melbourne Cup a year. Thanks to the advent of pay TV and online gambling, normal race-day attendances plummeted throughout the 2000s. "I haven't been to the races in three years," Waterhouse says. "It's dead. At the same time, I realised people still want to have a punt, they just wanted to do it from their couch or on their iPhone."
And so, in 2010, Waterhouse launched his online business, which he promoted in a multi-million-dollar campaign of free-to-air, print and online advertisements, including paying $70,000 to have his face plastered on a Melbourne tram. The company now has 80,000 clients, boosted by the purchase last year of the databases of two corporate bookmakers who had recently gone bust. Waterhouse employs 60 staff, and is recruiting overseas for 40 more. Robbie Waterhouse calls the strategy "growing broke", explaining, "The business is expanding at such a rate that it requires every dollar Tom has."
According to Warren Hebard, the marketing spend is now $20 million a year, a mere fraction of company turnover, which he puts in the "hundreds and hundreds of millions".
Recently I had dinner with Waterhouse at Nobu, a Japanese restaurant in Melbourne's Crown complex, where he lives in a $1900-a-night villa apartment on the 31st floor. Waterhouse has a perfectly acceptable home in Sydney - an apartment in Balmoral on Middle Harbour, just around the corner from his parents, that he bought in 2009 for $3.5 million. But Victoria's more favourable gambling laws mean he spends half his life south of the border, necessitating a yoyo-like schedule of at least three business-class flights to Melbourne and back a week. Such an arrangement is fine for now - he and wife Hoda Vakili, whom he married last year, don't have any children, a situation Waterhouse plans to remedy.
"I want to have six kids," he says. "As soon as possible."
"Seriously?" I ask.
"Seriously," he says.
Thanks to his 2006 appearance on Dancing with the Stars (he was knocked out in the third round), and his frequent partying with the likes of Charlotte Dawson and Tim Holmes à Court, Waterhouse has become known as something of a red-carpet junkie. He certainly knows how to spend his money: there are the skiing trips to Aspen, the holidays in Italy and, of course, the yearly pilgrimage to London, where he attends Royal Ascot and picks up a new suit from his father's tailor in Savile Row. His marriage last year was similarly five-star: bucks' and hens' nights in London, ceremony in the Sicilian seaside town of Taormina, followed by, as one newspaper put it, "lunch in Switzerland" and the honeymoon in Monte Carlo.
Not surprisingly, plenty of people don't like Waterhouse. The consensus is that he is too rich, too young and too lucky. Others don't like the fact he's a bookie. "Self promoter, making $ off the misery of others," one tabloid newspaper reader commented after an article on him last year. When news emerged that Vakili had undergone emergency surgery in January after injuring herself in Aspen, readers responded with an outpouring of indifference: "Should wipe the smug smile off their faces for a few weeks at least," one wrote.
I'm as jealous as the next guy, but "smug" isn't the right word for Waterhouse, who, in person at least, is self-effacing to the point of invisibility. He is softly spoken and reflexively formal. "Mum thinks I dress very boringly," he says. "Always in a dark suit and white shirt." When he was nominated for the Cleo Bachelor of the Year Awards in 2005, he was one of only two people out of 50 who opted to keep their shirts on for the photo. (The other was Guy Sebastian.) For now, he says, his life is defined by work: he goes to bed at midnight and rises at 7am, and takes only one day off a week. "Until I was married I worked seven days a week," he says. "Even when I'm on holidays I'm on my computer six or seven hours a day."
He is partial to fast cars: he has owned a Porsche 911 and currently drives a silver Mercedes SLS Gullwing (retail price: $496,000). But to picture him driving it fast, let alone crashing it, is to picture the Pope smoking crack. His optimum mode of relaxation is going to the movies with Vakili, which he does at least once a week. "We'll get the choc tops, a Slurpee," he says. "It's really great."
He also likes tennis, though playing him requires a certain kind of patience. "This is the problem with Tom at tennis: he is so formulaic and robotic," friend Jason Dundas says. "He never goes for a winner, because he knows the formula is that whoever can hold the rally longest wins. And so he plays the game to never hit a foul, and just hits these lollipops; he never goes for that Rafael Nadal cross-court winner because he knows that the chance it will go out is higher than it will go in, and he calculates that all in his head and wins the game every time. It's so annoying."
It's impossible to separate Waterhouse from his family, which has, since the First Fleet, shown a Flashman-like knack for controversy. When Governor Arthur Phillip was speared by Aborigines at Manly in 1790, it was Lieutenant Henry Waterhouse who was there to pull out the spear; Henry also brought the first thoroughbred racehorse to the colony, along with the first merino sheep. Later the family operated a Sydney ferry service, ran pubs and a sly-grog operation, even dabbled in opium smuggling.
The first bookmaker in the family was Charles Waterhouse, who got his licence in 1898, but it was his son, Bill, who would take it to another level. Through a combination of brains, balls and ruthlessness, Bill, who had initially practised as a barrister, became arguably the world's biggest gambler, a "leviathan bookie" who in the 1960s took on high-stakes punters like "Filipino Fireball" Felipe Ysmael and "Hong Kong Tiger" Frank Duval in million-dollar betting duels.
With his suit, hat, tote bag and cigarettes - 100 a day at one stage - Bill, who turned 90 this year, epitomised the old-style bookie. In his autobiography What Are the Odds?, he writes about arming himself with a .38 Smith & Wesson in the 1970s, and about his various entanglements with gangster George Freeman, "marijuana salesman" Robert Trimbole and the late Kerry Packer, who apparently died owing him $1 million. ("You can go and get f...ed and whistle for it," Packer reportedly told him. "You'll get nothing from me.")
"I don't pretend to be Simon Pure," Bill Waterhouse writes. "I have sometimes cut corners to get what I needed, but I am certainly no crook." Yet his name has been associated with virtually every scandal in horse racing bar the death of Phar Lap. Chief among these was, of course, the Fine Cotton affair of 1984, in which a handy sprinter named Bold Personality was painted with Clairol hair dye and substituted for a weaker horse called Fine Cotton. Bill and son Robbie, who had put money on the horse, were both charged by the Australian Jockey Club with "prior knowledge" - something they have always denied - and banned from racetracks for 14 years.
Tom insists he can't remember much about it: "I was two years old!" he tells me. Nor did it feature much in conversation. "It's a little bit like religion; I try not to bring it up."
It's tempting to see in the younger Waterhouse a reaction, conscious or otherwise, to the family's picaresque backstory. But it seems Tom has always been serious. Like his father before him, he attended the elite Sydney private school Shore. But where Robbie had gained a name for running a student betting ring, Tom became a senior prefect and house captain. "He is a seriously, like very, very, very ambitious guy," long-time friend David Chambers says. "He controls his emotions, he doesn't let them control him."
Chambers, who grew up around the corner from Waterhouse, says "Tom was always super competitive ... and a little bit bizarre. One day he came to school and said, 'You guys are all taking sick days: that's soft. I am never going to take a sick day.' He just thought it would be fun. And we were all like, 'Yeah, whatever.' But he never did, the whole time we were at school."
Horse racing dominated the Waterhouse home. "It was always discussed around the dinner table," Robbie says. "Every aspect of it." Tom got his first horse, a Shetland pony, for Christmas when he was five. Yet he had no interest in an on-course career. Instead, after school, he started a commerce degree, majoring in finance and marketing, at Sydney University. "I wanted to go into finance," he says. "It seemed like a good industry to be in."
Then one day in 2001, Robbie asked him if he'd come and "help out on the bag" at Rosehill. "Within about 20 minutes I was hooked," he says. Waterhouse was only six months into his course, but he immediately rearranged his timetable, moving his classes to Monday and Tuesday so that he could attend the races for the rest of the week. He got his licence for the dogs, then for thoroughbreds. Coming from racing royalty had its advantages. Gai, daughter of legendary trainer Tommy J. Smith, taught him horses; Robbie taught him analysis. ("Dad still gets up every day at 3am so he can do seven hours studying all the results and times.") And Bill showed him how to gamble. (Bet bigger if you're winning, smaller if you're losing, and always keep an eye on cash flow.)
Yet there were mishaps. In 2007, one of Waterhouse's biggest punters, the CEO of a big listed company in the US, placed a bet with him of $1.2 million. As he had never taken a bet that big, Waterhouse laid off the risk by "betting back" $800,000 with other bookies. When the CEO's horse lost, "I thought, 'Oh gosh, I've won $400,000! I'm going to buy a Ferrari!' But come Monday I had to pay $800,000 to those other bookies while my guy took the knock [refused to pay]."
Waterhouse pursued the debt through the courts, but has never got all of it back. (Courts are a recurring motif with bookies. In 2010, Waterhouse was in the Federal Magistrates Court chasing $2.6 million that he said Sydney businessman Andrew Sigalla owed him. And in January this year he placed a caveat over brothel-owner Eddie Hayson's Parramatta Road business, Stiletto, as security for $1 million in gambling debts.)
The movement of money away from the track and onto the internet has done much to sanitise racing. "In the days of the SPs, if you took the knock they'd come round and cut your toes off," veteran race writer Max Presnell says wistfully.
The perils of 21st-century gambling are more prosaic. Addiction. Bankruptcy. Family break-up. Waterhouse was raised in a religious household. "We went to church every Saturday night," he says. "I still pray occasionally, just to reflect on family and loved ones." But the moral dimension of his business doesn't trouble him. "I always say to people who bet with me, 'Anything in excess is bad for you: shopping, eating, gambling.' "
When in doubt, he invokes what he calls The Toilet Test: "If you feel uneasy about the bet, if you need to duck off to the toilet all the time, then you're betting too much. It's like anything else - if you feel uncomfortable doing it, chances are it's not a great thing to be doing."
The boardroom of Waterhouse's North Sydney office is an impressive space: there's a giant antique table, a cabinet full of trophies and a life-sized portrait of Bill Waterhouse, form guide folded under his arm, standing beneath the Harbour Bridge. Tom is explaining how he prices his odds when I spot, high up in the cabinet, Bill's original white leather tote bag.
"Do you want to see it?" Tom asks excitedly.
"Yes," I reply, imagining it to be full of interesting stuff: betting stubs, track programs, old pencils worn to the nub. But when Tom opens it up, it's empty. "Oh," I say, disappointed.
"It's basically just like a big purse," Tom says. "That's the way it worked." (Fairfax Media)
When the crowd funds a flop, what next? - 29th May 2012
Backers of high-tech video glasses have had enough of waiting for their crowdfunded returns.
Crowdfunding website Kickstarter was used to raise $US340,000 for a project to build a pair of HD-video recording glasses, but almost a year on, people who invested in the project have not received their products and the project creators have seemingly disappeared.
Kickstarter has denied responsibility for a growing number of apparently failed crowdfunding projects, but donors who claim to have been ripped-off are fighting back.
Crowdfunding is a way for individuals to make their dreams a reality, as touted by websites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo which provide the social media tools to tap friends, family, and their extended networks for the capital needed to build a product.
In the embryonic stages the quirkier ideas garner media attention and are oversubscribed, often raising more money than initially requested.
While the success stories are well-documented, there is a growing list of stillborn projects where money has been collected by the project owner (95 per cent) and by Kickstarter (five per cent) but donors haven't received their promised returns.
The websites stress the responsibility rests with the project owner and the donor - they shy away from calling them "investors" as this would attract different regulatory compliance - but some frustrated donors are taking action.
The ZionEyez project trajectory is typical other Kickstarter consumer tech product success stories, but so far it doesn't feature the same happy ending.
The four founders asked for $US55,000 to build Eyez, a pair of glasses that could record HD video. After extensive media coverage (including by Engadget, Mashable, Forbes and Rolling Stone) it raised $US343,415 from 2106 backers when the funding round closed on July 31.
