Gambling Games

News in Brief By Michael Gentile March 21, 2012

When the game of online poker goes on trial next month, Daniel Tzvetkoff, the man widely believed to have provided the evidence that eventually led to the Black Friday indictments, is set to be the prosecution’s star witness.

On April 9, Chad Elie and John Campos are scheduled to stand trial for processing illegal payments in connection with online poker. Before then, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan must decide the scope of evidence that will be allowed to be presented and in doing so will have a large influence on the nature of the trial itself.

Tzvetkoff was arrested in Las Vegas in April of 2010 and was charged with money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud after his company Intabill allegedly processed more than $1bn in online poker transactions. Fac

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Internet gambling software developer Playtech plc has released its latest full year performance numbers, covering the period to 31 December 2011 and showcasing an impressive year of business activity.Financial highlights of the report include:* Gross income* up 41% to Eruo 243.6 million (2010: Euro 173.1 million)* Total revenues up by 46% to Euro 207.5 million (2010: Euro 142.3 million)* Adjusted EBITDA increased by 22% to Euro 125.5 million (2010: Euro 103.1 million)* Adjusted net profit increased by 21% to Euro 112.8 million (2010: Euro 93.2 million)* Net cash balances at year end of Euro 137.3 million (2010: Euro 68.5 million) following a 100 million fundraising in December, providing new capital to support joint ventures in newly regulated markets, and funding of targeted acquisitions* Recommended combined interim and final dividend for 2011 of 16.5 cents per shareManagements assessment of current trading remains optimistic:”Playtech has experienced a strong start to the year enjoying healthy momentum across its operations including those it has acquired recently. Full article…

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When we think of professional poker players we tend to conjure up an image of some big name poker pro sitting at a table in Las Vegas perhaps playing in the WSOP—sporting the patch of his sponsor on his shirt and/or hat and sitting behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in chips, all the while talking to his peers about the recent places he’s been and the crazy side bets he has been making.

While the above description represents the glamorous side of the game, and there are a few dozen poker players living this lifestyle, the majority of poker “pros” are more in line with the players that appear in Matt Gallagher’s new documentary, Grinders, on the underground poker scene in Toronto.

As Gallagher told the Canadian Press:

People see that poker is this glamorous event and you see the World Series of Poker on TV and people making millions and theyre travelling the world, the Windsor, Ont., native said in a recent interview.

What I wanted to do is I wanted to show these guys who call themselves grinders, who sort of grind through their daily existence just trying to make their $200 a day or $500 a day. They trea

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By Wendeen H. Eolis

Any poker player worth his salt knows better than to say, “When I win, it is skill, and when I lose, it is luck,” but until the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, by and large, the poker community ignored the significant legal conundrums now playing out as high drama in the US Department of Justice’s vigorous prosecution of online poker.

Judge Lewis Kaplan Has Plenty to Ponder
Last week Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, the law firm recently brought in to defend Chad Elie and John Campos at their upcoming trial, hit the ground running. Elie

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It’s that time of the year when the new MLB season is starting to creep into the collective consciousness of baseball betting fans across the United States and Canada, and as proof of this many leading online sportsbetting sites have started posting 2012 World Series odds.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the Philadelphia Phillies have been laid as the early favorites to win baseball’s biggest honor, ahead even of last season’s World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals, and runners-up, the Texas Rangers.

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