Since then the founders have missed the original delivery deadline of the northern "Winter 2011" and donors' growing concerns over product delivery are not being directly addressed.
There are more than 850 comments on the project page, some asking for a class action, and including one donor's correspondence with ZionEyez.
"Thanks for reaching out to us. We will be releasing another engineering update for our KS Backers in the near future. Thanks for your patience and support!"
Bill Walker was one of the donors who committed the $US150 required to secure a pair of the glasses.
In an attempt to claw back the donations he built the site zionkick.com to organise legal action against the founders of the ZionEyez project.
They must provide a reasonable time for the product to be delivered, he said.
"At the present time we (interested backers) are playing the waiting game," Walker wrote via email. "We have to give them a period of time in which to perform before filing fraud charges. When a period of time elapses that would satisfy the legal eagles...then we attack. Until then we bide our time."
"Their attorney CEO knows the heat is on so he might be insisting they produce something, even if it's on the level of the $US59.95 products currently on the market. Produce anything that will satisfy the spirit of what they said they were going to produce.
"In the meantime Kickstarter takes their 5 per cent and insists the backer is totally responsible for vetting the money grubbers."
Kickstarter did not respond to specific questions about whether it would intervene in the ZionEyez project, and pointed to their frequently asked questions (FAQ) page which says the creator is responsible for fulfilling a project's promise.
"Kickstarter doesn't issue refunds since transactions are between backers and creators, but we're prepared to work with backers as well as law enforcement in the prosecution of any fraudulent activity. Scammers are bad news for everyone, and we'll defend the goodwill of our community."
ZionEyez did not respond to requests for comment.
Crowdfunding projects fall outside the general consumer protections afforded by the Australian Consumer Law and NSW Fair Trading's jurisdiction, according to a Fair Trading spokesperson.
This is because the project is not a form of business trading, and a consumer-supplier relationship does not exist. The risk is amplified when dealing with international sites, the spokesperson said.
"Whenever dealing with an entity that is from outside Australia, consumers should be aware that should something go wrong, redress can be much more difficult to achieve than when the trader is domestically-based," the spokesperson said.
Donors do have some avenues for legal recourse but this could be expensive, according to Rouse Lawyers special counsel Kurt Falkenstein, who specialises in start-ups and has helped some raise money via crowdfunding.
The crowdfunding websites should take responsibility, he said.
"The principles of contract law still apply to crowdfunding – and if you misrepresent or falsify information that induces someone to enter a contract, you are liable – so the terms and conditions of the crowdfunding platform are vital," Falkenstein said.
"The hard thing with contract law is enforcement – are you going to go to court over tens or hundreds of dollars?
"Consumer law may apply where goods or services are promised but not delivered – you can't promise to provide something and not do it – but then you are relying on the ACCC.
"For me, if hundreds or thousands of people are ripped off, the platform should help those people band together and enforce their rights."
There is always a risk that these websites can be exploited, according to Alan Crabbe, co-founder of local crowdfunding website Pozible. He did not respond to a question whether the site had any undelivered projects.
There are safeguards against this, including filtering projects based on national/state investment laws, checking the project creator and holding photo ID, and tracking unusual activity on projects, he said.
Crowdfunding websites are not legally responsible for failed projects, according to StartSomeGood.com co-founder Tom Dawkins, but this does not mean they won't be judged in the court of public opinion.
The key is to curate the projects , he said, so the sites, project creators, and donors are ensured of the greatest chance of success.
"We don't believe we are legally or functionally responsible but, after the project concludes, we know people will hold us responsible anyway."
"We reject a lot of projects because they're too fantastic and unachievable. We try and make sure that we do feel proud of every project on our site, that we feel comfortable and stand by it."
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Monday, May 28, 2012
2012 WSOP Day 1: Saechao, Routos Dominate Casino Employees Event
2012 WSOP Day 1: Saechao, Routos Dominate Casino Employees Event; Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca Wins 2012 LAPT Punta del Este
Profiles
Poker Online Poker World Series of Poker Poker Tournaments Casinos Gambling Gaming Promotions Las Vegas
The weeks of anticipation are over. It’s time for everyone to calm their “inside tinglies.” The 43rd Annual World Series of Poker is underway! As is the tradition, the first and only event to kick off Sunday was the Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em event. While it is a gold bracelet event, it is different from most WSOP tournaments in that it is not an open event in which anyone and everyone can participate. As its name implies, only those who work at a casino may enter. That does not stop it from being a large tournament, though, as 732 players paid the $500 for a shot at glory. Ending the first day atop the chip counts are Chip Saechao with 150,600 chips and James Routos hot on his tail with 146,900.
Both of our chip leaders, who coincidentally were seated at the same table, made their big moves to the top of the leader board late in the night during the 11th and final level of Day 1. Saechao went first, opening a hand for 4,200 chips (blinds and antes were 800/1,600/200) from the button. After both blinds called, the dealer laid down a flop of 2♠-8♥-9♥, prompting the small blind to bet 6,000. The big blind, who happened to be Routos, tossed away his hand and Saechao ratcheted it up to 16,000. The small blind called and the two players saw a turn of 3♠. The small blind checked this card, but Saechao did quite the opposite, moving all-in for more than 40,000 chips. Seeming to know his opponent was on a draw, Saechao told him, “Trust me, it’s not coming.” Despite the warning, his opponent made the call, revealing that he did indeed have a draw, holding A♥-4♥. It was a great read by Saechao, as he himself only had 6♣-8♠ for middle pair. The river was the 3♦, giving Saechao the hand and a significant pot. At that point, his stack was up around 110,000 chips.
Just a few hands later, it was Routos’ turn. The details from those on the scene are a bit sketchy, but Routos and one other player saw a flop of Q♣-3♥-7♠. Routos checked, the other player bet 7,000 and Routos called. The turn was the 7♥ and Routos checked once more, but this time he check-raised his opponent’s 12,000 chip bet up to 30,000. That was enough for the “other guy,” as he laid down his hand, giving the pot to Routos. At that, Routos took over the chip lead with a 150,000 chip stack, but as we know, Saechao regained it before the night was over.
With 732 players, the prize pool for Event #1 is $329,400 (7 percent of the buy-in is taken out for entry fees and 3 percent is taken for the tournament staff). Just 46 players remain, all of whom have already made the money, as the payouts extend down to 81st place. The eventual winner will receive $70,859. The remaining players will resume play in the Amazon Room at the Rio at 1:00pm local time. Tournament Director Jack Effel estimates that another 11 to 12 more levels will be needed to complete the tourney, so it will be a long night for the last few players. The plan is for Day 2 to be the final day, but if it’s not over by 3:00am, a third day will be added. The final table will be streamed “almost live” on a five minute delay at WSOP.com.
2012 WSOP Event #1: Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em – End of Day 1 Chip Leaders
1. Chip Saechao – 150,600
2. James Routos – 146,900
3. Matthew Wilmot – 122,800
4. Don Michael – 110,200
5. John Vohs – 102,300
6. Ray Pulford – 91,100
7. Carisa Schweisberger – 76,400
8. Joshua Murray – 72,400
9. Joseph McCarthy – 71,100
10. Ty Stewart – 69,900
Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca Wins 2012 LAPT Punta del Este
While the focus of the poker world is now set squarely on Las Vegas and the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP), there are still other live poker tournaments taking place all over the world. One of them, the Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT) Punta del Este stop, wrapped up Sunday with Brazil’s Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca topping the 375 player field to take down his first ever live tournament title and $144,240.
If you skipped down to the list of final table payouts, you may notice that there is a significant gap between the money awarded to Pablo Joaquin Melogno in 4th place ($60,420) and Francisco Baruffi Neto in 3rd place ($116,240). This is the result of a deal made amongst the top three finishers when they all held approximately equal chip stacks. They didn’t start three-handed play like that, but after double-ups by both Fonseca and Baruffi probably made the three men realize that the tide can turn any which way that late in the game, regardless of any individual player’s skill.
Baruffi was the one to broach the topic of a deal after he doubled through Angel Guillen, suggesting they split the remaining prize pool three ways. This would have given each just shy of $129,000, close to the $133,688 that would have gone to the second place finisher without a deal. In the end, they agreed to each get $116,240 and play for the remaining $38,000.
Shortly after the deal was settled upon, Guillen crippled Baruffi, leaving him with barely more than a big blind. The next hand was Baruffi’s last, as his A♥-5♠ fell to Fonseca’s 9♠-9♣.
Going into heads-up play, Fonseca had a moderate chip lead, 4.1 million to Guillen’s 3.5 million. The two men then decided to adjust the previous deal, allotting $28,000 of the $38,000 left on the table to first place and the remaining $10,000 to second place.
Fonseca never gave up his lead for the entire hour and a half duration of the one-on-one match. Because of the cautiousness of both players, though, he also never stretched the lead to the point where a victory looked completely inevitable. But just like that, it ended.
Fonseca made a min-raise pre-flop to 200,000 and shockingly, Guillen moved all-in for 2.8 million. Fonseca called immediately with A♣-K♥, obviously happy to see Guillen’s A♠-9♣. The flop of T♥-7♠-J♠ gave a tiny bit of extra hope to Guillen, as he now had a gutshot straight draw, but neither the turn nor river helped at all and Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca was the LAPT Punta del Este champion.
This win almost double’s Fonseca’s total career earnings in live tournaments. He had gone into the final table with six lifetime cashes for a total of $171,896.
2012 LAPT Punta del Este – Final Table Results
1. Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca – $144,240
2. Angel Guillen – $126,240
3. Francisco Baruffi Neto – $116,240
4. Pablo Joaquin Melogno – $60,420
5. Ivan Luca – $46,000
6. Osvaldo Silvio Resquin – $35,970
7. Vladimir Dobrovolskiy – $26,770
8. Guido Ruffini – $20,080
9. Carlos Leoncio Mironiuk – $15,390
WSOP Unveils 2012 Bracelets - 20th May 2012
With the 43rd Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) just a week away, it is only appropriate that the new bracelet has been officially unveiled. After all, it’s the one thing by which poker players measure their success (we suppose one could count that whole business of cash winnings, too). This year’s designer is Jason Arasheben, perhaps better known as “Jason of Beverly Hills.”
Considering Jason of Beverly Hills’ reputation for creating gaudy, over-the-top pieces that can be seen from the moon, the bracelet is relatively tame. Make no mistake, though – it will still grab attention more than last year’s simple, gold piece of jewelry created by OnTilt Designs. The bracelet is gold, of course, with a very smooth look. The four playing card suits are represented in each corner of the bracelet’s face, with the heart and diamond comprised of white diamonds and the spade and club appearing to be made up of black diamonds. A raised World Series of Poker logo adorns the center of the bracelet face, enhanced by color to make it stand out.
But that is just the bracelet for the 66 preliminary events. Jason of Beverly Hills will also be creating the 2012 WSOP Main Event bracelet, which he promises will be a sight to behold.
“We are honored to have the opportunity to create this masterpiece for the World Series of Poker and it will go down as the most expensive piece of championship jewelry across all major sports,” said Jason of Beverly Hills about the WSOP Main Event gold bracelet. “We will tour this bracelet in our Las Vegas and Beverly Hills boutique so the world can bear witness to this historic work of art.”
The four card suits will be in their normal colors, with the heart and diamond formed by rubies and the spade and club created with black diamonds. All told, the Main Event bracelet will contain over 160 grams of 14 karat gold and over 35 carats of flawless diamonds.
“Blinger is Better,” said WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart in a press release. “Jason grasped the heritage of WSOP bracelets, but was only interested if he could take it up several notches. This is a trophy that truly embodies the promise of today’s WSOP – seemingly unthinkable dreams are dealt each year. I challenge anyone to keep a poker face when they see this bracelet in person.”
Jason of Beverly Hills started his business as a student at UCLA, selling silver trinkets to fellow students, and eventually grew it into the go-to source for amazing diamond creations for the world’s biggest celebrities. He has created pieces for the likes of LeBron James, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and even Middle Eastern royalty. The pendant he made for Lil Jon was named the largest in the world by Guinness World Records. (Poker News Daily)
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Profiles
Poker Online Poker World Series of Poker Poker Tournaments Casinos Gambling Gaming Promotions Las Vegas
The weeks of anticipation are over. It’s time for everyone to calm their “inside tinglies.” The 43rd Annual World Series of Poker is underway! As is the tradition, the first and only event to kick off Sunday was the Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em event. While it is a gold bracelet event, it is different from most WSOP tournaments in that it is not an open event in which anyone and everyone can participate. As its name implies, only those who work at a casino may enter. That does not stop it from being a large tournament, though, as 732 players paid the $500 for a shot at glory. Ending the first day atop the chip counts are Chip Saechao with 150,600 chips and James Routos hot on his tail with 146,900.
Both of our chip leaders, who coincidentally were seated at the same table, made their big moves to the top of the leader board late in the night during the 11th and final level of Day 1. Saechao went first, opening a hand for 4,200 chips (blinds and antes were 800/1,600/200) from the button. After both blinds called, the dealer laid down a flop of 2♠-8♥-9♥, prompting the small blind to bet 6,000. The big blind, who happened to be Routos, tossed away his hand and Saechao ratcheted it up to 16,000. The small blind called and the two players saw a turn of 3♠. The small blind checked this card, but Saechao did quite the opposite, moving all-in for more than 40,000 chips. Seeming to know his opponent was on a draw, Saechao told him, “Trust me, it’s not coming.” Despite the warning, his opponent made the call, revealing that he did indeed have a draw, holding A♥-4♥. It was a great read by Saechao, as he himself only had 6♣-8♠ for middle pair. The river was the 3♦, giving Saechao the hand and a significant pot. At that point, his stack was up around 110,000 chips.
Just a few hands later, it was Routos’ turn. The details from those on the scene are a bit sketchy, but Routos and one other player saw a flop of Q♣-3♥-7♠. Routos checked, the other player bet 7,000 and Routos called. The turn was the 7♥ and Routos checked once more, but this time he check-raised his opponent’s 12,000 chip bet up to 30,000. That was enough for the “other guy,” as he laid down his hand, giving the pot to Routos. At that, Routos took over the chip lead with a 150,000 chip stack, but as we know, Saechao regained it before the night was over.
With 732 players, the prize pool for Event #1 is $329,400 (7 percent of the buy-in is taken out for entry fees and 3 percent is taken for the tournament staff). Just 46 players remain, all of whom have already made the money, as the payouts extend down to 81st place. The eventual winner will receive $70,859. The remaining players will resume play in the Amazon Room at the Rio at 1:00pm local time. Tournament Director Jack Effel estimates that another 11 to 12 more levels will be needed to complete the tourney, so it will be a long night for the last few players. The plan is for Day 2 to be the final day, but if it’s not over by 3:00am, a third day will be added. The final table will be streamed “almost live” on a five minute delay at WSOP.com.
2012 WSOP Event #1: Casino Employees No-Limit Hold’em – End of Day 1 Chip Leaders
1. Chip Saechao – 150,600
2. James Routos – 146,900
3. Matthew Wilmot – 122,800
4. Don Michael – 110,200
5. John Vohs – 102,300
6. Ray Pulford – 91,100
7. Carisa Schweisberger – 76,400
8. Joshua Murray – 72,400
9. Joseph McCarthy – 71,100
10. Ty Stewart – 69,900
Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca Wins 2012 LAPT Punta del Este
While the focus of the poker world is now set squarely on Las Vegas and the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP), there are still other live poker tournaments taking place all over the world. One of them, the Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT) Punta del Este stop, wrapped up Sunday with Brazil’s Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca topping the 375 player field to take down his first ever live tournament title and $144,240.
If you skipped down to the list of final table payouts, you may notice that there is a significant gap between the money awarded to Pablo Joaquin Melogno in 4th place ($60,420) and Francisco Baruffi Neto in 3rd place ($116,240). This is the result of a deal made amongst the top three finishers when they all held approximately equal chip stacks. They didn’t start three-handed play like that, but after double-ups by both Fonseca and Baruffi probably made the three men realize that the tide can turn any which way that late in the game, regardless of any individual player’s skill.
Baruffi was the one to broach the topic of a deal after he doubled through Angel Guillen, suggesting they split the remaining prize pool three ways. This would have given each just shy of $129,000, close to the $133,688 that would have gone to the second place finisher without a deal. In the end, they agreed to each get $116,240 and play for the remaining $38,000.
Shortly after the deal was settled upon, Guillen crippled Baruffi, leaving him with barely more than a big blind. The next hand was Baruffi’s last, as his A♥-5♠ fell to Fonseca’s 9♠-9♣.
Going into heads-up play, Fonseca had a moderate chip lead, 4.1 million to Guillen’s 3.5 million. The two men then decided to adjust the previous deal, allotting $28,000 of the $38,000 left on the table to first place and the remaining $10,000 to second place.
Fonseca never gave up his lead for the entire hour and a half duration of the one-on-one match. Because of the cautiousness of both players, though, he also never stretched the lead to the point where a victory looked completely inevitable. But just like that, it ended.
Fonseca made a min-raise pre-flop to 200,000 and shockingly, Guillen moved all-in for 2.8 million. Fonseca called immediately with A♣-K♥, obviously happy to see Guillen’s A♠-9♣. The flop of T♥-7♠-J♠ gave a tiny bit of extra hope to Guillen, as he now had a gutshot straight draw, but neither the turn nor river helped at all and Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca was the LAPT Punta del Este champion.
This win almost double’s Fonseca’s total career earnings in live tournaments. He had gone into the final table with six lifetime cashes for a total of $171,896.
2012 LAPT Punta del Este – Final Table Results
1. Marcelo Ramos Da Fonseca – $144,240
2. Angel Guillen – $126,240
3. Francisco Baruffi Neto – $116,240
4. Pablo Joaquin Melogno – $60,420
5. Ivan Luca – $46,000
6. Osvaldo Silvio Resquin – $35,970
7. Vladimir Dobrovolskiy – $26,770
8. Guido Ruffini – $20,080
9. Carlos Leoncio Mironiuk – $15,390
WSOP Unveils 2012 Bracelets - 20th May 2012
With the 43rd Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) just a week away, it is only appropriate that the new bracelet has been officially unveiled. After all, it’s the one thing by which poker players measure their success (we suppose one could count that whole business of cash winnings, too). This year’s designer is Jason Arasheben, perhaps better known as “Jason of Beverly Hills.”
Considering Jason of Beverly Hills’ reputation for creating gaudy, over-the-top pieces that can be seen from the moon, the bracelet is relatively tame. Make no mistake, though – it will still grab attention more than last year’s simple, gold piece of jewelry created by OnTilt Designs. The bracelet is gold, of course, with a very smooth look. The four playing card suits are represented in each corner of the bracelet’s face, with the heart and diamond comprised of white diamonds and the spade and club appearing to be made up of black diamonds. A raised World Series of Poker logo adorns the center of the bracelet face, enhanced by color to make it stand out.
But that is just the bracelet for the 66 preliminary events. Jason of Beverly Hills will also be creating the 2012 WSOP Main Event bracelet, which he promises will be a sight to behold.
“We are honored to have the opportunity to create this masterpiece for the World Series of Poker and it will go down as the most expensive piece of championship jewelry across all major sports,” said Jason of Beverly Hills about the WSOP Main Event gold bracelet. “We will tour this bracelet in our Las Vegas and Beverly Hills boutique so the world can bear witness to this historic work of art.”
The four card suits will be in their normal colors, with the heart and diamond formed by rubies and the spade and club created with black diamonds. All told, the Main Event bracelet will contain over 160 grams of 14 karat gold and over 35 carats of flawless diamonds.
“Blinger is Better,” said WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart in a press release. “Jason grasped the heritage of WSOP bracelets, but was only interested if he could take it up several notches. This is a trophy that truly embodies the promise of today’s WSOP – seemingly unthinkable dreams are dealt each year. I challenge anyone to keep a poker face when they see this bracelet in person.”
Jason of Beverly Hills started his business as a student at UCLA, selling silver trinkets to fellow students, and eventually grew it into the go-to source for amazing diamond creations for the world’s biggest celebrities. He has created pieces for the likes of LeBron James, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and even Middle Eastern royalty. The pendant he made for Lil Jon was named the largest in the world by Guinness World Records. (Poker News Daily)
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Media Man News Update: Movies, Gaming, Casinos, Politics, Australia, Hollywood...
Promotions
PartyCasino.com Marvel slots website PartyCasino.com website $3000 sign up bonus PartyPoker.com website $500 sign up bonus VirginCasino.com website Media Man promotions
News
PartyCasino.com Wins Media Man 'Online Casino of the Month'
PartyPoker And PartyCasino Owner bwin.party Digital Entertainment Plans Return to US Market
Worldwide Satellite Trailer Debut: “The Great Gatsby”; YouTube Warner Bros. Pictures
Australian Government may legalise live online gambling; NRL, Crown Limited; The Star, Marvel Games
CeBIT Australia; CeBIT platforms NSW tech projects; Award Winners - Sydney, Australia
Avengers smash $1 billion mark; Marvel Entertainment: The Avengers video game in the works...
The secrets of Sin City
Bikie Wars skids to under 1m for Ten
ABC, Star casino go to court over TV news report
Kerry Packer is Nine’s secret weapon
Casino Stocks Worth The Gamble
Labor and Communication Minister Stephen Conroy under attack over internet gamble
Russell Crowe Feared He Was Target of 'Hit'
Your Guide to 'Mad Men' and Advertising History
TNA claims WWE tried to poach its wrestlers
Worst Comic Book Ever!
Spotify Launches Down Under
News On Rock's New Movie, Legend At Comic-Con This Weekend, Brooke Hogan On FOX & Friends
WWE Attorney Responds To TNA Lawsuit, Says They Did The Right Thing
‘Marvel Heroes’ Online Game Gets First Preview (Video)
Resort experts welcome more non-gaming business
Hollywood action hero news: Stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Expendables 2, The Tomb
An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical Plays Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star
Fightin' Fanboys: Dolph Ziggler
Business Matters: Bono Will Make Maybe $10 Million, Not $1.5 Billion, From Facebook's IPO
Facebook could kill the internet: Wolff
Naples Museum of Art to feature costumes from famous science-fiction movies, TV shows
TNA Files Lawsuit Against WWE, Ric Flair Mentioned In Suit
WWE News: Jericho "suspended indefinitely" following flag incident at Brazil house show, WWE issues statement
WWE STAR CHRIS JERICHO Suspended for Desecrating Brazilian Flag
JOHN CENA'S WIFE You Can't Divorce Me... Yet
A Much Closer Look At The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man
Mashable’s Exclusive Q&A With Stan Lee: Here’s a Teaser [VIDEO]
bwin.party gets answer to Schleswig-Holstein question
Australian tourism can be saved by Chinese middle class to large casinos; Melbourne, Perth, Sydney
Wrestling with face paint, bodyart and human statues; Ultimate Warrior, Sting, Jeff Hardy...
What the Media has said about wrestling over the years
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Wrestling News Media
PartyCasino.com Marvel slots website PartyCasino.com website $3000 sign up bonus PartyPoker.com website $500 sign up bonus VirginCasino.com website Media Man promotions
News
PartyCasino.com Wins Media Man 'Online Casino of the Month'
PartyPoker And PartyCasino Owner bwin.party Digital Entertainment Plans Return to US Market
Worldwide Satellite Trailer Debut: “The Great Gatsby”; YouTube Warner Bros. Pictures
Australian Government may legalise live online gambling; NRL, Crown Limited; The Star, Marvel Games
CeBIT Australia; CeBIT platforms NSW tech projects; Award Winners - Sydney, Australia
Avengers smash $1 billion mark; Marvel Entertainment: The Avengers video game in the works...
The secrets of Sin City
Bikie Wars skids to under 1m for Ten
ABC, Star casino go to court over TV news report
Kerry Packer is Nine’s secret weapon
Casino Stocks Worth The Gamble
Labor and Communication Minister Stephen Conroy under attack over internet gamble
Russell Crowe Feared He Was Target of 'Hit'
Your Guide to 'Mad Men' and Advertising History
TNA claims WWE tried to poach its wrestlers
Worst Comic Book Ever!
Spotify Launches Down Under
News On Rock's New Movie, Legend At Comic-Con This Weekend, Brooke Hogan On FOX & Friends
WWE Attorney Responds To TNA Lawsuit, Says They Did The Right Thing
‘Marvel Heroes’ Online Game Gets First Preview (Video)
Resort experts welcome more non-gaming business
Hollywood action hero news: Stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Expendables 2, The Tomb
An Officer and a Gentleman The Musical Plays Sydney Lyric Theatre, The Star
Fightin' Fanboys: Dolph Ziggler
Business Matters: Bono Will Make Maybe $10 Million, Not $1.5 Billion, From Facebook's IPO
Facebook could kill the internet: Wolff
Naples Museum of Art to feature costumes from famous science-fiction movies, TV shows
TNA Files Lawsuit Against WWE, Ric Flair Mentioned In Suit
WWE News: Jericho "suspended indefinitely" following flag incident at Brazil house show, WWE issues statement
WWE STAR CHRIS JERICHO Suspended for Desecrating Brazilian Flag
JOHN CENA'S WIFE You Can't Divorce Me... Yet
A Much Closer Look At The Lizard from The Amazing Spider-Man
Mashable’s Exclusive Q&A With Stan Lee: Here’s a Teaser [VIDEO]
bwin.party gets answer to Schleswig-Holstein question
Australian tourism can be saved by Chinese middle class to large casinos; Melbourne, Perth, Sydney
Wrestling with face paint, bodyart and human statues; Ultimate Warrior, Sting, Jeff Hardy...
What the Media has said about wrestling over the years
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Wrestling News Media
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Australian Government may legalise live online gambling; NRL, Crown Limited; The Star, Marvel Games
Australian Government may legalise live online gambling; Crown Limited gambler case; The Star entertains with musical in Sin City Sydney; World Series of Poker to Melbourne; Marvel Entertainment Online Games...
Profiles
Gambling Gaming Poker Politics Marvel Entertainment Marvel Slots Marvel Games Entertainment Sports Australia
The Federal Government has flagged potential amendments to gambling laws that would allow people to bet online during live sporting events.
The Government is currently reviewing interactive gambling laws and is talking with key stakeholders about possible changes.
Currently, punters can only bet on sporting events as they happen in person or over the phone.
However Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has flagged a possible change to allow people to bet online during live events like last night's State of Origin clash.
"While the State of Origin was on last night, you can pick up a phone and make a bet, [but] you can't go online and make a bet," he told Channel Nine.
"So you've got a situation where if you make the phone call it's legal, if you try and do it online it's illegal.
"And that seems an anomaly ... this is one of the issues that needs to be looked at so that you've got consistent laws."
Reports in News Limited publication Herald Sun state that Merrill Lynch gaming analyst Mark Bryan wrote in an email that Mr Conroy's department has provided the industry with a brief on draft legislation. Other firms such as the Media Man agency, Bwin.Party digital entertainment, World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker have also enjoyed positive liasions with various Australian government departments regarding gaming legislation in Australia.
Crown Casino To Host World Series of Poker in 2013...
James Packer's Crown Casino has announced an exciting partnership with the worlds largest poker brand, the World Series Of Poker. Set to take place at Crown Casino in Melbourne from April 4-15 2013, the World Series of poker Asia-Pacific (WSOP APAC) is a huge expansion into the world's largest gaming market.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart said, “Our goal is to establish the worldwide grand slam of poker and use our platform to elevate the game through a series of major championships,”
“With WSOP Las Vegas growing annually and WSOP Europe poised for long-term success after five years, the time is right to turn our attention to the dynamic poker scene in Asia and Australia. Given Crown’s success with the ‘Aussie Millions Poker Championship’, we couldn’t ask for a better partner than Crown to establish the Asia-Pacific’s definitive poker festival.”
Crown Casino in Melbourne already is the home to the world's largest tournament series outside of the World Series Of Poker in Las Vegas with the Aussie Millions series each January attracting the worlds premier players. Crown Melbourne's CEO Greg Hawkins said, “This exciting partnership brings together two industry leaders, and two strong brands, to create a premier poker event in this region”.
“Our agreement firmly aligns with our objective of attracting the very best local and international players, all vying for a coveted WSOP bracelet. We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved with the Aussie Millions and look forward to featuring WSOP Asia Pacific on our poker calendar in April 2013.”
The WSOP brand is one of the worlds most iconic and every poker player in the world dreams of one day being the proud owner of coveted WSOP Bracelet. The WSOP brand is 42-years old and in 2007 it expanded beyond the USA with the launch of the WSOP Europe in London (2007-2010) and subsequently into France (2011). The WSOP APAC is set to tap into the tremendous growth of peer-2-peer gaming in this region.
As part of the agreement with the WSOP, the WSOP APAC events are expected to be televised globally across ESPN. Fox Sports, as seen on Foxtel, already broadcasts games from competitor, World Poker Tour (owned by Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment).
One man who is no stranger to ESPN and the WSOP is Australian local sporting hero, Joe Hachem. Way back in 2005 Joe won the most prestigious poker event in the world, the World Series Of Poker Main Event.
“It’s thrilling to think the World Series of Poker is coming to Australian soil,” said Joe Hachem. “I know first-hand what a life-changing moment winning the WSOP gold bracelet was and how it served as a catalyst for the growth of poker in Australia and Asia. It will be a dream come true to host a worldwide poker event such as this at Crown. I can’t wait.”
The full WSOP APAC schedule is set to be released later this year.
In other gambling and gaming news...
Coast high-roller fails to recover millions...
A Gold Coast businessman who turned over almost $1.5 billion in 14 months at Melbourne's Crown Casino has lost his bid to recover more than $20 million he lost there.
Property developer Harry Kakavas spent $1.479 billion on 30 separate visits to Crown between June 2005 and August 2006, winning and losing vast sums, but ultimately accruing losses of $20.5 million, a Melbourne court has heard.
Mr Kakavas claimed Crown knew he suffered from pathological gambling and lured him back to the casino with the use of a private jet and cash and entertainment gifts.
But on Monday the Court of Appeal upheld an earlier Supreme Court decision that the casino did not take advantage of his gambling habits.
Appeal judge Justice Bernard Bongiorno said Mr Kakavas alleged his pathological gambling condition impaired his ability to make rational decisions about the amount of money he gambled.
Mr Kakavas would gamble six-figure sums on hands of baccarat, which take a matter of seconds to play.
But Justice Bongiorno said the fact Mr Kakavas was able to negotiate favourable terms for himself at Crown demonstrated his ability to make decisions in his best interest.
"When gambling at Crown he had negotiated the terms on which he gambled and had threatened to and in fact had withheld his custom from Crown when he did not get what he wanted," Justice Bongiorno said.
"These are not the characteristics of someone unable to conserve his own interests."
Justice Bongiorno found the allowances Crown offered to Mr Kakavas were not out of step with those typically offered to high-rolling gamblers.
He also rejected a claim by Mr Kakavas that he had lost $30 million in one losing streak at Crown in 2006.
He said on one occasion in March 2006 Mr Kakavas returned home to the Gold Coast with $14 million in winnings.
"That he lost overall is not in any way surprising," he said.
"The longer a person plays, the more certain it is that he will ultimately lose. Were it otherwise casinos would fail."
Mr Kakavas was ordered to pay Crown's legal costs. (AAP)
The Star entertains with musical: An Officer and a Gentleman...
Australian casinos and entertainment do mix!
Last week An Officer and a Gentleman enjoyed its Sydney, Australia premiere at The Star's Lyric Theatre at Ultimo.
The red carpet premiere was well attended by media and celebrities, and its understood the production is likely to match if not well exceed the substantial hype.
Producer John Frost said that more hard-won world premieres were in store.
"Not just Australian stories, but international stories that can be exported to international markets," Frost said.
Producers from Germany, South Korea, Canada, New York and London were at tonight's opening.
Frost said the $6 million budget for An Officer And A Gentleman was about half what it might have been if it was developed in New York or London.
"Things are just easier and cheaper here, and in New York and London, you're so far out of town (doing the set building) trying to get it right and get it fixed," he said.
Frost said the process of developing new musicals, as opposed to simply remounting a successful overseas version, would help build production skills for the creation of new musicals in the future.
"What this is doing is establishing people like (An Officer And A Gentleman) director Simon Phillips, his choreographer and his assistants, to do new stuff they're not used to doing, because they are used to doing stuff that's already been done and what we are trying to do is to broaden that experience so a lot more directors and a lot more writers get that opportunity," Frost added.
Later next year and early 2014 Frost expects to mount world premieres of Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Show and Red Dog. His production of Doctor Zhivago is approaching the end of a six month-long run in Seoul and will then be mounted in New York.
The Media Man and Music News Australia agencies were overheard agreeing "Another world class production put on by The Star and Lyric Theatre".
The pitch:
A new musical based on the Paramount Pictures-Lorimar movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" written by Douglas Day Stewart
Music and lyrics by Ken Hirsch and Robin Lerner
Book by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen
Director Simon Phillips
Choreographer Andrew Hallsworth
Set and Costume Designer Dale Ferguson
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Musical Director Dave Skelton
Associate Director Dean Bryant
Producers Sharleen Cooper Cohen and John Frost
In association with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros Theatre Ventures
Based on the hugely successful Academy Award-winning film, this new production has been adapted for the stage by the original screen writer, Douglas Day Stewart and co-writer Sharleen Cooper Cohen, with music and lyrics by Kenny Hirsch and Robin Lerner. It will be produced by Sharleen Cooper Cohen and John Frost, and directed by Simon Phillips (Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical).
The talented cast that will bring this timeless story to life includes Ben Mingay (Jersey Boys) as Zack Mayo, the classic angry young man who grew up in a "sewer" and dreams of flying jets and parlaying this skill into a better life; Amanda Harrison (Wicked) as Paula Pokrifki, the young factory worker who dreams of becoming a nurse and finding a better life without selling out for it, like everyone around her; Kate Kendall (Next to Normal) as Lynette Pomeroy, Paula's best friend who is determined to marry a flier to escape her dead end life, no matter what it takes; and Alex Rathgeber (The Phantom of the Opera) as Sid Worley, the likeable Okie son of a Navy Admiral who is the class "superstar" at the Naval Academy.
A hit across the ages, the 1982 film has become a phenomenon in cinema history, recently listed by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten love stories in cinema history. Featuring the iconic hit song "Up Where We Belong" and a new score by hit song writer Ken Hirsch and Grammy nominee Robin Lerner this timeless tale of struggle, success, friendship and love promises to be the musical blockbuster of 2012.
An Officer and a Gentleman is a triumphant story of working class heroes surviving great tests; a classic modern day love story about a working class boy and girl who must overcome their upbringing and personal weaknesses to accept life and love.
His Story, Her Romance.
The Star's history of celebrities...
Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair (ok, before it was rebranded The Star - back in Star City Casino days), Al Pacino, Bob Geldof, Russell Crowe, Paris Hilton, Afrojack, will.i.am, Snoop Dogg and so the list goes on.
Legally Blonde To Open 4th October 2012...
The Sydney Lyric Theatre is also going to be host to the famous musical 'Legally Blonde'.
Legally Blonde The Musical is the hilarious story of college sweetheart and homecoming queen, Elle Woods - a girl who doesn't take no for an answer. When her boyfriend dumps her for someone "serious", Elle puts down the credit card, hits the books and heads for Harvard Law School! Along the way, she proves that being true to yourself never goes out of style.
Legally Blonde The Musical - Winner of Best Musical 2011 Olivier Awards and a smash hit running into its third year on the West End was created by a world-class creative team led by Tony Award-winning director Jerry Mitchell.
The musical opens 4th October 2012.
Marvel Entertainment - The Avengers Boosting Marvel Slots Popularity; Media Agency...
The box office success of Marvel Entertainment comic book based movie 'The Avengers', is boosting the popularity of Marvel slot games across internet networks, the Media Man agency has reported.
A Media Man spokesperson said "Marvel themed games have been popular ever since they were first released, but the success of Marvel Entertainment movies such as Thor, Captain America and The Avengers has at least doubled their popularity according to our data. A new rumoured Hulk movie or TV series, and the upcoming release of The Wolverine movie, staring Australia's own Hugh Jackman, will only further spike online game popularity."
Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment has licensed the Marvel deal, and the games can be found at Hitwise top ten website portals such as Media Man, which has a b2b in place with Bwin.Party and PartyCasino.
More Marvel Entertainment games are in the works and the Media Man agency will be providing detailed reviews on the games as more information comes to hand.
Gamers and gamblers, as always - bet with your head, not over it, and have fun.
Marvel Entertainment movie game fans and true believers...there's only one thing to say - Excelsior!
Websites
Media Man International
New South Wales Rugby League official website
NRL official website
Casino News Media
Crown Melbourne (Crown Casino)
Media Man Entertainment
Australian Sports Entertainment
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man Entertainment
Media Man News
Wrestling News Media
Australian Sports Entertainment
Profiles
Gambling Gaming Poker Politics Marvel Entertainment Marvel Slots Marvel Games Entertainment Sports Australia
The Federal Government has flagged potential amendments to gambling laws that would allow people to bet online during live sporting events.
The Government is currently reviewing interactive gambling laws and is talking with key stakeholders about possible changes.
Currently, punters can only bet on sporting events as they happen in person or over the phone.
However Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has flagged a possible change to allow people to bet online during live events like last night's State of Origin clash.
"While the State of Origin was on last night, you can pick up a phone and make a bet, [but] you can't go online and make a bet," he told Channel Nine.
"So you've got a situation where if you make the phone call it's legal, if you try and do it online it's illegal.
"And that seems an anomaly ... this is one of the issues that needs to be looked at so that you've got consistent laws."
Reports in News Limited publication Herald Sun state that Merrill Lynch gaming analyst Mark Bryan wrote in an email that Mr Conroy's department has provided the industry with a brief on draft legislation. Other firms such as the Media Man agency, Bwin.Party digital entertainment, World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker have also enjoyed positive liasions with various Australian government departments regarding gaming legislation in Australia.
Crown Casino To Host World Series of Poker in 2013...
James Packer's Crown Casino has announced an exciting partnership with the worlds largest poker brand, the World Series Of Poker. Set to take place at Crown Casino in Melbourne from April 4-15 2013, the World Series of poker Asia-Pacific (WSOP APAC) is a huge expansion into the world's largest gaming market.
WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart said, “Our goal is to establish the worldwide grand slam of poker and use our platform to elevate the game through a series of major championships,”
“With WSOP Las Vegas growing annually and WSOP Europe poised for long-term success after five years, the time is right to turn our attention to the dynamic poker scene in Asia and Australia. Given Crown’s success with the ‘Aussie Millions Poker Championship’, we couldn’t ask for a better partner than Crown to establish the Asia-Pacific’s definitive poker festival.”
Crown Casino in Melbourne already is the home to the world's largest tournament series outside of the World Series Of Poker in Las Vegas with the Aussie Millions series each January attracting the worlds premier players. Crown Melbourne's CEO Greg Hawkins said, “This exciting partnership brings together two industry leaders, and two strong brands, to create a premier poker event in this region”.
“Our agreement firmly aligns with our objective of attracting the very best local and international players, all vying for a coveted WSOP bracelet. We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved with the Aussie Millions and look forward to featuring WSOP Asia Pacific on our poker calendar in April 2013.”
The WSOP brand is one of the worlds most iconic and every poker player in the world dreams of one day being the proud owner of coveted WSOP Bracelet. The WSOP brand is 42-years old and in 2007 it expanded beyond the USA with the launch of the WSOP Europe in London (2007-2010) and subsequently into France (2011). The WSOP APAC is set to tap into the tremendous growth of peer-2-peer gaming in this region.
As part of the agreement with the WSOP, the WSOP APAC events are expected to be televised globally across ESPN. Fox Sports, as seen on Foxtel, already broadcasts games from competitor, World Poker Tour (owned by Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment).
One man who is no stranger to ESPN and the WSOP is Australian local sporting hero, Joe Hachem. Way back in 2005 Joe won the most prestigious poker event in the world, the World Series Of Poker Main Event.
“It’s thrilling to think the World Series of Poker is coming to Australian soil,” said Joe Hachem. “I know first-hand what a life-changing moment winning the WSOP gold bracelet was and how it served as a catalyst for the growth of poker in Australia and Asia. It will be a dream come true to host a worldwide poker event such as this at Crown. I can’t wait.”
The full WSOP APAC schedule is set to be released later this year.
In other gambling and gaming news...
Coast high-roller fails to recover millions...
A Gold Coast businessman who turned over almost $1.5 billion in 14 months at Melbourne's Crown Casino has lost his bid to recover more than $20 million he lost there.
Property developer Harry Kakavas spent $1.479 billion on 30 separate visits to Crown between June 2005 and August 2006, winning and losing vast sums, but ultimately accruing losses of $20.5 million, a Melbourne court has heard.
Mr Kakavas claimed Crown knew he suffered from pathological gambling and lured him back to the casino with the use of a private jet and cash and entertainment gifts.
But on Monday the Court of Appeal upheld an earlier Supreme Court decision that the casino did not take advantage of his gambling habits.
Appeal judge Justice Bernard Bongiorno said Mr Kakavas alleged his pathological gambling condition impaired his ability to make rational decisions about the amount of money he gambled.
Mr Kakavas would gamble six-figure sums on hands of baccarat, which take a matter of seconds to play.
But Justice Bongiorno said the fact Mr Kakavas was able to negotiate favourable terms for himself at Crown demonstrated his ability to make decisions in his best interest.
"When gambling at Crown he had negotiated the terms on which he gambled and had threatened to and in fact had withheld his custom from Crown when he did not get what he wanted," Justice Bongiorno said.
"These are not the characteristics of someone unable to conserve his own interests."
Justice Bongiorno found the allowances Crown offered to Mr Kakavas were not out of step with those typically offered to high-rolling gamblers.
He also rejected a claim by Mr Kakavas that he had lost $30 million in one losing streak at Crown in 2006.
He said on one occasion in March 2006 Mr Kakavas returned home to the Gold Coast with $14 million in winnings.
"That he lost overall is not in any way surprising," he said.
"The longer a person plays, the more certain it is that he will ultimately lose. Were it otherwise casinos would fail."
Mr Kakavas was ordered to pay Crown's legal costs. (AAP)
The Star entertains with musical: An Officer and a Gentleman...
Australian casinos and entertainment do mix!
Last week An Officer and a Gentleman enjoyed its Sydney, Australia premiere at The Star's Lyric Theatre at Ultimo.
The red carpet premiere was well attended by media and celebrities, and its understood the production is likely to match if not well exceed the substantial hype.
Producer John Frost said that more hard-won world premieres were in store.
"Not just Australian stories, but international stories that can be exported to international markets," Frost said.
Producers from Germany, South Korea, Canada, New York and London were at tonight's opening.
Frost said the $6 million budget for An Officer And A Gentleman was about half what it might have been if it was developed in New York or London.
"Things are just easier and cheaper here, and in New York and London, you're so far out of town (doing the set building) trying to get it right and get it fixed," he said.
Frost said the process of developing new musicals, as opposed to simply remounting a successful overseas version, would help build production skills for the creation of new musicals in the future.
"What this is doing is establishing people like (An Officer And A Gentleman) director Simon Phillips, his choreographer and his assistants, to do new stuff they're not used to doing, because they are used to doing stuff that's already been done and what we are trying to do is to broaden that experience so a lot more directors and a lot more writers get that opportunity," Frost added.
Later next year and early 2014 Frost expects to mount world premieres of Dream Lover: The Bobby Darin Show and Red Dog. His production of Doctor Zhivago is approaching the end of a six month-long run in Seoul and will then be mounted in New York.
The Media Man and Music News Australia agencies were overheard agreeing "Another world class production put on by The Star and Lyric Theatre".
The pitch:
A new musical based on the Paramount Pictures-Lorimar movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" written by Douglas Day Stewart
Music and lyrics by Ken Hirsch and Robin Lerner
Book by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen
Director Simon Phillips
Choreographer Andrew Hallsworth
Set and Costume Designer Dale Ferguson
Lighting Designer Matt Scott
Musical Director Dave Skelton
Associate Director Dean Bryant
Producers Sharleen Cooper Cohen and John Frost
In association with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros Theatre Ventures
Based on the hugely successful Academy Award-winning film, this new production has been adapted for the stage by the original screen writer, Douglas Day Stewart and co-writer Sharleen Cooper Cohen, with music and lyrics by Kenny Hirsch and Robin Lerner. It will be produced by Sharleen Cooper Cohen and John Frost, and directed by Simon Phillips (Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical).
The talented cast that will bring this timeless story to life includes Ben Mingay (Jersey Boys) as Zack Mayo, the classic angry young man who grew up in a "sewer" and dreams of flying jets and parlaying this skill into a better life; Amanda Harrison (Wicked) as Paula Pokrifki, the young factory worker who dreams of becoming a nurse and finding a better life without selling out for it, like everyone around her; Kate Kendall (Next to Normal) as Lynette Pomeroy, Paula's best friend who is determined to marry a flier to escape her dead end life, no matter what it takes; and Alex Rathgeber (The Phantom of the Opera) as Sid Worley, the likeable Okie son of a Navy Admiral who is the class "superstar" at the Naval Academy.
A hit across the ages, the 1982 film has become a phenomenon in cinema history, recently listed by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten love stories in cinema history. Featuring the iconic hit song "Up Where We Belong" and a new score by hit song writer Ken Hirsch and Grammy nominee Robin Lerner this timeless tale of struggle, success, friendship and love promises to be the musical blockbuster of 2012.
An Officer and a Gentleman is a triumphant story of working class heroes surviving great tests; a classic modern day love story about a working class boy and girl who must overcome their upbringing and personal weaknesses to accept life and love.
His Story, Her Romance.
The Star's history of celebrities...
Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair (ok, before it was rebranded The Star - back in Star City Casino days), Al Pacino, Bob Geldof, Russell Crowe, Paris Hilton, Afrojack, will.i.am, Snoop Dogg and so the list goes on.
Legally Blonde To Open 4th October 2012...
The Sydney Lyric Theatre is also going to be host to the famous musical 'Legally Blonde'.
Legally Blonde The Musical is the hilarious story of college sweetheart and homecoming queen, Elle Woods - a girl who doesn't take no for an answer. When her boyfriend dumps her for someone "serious", Elle puts down the credit card, hits the books and heads for Harvard Law School! Along the way, she proves that being true to yourself never goes out of style.
Legally Blonde The Musical - Winner of Best Musical 2011 Olivier Awards and a smash hit running into its third year on the West End was created by a world-class creative team led by Tony Award-winning director Jerry Mitchell.
The musical opens 4th October 2012.
Marvel Entertainment - The Avengers Boosting Marvel Slots Popularity; Media Agency...
The box office success of Marvel Entertainment comic book based movie 'The Avengers', is boosting the popularity of Marvel slot games across internet networks, the Media Man agency has reported.
A Media Man spokesperson said "Marvel themed games have been popular ever since they were first released, but the success of Marvel Entertainment movies such as Thor, Captain America and The Avengers has at least doubled their popularity according to our data. A new rumoured Hulk movie or TV series, and the upcoming release of The Wolverine movie, staring Australia's own Hugh Jackman, will only further spike online game popularity."
Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment has licensed the Marvel deal, and the games can be found at Hitwise top ten website portals such as Media Man, which has a b2b in place with Bwin.Party and PartyCasino.
More Marvel Entertainment games are in the works and the Media Man agency will be providing detailed reviews on the games as more information comes to hand.
Gamers and gamblers, as always - bet with your head, not over it, and have fun.
Marvel Entertainment movie game fans and true believers...there's only one thing to say - Excelsior!
Websites
Media Man International
New South Wales Rugby League official website
NRL official website
Casino News Media
Crown Melbourne (Crown Casino)
Media Man Entertainment
Australian Sports Entertainment
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man Entertainment
Media Man News
Wrestling News Media
Australian Sports Entertainment
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Virgin Casino Grand Prix Promotion; Virgin Casino adds Stash of the Titans, Coyote Moon and Rocky online slot games
Profiles
Virgin Casino Virgin Games IGT Microgaming Casino Slots Richard Branson Spain Alderney Coyote Moon Stash Of The Titans Rocky Promotions Virgin Enterprises Limited
Due to the upcoming season of Formula 1 and the Spanish Grand Prix, Virgin Casino has taken advantage of this by launching its own Grand Prix internet promo.
Similar to the Formula 1, this promotion will have a qualifier prior to entering the main event. In order for the players to earn a place in this high stakes race, players will have to bet at least five thousand pounds in any of the various games available on the Virgin Casino website. This wagering requirement will have to be met during the qualification period, this period starts on the 14th of May and ends on the 20th of May. As for the main event, the race itself will occur on the 21st of May and will last until the 27th of the same month. This race at the casino has a grand total prize of ten thousand pounds that is going to be distributed among the top 50 players, with the top player winning a total of 1,500 pounds.
If this is too much for you to handle, then you will have a chance to take a place in the Challenge race, this race has a grand prize of 5,000 pounds that is going to be distributed among the top 200 players. The top player will win a total of 350 pounds. The same terms and condition apply and has the same qualifying and race period.
For those who are unfamiliar with Virgin Casino, it is one of the biggest online casinos that are licensed by the gambling control commission of Aldenrey and is owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Enterprises Limited.
Virgin Casino adds Stash of the Titans, Coyote Moon and Rocky online slot games...
Virgin Casino have added the Stash of the Titans and Coyote Moon slot games to their offering today – get a 100% welcome bonus up to £100 as well as a one off 100% deposit bonus up to £500 on the new slot games.
Stash of the Titans is a Microgaming powered slot game with 5 reels and 20 paylines. The main feature is the Free Spins bonus round where you can win up to 200,000 coins. You need to get 3 or more Medusa symbols across the reels to initiate the bonus game. You will then be rewarded with 15 free spins each with a 4x multiplier.
Coyote Moon is powered by IGT/WagerWorks and features 5 reels and 40 paylines. Similar to Wolf Run, it’s a low variance slot game which will give you plenty (but small wins). It has a Stacked Wilds feature where each reel is loaded with groups of 4 or more consecutive Wild symbols. This becomes significant in the Rising Moon Bonus feature as the Stacked Wilds give you bigger rewards. You can trigger the feature by getting 3 bonus symbols on reels 2, 3 & 4. You will then be rewarded with 5 free spins which come with richer stacked wilds. You can retrigger more free spins up to a maximum of 255 free spins.
If you haven’t got an account at Virgin Casino, now is the time – they offer a 100% welcome bonus up to £100. This means that if you deposit anything up to £100, you will get the same value free. When registering, click on the ‘Select A Bonus’ button and select the ‘Casino’ option – simple.
Furthermore, Virgin Casino are running a Cash Blast Off promo with a deposit bonus match up to £500. If you take up the welcome bonus today, you have time to get a 100% bonus up to £500 – yes, £500. You need to deposit by tomorrow and enter the bonus code BLAST500 to qualify.
Rocky
Get in the ring and go a few rounds with a champion! Rocky is a 25 line slot game crammed with great features that pack a punch!
Website Network
Media Man Int
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Media Man Entertainment
Global Gaming Directory
Virgin Casino Virgin Games IGT Microgaming Casino Slots Richard Branson Spain Alderney Coyote Moon Stash Of The Titans Rocky Promotions Virgin Enterprises Limited
Due to the upcoming season of Formula 1 and the Spanish Grand Prix, Virgin Casino has taken advantage of this by launching its own Grand Prix internet promo.
Similar to the Formula 1, this promotion will have a qualifier prior to entering the main event. In order for the players to earn a place in this high stakes race, players will have to bet at least five thousand pounds in any of the various games available on the Virgin Casino website. This wagering requirement will have to be met during the qualification period, this period starts on the 14th of May and ends on the 20th of May. As for the main event, the race itself will occur on the 21st of May and will last until the 27th of the same month. This race at the casino has a grand total prize of ten thousand pounds that is going to be distributed among the top 50 players, with the top player winning a total of 1,500 pounds.
If this is too much for you to handle, then you will have a chance to take a place in the Challenge race, this race has a grand prize of 5,000 pounds that is going to be distributed among the top 200 players. The top player will win a total of 350 pounds. The same terms and condition apply and has the same qualifying and race period.
For those who are unfamiliar with Virgin Casino, it is one of the biggest online casinos that are licensed by the gambling control commission of Aldenrey and is owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Enterprises Limited.
Virgin Casino adds Stash of the Titans, Coyote Moon and Rocky online slot games...
Virgin Casino have added the Stash of the Titans and Coyote Moon slot games to their offering today – get a 100% welcome bonus up to £100 as well as a one off 100% deposit bonus up to £500 on the new slot games.
Stash of the Titans is a Microgaming powered slot game with 5 reels and 20 paylines. The main feature is the Free Spins bonus round where you can win up to 200,000 coins. You need to get 3 or more Medusa symbols across the reels to initiate the bonus game. You will then be rewarded with 15 free spins each with a 4x multiplier.
Coyote Moon is powered by IGT/WagerWorks and features 5 reels and 40 paylines. Similar to Wolf Run, it’s a low variance slot game which will give you plenty (but small wins). It has a Stacked Wilds feature where each reel is loaded with groups of 4 or more consecutive Wild symbols. This becomes significant in the Rising Moon Bonus feature as the Stacked Wilds give you bigger rewards. You can trigger the feature by getting 3 bonus symbols on reels 2, 3 & 4. You will then be rewarded with 5 free spins which come with richer stacked wilds. You can retrigger more free spins up to a maximum of 255 free spins.
If you haven’t got an account at Virgin Casino, now is the time – they offer a 100% welcome bonus up to £100. This means that if you deposit anything up to £100, you will get the same value free. When registering, click on the ‘Select A Bonus’ button and select the ‘Casino’ option – simple.
Furthermore, Virgin Casino are running a Cash Blast Off promo with a deposit bonus match up to £500. If you take up the welcome bonus today, you have time to get a 100% bonus up to £500 – yes, £500. You need to deposit by tomorrow and enter the bonus code BLAST500 to qualify.
Rocky
Get in the ring and go a few rounds with a champion! Rocky is a 25 line slot game crammed with great features that pack a punch!
Website Network
Media Man Int
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Media Man Entertainment
Global Gaming Directory
Monday, May 14, 2012
Vegas casinos gamble on online partners with a past - 14th May 2012
Profiles
bwin.party Digital Entertainment PartyCasino.com PartyPoker.com World Poker Tour MGM Resorts International Casinos Poker Live Dealer Las Vegas Internet United States World Directory
To prime itself for the U.S. debut of legal online poker, MGM Resorts International, owner of such Las Vegas Strip monuments as the MGM Grand, the Bellagio and the Mirage, wanted a partner that knew the ropes.
So last October it hooked up with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc, a London-listed, Gibraltar-based specialist that rakes in more from Web betting than any other publicly traded company. MGM Resorts took 25 percent of a new venture 65 percent owned by Bwin.Party, with smaller Las Vegas casino operator Boyd Gaming getting the remaining 10 percent.
"We'll be out of the gate as soon as anybody," MGM Resorts Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren boasted to investors in February.
Online expertise isn't the only thing that distinguishes Bwin.Party. In 2009, an earlier incarnation of the company paid $105 million while admitting to U.S. prosecutors it had run an illegal gambling operation and engaged in bank and wire fraud.
Among its principal backers: a California-born woman who made a fortune in phone sex and Web pornography businesses that, like the pioneering online-gambling company that became Bwin.Party, faced multiple allegations of wrongdoing.
MGM Resorts' choice of Bwin.Party as a partner while applying for online poker licenses in Nevada might seem unusual. It isn't. The alliance reflects the calculated risks that major casino operators, Native American tribes and social-gaming giants Zynga and Facebook are weighing as they angle for a slice of a market valued at billions of dollars a year.
Caesars Entertainment Corp is prepping for online poker by tying up with an Israeli company that in 2007 acknowledged settlement talks with the U.S. Justice Department over alleged breaches of anti-gambling laws.
A group of Native American tribes in California has signed up to use software from another Israeli company, run by a man who served prison time for stock manipulation and bribery. Another tribe last week announced a deal with Bwin.Party.
Zynga, eager to convert some of its tens of millions of virtual poker enthusiasts into cash gamblers, also has been in talks with Bwin.Party and others that have had brushes with the law, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, offshore gambling outfit PokerStars is considering buying its chief offshore rival, Full Tilt, and making a run at the U.S. market even though founders of both were indicted by the Justice Department last year on charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering, according to people familiar with the situation.
All this comes as Nevada prepares to license the first online poker operators and software suppliers late next month -- and as California, New Jersey, Iowa, Massachusetts, Delaware and other states debate similar moves.
Many of the cash-starved states, encouraged by intensive industry lobbying, have felt freer to act since December, when the Justice Department declared that one federal anti-gambling law, the Wire Act, would no longer be enforced beyond sports betting.
But casino operators, Indian tribes and Internet powers bent on offering online poker lack experience delivering it. Online poker is a business that involves processing billions of dollars worth of bets and battling the fraudsters, cheats and robot-player software that can ruin the games. Hence the casinos are cozying up to some tech-savvy offshore partners whose pedigrees might give regulators pause.
Most states have "suitability" rules designed to keep crooks out of the gambling industry. Nevada requires that successful license applicants and their large shareholders possess "good character, honesty and integrity." Nevertheless, the big casino operators and their offshore partners are betting that regulators will look favorably on their license applications for two good reasons: tax money and high-tech jobs.
Early indications are that they are right.
At a hearing on a Caesars deal with the Israeli company last year, Mark Lipparelli, chairman of Nevada's Gaming Control Board, said: "I don't think as we look at companies that we can have perfection as the standard, because I think that would be a disservice to the state in attracting business here." The board unanimously recommended approval of the venture.
Gambling foes warn that states are putting fiscal worries ahead of public safety, exposing a huge and vulnerable population to the potential for compulsive betting. "The governments are so desperate for revenues that they will partner with these lawbreaking outfits," said Les Bernal, executive director of the nonprofit Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation in Washington, D.C. "They will create addiction in order to feed off of it."
PORN AND CARDS
Jim Ryan, co-chief executive officer of Bwin.Party, acknowledged in an interview that when the company was looking for U.S. partners, its history was a chief concern of MGM Resorts and other U.S. companies.
"Suitability is the very first question on all of their minds," he told Reuters during a recent business trip to San Francisco.
It's easy to see why.
Bwin.Party grew out of PartyGaming, a brainchild of San Francisco-area native Ruth Parasol, who has a history as colorful as Las Vegas. After earning a law degree, Parasol first prospered in the 1990s through 1-900 phone-sex and other services that were sued by multiple states for aggressive billing and collection practices. In North Carolina's suit, the judge ordered a company she co-founded to pay $270,000 in damages.
Then Parasol put her money behind Internet Entertainment Group, which gained notoriety for releasing an early Pamela Anderson sex video and promising an initial public offering that never happened. Employees accused the company of routinely overbilling customers, and Chief Executive Seth Warshavsky fled to Thailand as authorities investigated. Warshavsky didn't respond to an interview request.
Parasol managed to emerge unscathed, and in 1997 founded Starluck Casino in the Caribbean, providing online gambling to customers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The company had a big hit with its PartyPoker website, which became the dominant force in U.S. online cards, and then renamed itself PartyGaming.
Parasol, who has been living in Gibraltar for most of the past decade, declined requests for an interview.
In 2005, PartyGaming's IPO became the largest London had seen in four years, valuing the company at more than $8 billion. Just then, debate over the U.S. legal status of online gambling flared.
The Justice Department had long argued that Internet poker violated the Wire Act and other federal and state laws. Despite the success of PartyGaming and other offshore companies, no U.S.-based companies offered alternatives for fear of prosecution.
In 2006, Congress clarified the matter by passing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, explicitly barring processing interstate or international poker transactions where state laws forbade such gambling. PartyGaming responded by pulling out of the U.S., leaving two-thirds of its players behind to be claimed by privately held offshore companies.
The law didn't snuff out online poker in the U.S. as players migrated to other offshore providers. Research firm H2 Gambling Capital estimates the U.S. accounts for about $400 million of global annual online poker revenue of nearly $5 billion, or 8 percent. Depending on how many states ultimately legalize online cards, that share could rise to as high as 28 percent in five years, the company says.
PartyGaming's problems didn't end when it left the United States. In 2008, co-founder Anurag Dikshit pleaded guilty to gambling via the wires in federal district court in New York. He forfeited $300 million and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, leading PartyGaming itself to settle in 2009. The company paid $105 million to avoid prosecution for pre-UIGEA violations. Dikshit couldn't be reached. His lawyer didn't return calls seeking comment.
In 2010, prosecutor Arlo Devlin-Brown told the court that the probe was continuing and referred to documents under seal. He recently told Reuters he could not comment further, leaving open the possibility that Parasol could be charged if she returns home to the United States.
PartyGaming's fortunes recovered as it began to focus on non-U.S. customers. Last year it bought rival Bwin Interactive of Austria and changed the merged company's name to Bwin.Party, with annual revenue of 691 million euros, or $902 million.
During the merger talks, the regulatory suitability of PartyGaming and Parasol became an issue. Parasol and her husband, Russell DeLeon, agreed that the board could force them to restructure their more than 13 percent stake in the merged company or sell it if "required by any gaming regulatory authority in connection with business opportunities," according to merger documents filed with regulators.
That clause wouldn't apply, however, if the licensing process is "more burdensome to the principal PartyGaming shareholders than the licensing requirements currently imposed by the state of Nevada." That means the couple's stake could, in effect, block deals in states with tougher standards. Bwin.Party's Ryan said he couldn't imagine the couple standing in the way. DeLeon couldn't be reached for comment.
Now partnered with MGM Resorts, Bwin.Party has applied for a Nevada license to offer Internet poker software and services. Co-CEO Ryan said the joint venture will handle all U.S. games where players pay to play and can cash out their winnings.
In the meantime, he said, Bwin.Party will promote its brands through a social game, to be announced soon, without the ability to cash out. Ryan said negotiations with Facebook, a likely game platform, are continuing.
Facebook declined to comment. MGM did not respond to repeated interview requests about its choice of Bwin.Party.
"PRETTIEST GIRL IN TOWN"
One of Bwin.Party's top rivals is also listed in London but based in Israel. That company is 888 Holdings, founded by a dentist inspired to put poker on the Net after a 1996 trip to Monte Carlo. The late Aharon Shaked and his brother Avi mortgaged their homes to fund the company, and their families and a co-founding family still have majority control.
In 2006, 888 joined PartyGaming in pulling out of the U.S. market. But for a time before that, 888's Casino-on-Net gambling website was among the top 10 buyers of banner ads aimed at U.S. home Internet users, reaching more than 10 percent of them in a single week, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
In 2007 the company acknowledged it was in settlement talks with the Justice Department over suspected breaches of pre-2006 anti gambling laws. No charges were filed.
The 888 deal with Caesars that Nevada regulators approved last year was a trial run of Caesars-branded online poker in the British market, where such games have been legal for years. Caesars, operator of the Strip's Caesars Palace, Harrah's and Rio, has since expanded its relationship with 888, agreeing to use its software in the United States once states approve.
Ambitions are running high at 888. "The most exciting market opportunity for the industry must be that of the States, and we are definitely the prettiest girl in town, with everybody keen to have discussions with us," 888 Chief Executive Officer Brian Mattingley told investors last month. Officials at 888 declined interview requests, as did those at Caesars.
Lipparelli, the Nevada Gaming Control Board chairman, said scrutiny of the initial Caesars venture was lower than what it would have been for a U.S. venture. He said current investigations of Bwin.Party, 888 and more than 20 other license applicants would be far more rigorous than anything the overseas outfits had experienced in their home countries. "Some will probably not make it through," Lipparelli said.
He said confessions of pre-2006 wrongdoing wouldn't automatically prevent licensing, though. Gambling executives say they expect smooth sailing in Nevada because regulators want to add local technology jobs. Concern about past lawbreaking "has all gone away," one casino executive said.
One big test could come in the case of PokerStars, based in the Isle of Man, and Full Tilt Poker, based in the Channel Islands, which together snapped up most of the U.S. market after the 2006 law was passed and PartyGaming ran for the exits.
Last year, on an April day known in online poker circles as Black Friday, federal prosecutors unsealed indictments alleging illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering against the founders of PokerStars and Full Tilt. Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Full Tilt had operated as a Ponzi scheme, relying on new players' deposits to cover payouts to older customers while executives and advisers took hundreds of millions of dollars from player accounts.
The indictments prompted Wynn Resorts Ltd to drop a weeks-old "strategic relationship" with PokerStars. The main owner of Station Casinos, which serves Las Vegas locals at 11 casinos off the Strip, abandoned a similar tie-up with Full Tilt. Neither Nevada company returned calls seeking comment.
Full Tilt has shut down while it negotiates with the Justice Department. But PokerStars remains the biggest site worldwide, with what others in the industry believe tops $1 billion in annual revenue. It harbors hopes that a deal with prosecutors could pave the way for a return to the U.S.
People familiar with the situation say that as part of the settlement talks with the Justice Department, PokerStars is considering buying Full Tilt and refunding U.S. players hundreds of millions of dollars missing from their accounts. PokerStars confirmed the settlement talks but declined to comment on Full Tilt or its American aspirations. Full Tilt officials couldn't be reached for comment.
"CONCERNED ABOUT PROBITY"
In California, casinos and gambling-software companies already are scurrying for deals with the tribes and others that would be eligible for direct licenses under a bill pending in the state senate. Caesars manages the Rincon tribe's Harrah's casino and is hoping to build on that with software from 888.
A coalition of tribes and card rooms known as the California Online Poker Association has signed up to use software from Playtech Ltd, a London-listed British company. About 40 per cent of Playtech is owned by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire who pleaded guilty to stock manipulation and bribery in 1996 in a scandal known as the Discount Affair. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. Playtech didn't respond to a request for comment.
The tribes are aware of the risks of choosing partners that won't satisfy the state Justice Department, which the current bill would empower to approve license applications.
"We are very, very concerned about probity," said Joaquin Fletcher, president of the Pechanga Development Corp, owner of the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California. "We don't want whoever we pick to just create more nightmares down the road."
Similar concerns are on the minds of social media companies.
Zynga, the dominant provider of recreational games on Facebook, has 36 million monthly average users of its Texas HoldEm Poker, the second most popular game on Facebook after its CityVille, according to market research firm AppData.
The card game doesn't require regulation because players don't receive cash payouts, though they often pay for extra chips to play with. Those virtual chip purchases have made the game one of Zynga's top earners and opened the company's eyes to the potential of the real thing.
Lazard Capital Markets said in March that it expected Zynga to move "aggressively" and capture an extra $100 million in annual profit by offering online poker with cash payouts and prizes.
Zynga has held talks with Bwin.Party, 888, multiple California tribes and card rooms, and the big brick-and-mortar casinos, people familiar with the discussions said. The company might experiment first with poker in well-regulated overseas markets such as the United Kingdom, they said. Zynga declined to comment.
The gambling majors have seen the promise of social networking as well. MGM Resorts, like Bwin.Party, is planning its own game without cash payouts but with social networking built in. Caesars recently bought game application developer Playtika, which has a popular free slot machine app on Facebook called Slotomania, and it launched a Caesars-branded casino game suite there, too.
Despite the enthusiasm, the risks of a regulatory, legal or public-relations setback for Zynga and Facebook are substantial, even if they partner well.
With millions of free players, "it's very likely these people can be converted" to playing for real money, said one longtime offshore poker executive. "But do they want a headline saying some kid lost $10,000 playing poker on Facebook?" (Reuters)
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
bwin.party Digital Entertainment PartyCasino.com PartyPoker.com World Poker Tour MGM Resorts International Casinos Poker Live Dealer Las Vegas Internet United States World Directory
To prime itself for the U.S. debut of legal online poker, MGM Resorts International, owner of such Las Vegas Strip monuments as the MGM Grand, the Bellagio and the Mirage, wanted a partner that knew the ropes.
So last October it hooked up with Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc, a London-listed, Gibraltar-based specialist that rakes in more from Web betting than any other publicly traded company. MGM Resorts took 25 percent of a new venture 65 percent owned by Bwin.Party, with smaller Las Vegas casino operator Boyd Gaming getting the remaining 10 percent.
"We'll be out of the gate as soon as anybody," MGM Resorts Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren boasted to investors in February.
Online expertise isn't the only thing that distinguishes Bwin.Party. In 2009, an earlier incarnation of the company paid $105 million while admitting to U.S. prosecutors it had run an illegal gambling operation and engaged in bank and wire fraud.
Among its principal backers: a California-born woman who made a fortune in phone sex and Web pornography businesses that, like the pioneering online-gambling company that became Bwin.Party, faced multiple allegations of wrongdoing.
MGM Resorts' choice of Bwin.Party as a partner while applying for online poker licenses in Nevada might seem unusual. It isn't. The alliance reflects the calculated risks that major casino operators, Native American tribes and social-gaming giants Zynga and Facebook are weighing as they angle for a slice of a market valued at billions of dollars a year.
Caesars Entertainment Corp is prepping for online poker by tying up with an Israeli company that in 2007 acknowledged settlement talks with the U.S. Justice Department over alleged breaches of anti-gambling laws.
A group of Native American tribes in California has signed up to use software from another Israeli company, run by a man who served prison time for stock manipulation and bribery. Another tribe last week announced a deal with Bwin.Party.
Zynga, eager to convert some of its tens of millions of virtual poker enthusiasts into cash gamblers, also has been in talks with Bwin.Party and others that have had brushes with the law, according to people familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, offshore gambling outfit PokerStars is considering buying its chief offshore rival, Full Tilt, and making a run at the U.S. market even though founders of both were indicted by the Justice Department last year on charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering, according to people familiar with the situation.
All this comes as Nevada prepares to license the first online poker operators and software suppliers late next month -- and as California, New Jersey, Iowa, Massachusetts, Delaware and other states debate similar moves.
Many of the cash-starved states, encouraged by intensive industry lobbying, have felt freer to act since December, when the Justice Department declared that one federal anti-gambling law, the Wire Act, would no longer be enforced beyond sports betting.
But casino operators, Indian tribes and Internet powers bent on offering online poker lack experience delivering it. Online poker is a business that involves processing billions of dollars worth of bets and battling the fraudsters, cheats and robot-player software that can ruin the games. Hence the casinos are cozying up to some tech-savvy offshore partners whose pedigrees might give regulators pause.
Most states have "suitability" rules designed to keep crooks out of the gambling industry. Nevada requires that successful license applicants and their large shareholders possess "good character, honesty and integrity." Nevertheless, the big casino operators and their offshore partners are betting that regulators will look favorably on their license applications for two good reasons: tax money and high-tech jobs.
Early indications are that they are right.
At a hearing on a Caesars deal with the Israeli company last year, Mark Lipparelli, chairman of Nevada's Gaming Control Board, said: "I don't think as we look at companies that we can have perfection as the standard, because I think that would be a disservice to the state in attracting business here." The board unanimously recommended approval of the venture.
Gambling foes warn that states are putting fiscal worries ahead of public safety, exposing a huge and vulnerable population to the potential for compulsive betting. "The governments are so desperate for revenues that they will partner with these lawbreaking outfits," said Les Bernal, executive director of the nonprofit Stop Predatory Gambling Foundation in Washington, D.C. "They will create addiction in order to feed off of it."
PORN AND CARDS
Jim Ryan, co-chief executive officer of Bwin.Party, acknowledged in an interview that when the company was looking for U.S. partners, its history was a chief concern of MGM Resorts and other U.S. companies.
"Suitability is the very first question on all of their minds," he told Reuters during a recent business trip to San Francisco.
It's easy to see why.
Bwin.Party grew out of PartyGaming, a brainchild of San Francisco-area native Ruth Parasol, who has a history as colorful as Las Vegas. After earning a law degree, Parasol first prospered in the 1990s through 1-900 phone-sex and other services that were sued by multiple states for aggressive billing and collection practices. In North Carolina's suit, the judge ordered a company she co-founded to pay $270,000 in damages.
Then Parasol put her money behind Internet Entertainment Group, which gained notoriety for releasing an early Pamela Anderson sex video and promising an initial public offering that never happened. Employees accused the company of routinely overbilling customers, and Chief Executive Seth Warshavsky fled to Thailand as authorities investigated. Warshavsky didn't respond to an interview request.
Parasol managed to emerge unscathed, and in 1997 founded Starluck Casino in the Caribbean, providing online gambling to customers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The company had a big hit with its PartyPoker website, which became the dominant force in U.S. online cards, and then renamed itself PartyGaming.
Parasol, who has been living in Gibraltar for most of the past decade, declined requests for an interview.
In 2005, PartyGaming's IPO became the largest London had seen in four years, valuing the company at more than $8 billion. Just then, debate over the U.S. legal status of online gambling flared.
The Justice Department had long argued that Internet poker violated the Wire Act and other federal and state laws. Despite the success of PartyGaming and other offshore companies, no U.S.-based companies offered alternatives for fear of prosecution.
In 2006, Congress clarified the matter by passing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, explicitly barring processing interstate or international poker transactions where state laws forbade such gambling. PartyGaming responded by pulling out of the U.S., leaving two-thirds of its players behind to be claimed by privately held offshore companies.
The law didn't snuff out online poker in the U.S. as players migrated to other offshore providers. Research firm H2 Gambling Capital estimates the U.S. accounts for about $400 million of global annual online poker revenue of nearly $5 billion, or 8 percent. Depending on how many states ultimately legalize online cards, that share could rise to as high as 28 percent in five years, the company says.
PartyGaming's problems didn't end when it left the United States. In 2008, co-founder Anurag Dikshit pleaded guilty to gambling via the wires in federal district court in New York. He forfeited $300 million and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, leading PartyGaming itself to settle in 2009. The company paid $105 million to avoid prosecution for pre-UIGEA violations. Dikshit couldn't be reached. His lawyer didn't return calls seeking comment.
In 2010, prosecutor Arlo Devlin-Brown told the court that the probe was continuing and referred to documents under seal. He recently told Reuters he could not comment further, leaving open the possibility that Parasol could be charged if she returns home to the United States.
PartyGaming's fortunes recovered as it began to focus on non-U.S. customers. Last year it bought rival Bwin Interactive of Austria and changed the merged company's name to Bwin.Party, with annual revenue of 691 million euros, or $902 million.
During the merger talks, the regulatory suitability of PartyGaming and Parasol became an issue. Parasol and her husband, Russell DeLeon, agreed that the board could force them to restructure their more than 13 percent stake in the merged company or sell it if "required by any gaming regulatory authority in connection with business opportunities," according to merger documents filed with regulators.
That clause wouldn't apply, however, if the licensing process is "more burdensome to the principal PartyGaming shareholders than the licensing requirements currently imposed by the state of Nevada." That means the couple's stake could, in effect, block deals in states with tougher standards. Bwin.Party's Ryan said he couldn't imagine the couple standing in the way. DeLeon couldn't be reached for comment.
Now partnered with MGM Resorts, Bwin.Party has applied for a Nevada license to offer Internet poker software and services. Co-CEO Ryan said the joint venture will handle all U.S. games where players pay to play and can cash out their winnings.
In the meantime, he said, Bwin.Party will promote its brands through a social game, to be announced soon, without the ability to cash out. Ryan said negotiations with Facebook, a likely game platform, are continuing.
Facebook declined to comment. MGM did not respond to repeated interview requests about its choice of Bwin.Party.
"PRETTIEST GIRL IN TOWN"
One of Bwin.Party's top rivals is also listed in London but based in Israel. That company is 888 Holdings, founded by a dentist inspired to put poker on the Net after a 1996 trip to Monte Carlo. The late Aharon Shaked and his brother Avi mortgaged their homes to fund the company, and their families and a co-founding family still have majority control.
In 2006, 888 joined PartyGaming in pulling out of the U.S. market. But for a time before that, 888's Casino-on-Net gambling website was among the top 10 buyers of banner ads aimed at U.S. home Internet users, reaching more than 10 percent of them in a single week, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
In 2007 the company acknowledged it was in settlement talks with the Justice Department over suspected breaches of pre-2006 anti gambling laws. No charges were filed.
The 888 deal with Caesars that Nevada regulators approved last year was a trial run of Caesars-branded online poker in the British market, where such games have been legal for years. Caesars, operator of the Strip's Caesars Palace, Harrah's and Rio, has since expanded its relationship with 888, agreeing to use its software in the United States once states approve.
Ambitions are running high at 888. "The most exciting market opportunity for the industry must be that of the States, and we are definitely the prettiest girl in town, with everybody keen to have discussions with us," 888 Chief Executive Officer Brian Mattingley told investors last month. Officials at 888 declined interview requests, as did those at Caesars.
Lipparelli, the Nevada Gaming Control Board chairman, said scrutiny of the initial Caesars venture was lower than what it would have been for a U.S. venture. He said current investigations of Bwin.Party, 888 and more than 20 other license applicants would be far more rigorous than anything the overseas outfits had experienced in their home countries. "Some will probably not make it through," Lipparelli said.
He said confessions of pre-2006 wrongdoing wouldn't automatically prevent licensing, though. Gambling executives say they expect smooth sailing in Nevada because regulators want to add local technology jobs. Concern about past lawbreaking "has all gone away," one casino executive said.
One big test could come in the case of PokerStars, based in the Isle of Man, and Full Tilt Poker, based in the Channel Islands, which together snapped up most of the U.S. market after the 2006 law was passed and PartyGaming ran for the exits.
Last year, on an April day known in online poker circles as Black Friday, federal prosecutors unsealed indictments alleging illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering against the founders of PokerStars and Full Tilt. Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Full Tilt had operated as a Ponzi scheme, relying on new players' deposits to cover payouts to older customers while executives and advisers took hundreds of millions of dollars from player accounts.
The indictments prompted Wynn Resorts Ltd to drop a weeks-old "strategic relationship" with PokerStars. The main owner of Station Casinos, which serves Las Vegas locals at 11 casinos off the Strip, abandoned a similar tie-up with Full Tilt. Neither Nevada company returned calls seeking comment.
Full Tilt has shut down while it negotiates with the Justice Department. But PokerStars remains the biggest site worldwide, with what others in the industry believe tops $1 billion in annual revenue. It harbors hopes that a deal with prosecutors could pave the way for a return to the U.S.
People familiar with the situation say that as part of the settlement talks with the Justice Department, PokerStars is considering buying Full Tilt and refunding U.S. players hundreds of millions of dollars missing from their accounts. PokerStars confirmed the settlement talks but declined to comment on Full Tilt or its American aspirations. Full Tilt officials couldn't be reached for comment.
"CONCERNED ABOUT PROBITY"
In California, casinos and gambling-software companies already are scurrying for deals with the tribes and others that would be eligible for direct licenses under a bill pending in the state senate. Caesars manages the Rincon tribe's Harrah's casino and is hoping to build on that with software from 888.
A coalition of tribes and card rooms known as the California Online Poker Association has signed up to use software from Playtech Ltd, a London-listed British company. About 40 per cent of Playtech is owned by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire who pleaded guilty to stock manipulation and bribery in 1996 in a scandal known as the Discount Affair. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. Playtech didn't respond to a request for comment.
The tribes are aware of the risks of choosing partners that won't satisfy the state Justice Department, which the current bill would empower to approve license applications.
"We are very, very concerned about probity," said Joaquin Fletcher, president of the Pechanga Development Corp, owner of the Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California. "We don't want whoever we pick to just create more nightmares down the road."
Similar concerns are on the minds of social media companies.
Zynga, the dominant provider of recreational games on Facebook, has 36 million monthly average users of its Texas HoldEm Poker, the second most popular game on Facebook after its CityVille, according to market research firm AppData.
The card game doesn't require regulation because players don't receive cash payouts, though they often pay for extra chips to play with. Those virtual chip purchases have made the game one of Zynga's top earners and opened the company's eyes to the potential of the real thing.
Lazard Capital Markets said in March that it expected Zynga to move "aggressively" and capture an extra $100 million in annual profit by offering online poker with cash payouts and prizes.
Zynga has held talks with Bwin.Party, 888, multiple California tribes and card rooms, and the big brick-and-mortar casinos, people familiar with the discussions said. The company might experiment first with poker in well-regulated overseas markets such as the United Kingdom, they said. Zynga declined to comment.
The gambling majors have seen the promise of social networking as well. MGM Resorts, like Bwin.Party, is planning its own game without cash payouts but with social networking built in. Caesars recently bought game application developer Playtika, which has a popular free slot machine app on Facebook called Slotomania, and it launched a Caesars-branded casino game suite there, too.
Despite the enthusiasm, the risks of a regulatory, legal or public-relations setback for Zynga and Facebook are substantial, even if they partner well.
With millions of free players, "it's very likely these people can be converted" to playing for real money, said one longtime offshore poker executive. "But do they want a headline saying some kid lost $10,000 playing poker on Facebook?" (Reuters)
Website Network
Media Man Int
Media Man
Media Man News
Media Man Entertainment
Casino News Media
Global Gaming Directory
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)