This Week in Gambling

This Week in Gambling – Robert Smith, Treasurer of the CTBA Board and Chairman of the Pala Band of Luiseno Indians, will testify at the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization, during their informational hearing on Internet poker. The iPoker hearing is set for Wednesday, April 23 at 1:30 pm, in State Capitol, Room 4202. The hearing, was called by AGO Chair Isadore Hall, III, to promote a better understanding of the iPoker issue.  Two bills, AB 2291 (Jones-Sawyer) and SB 1366 (Correa), have been introduced this year that would legalize Internet poker in California.  CTBA member tribes are part of…

Press of Atlantic City – After an 11-year stint in Las Vegas, a high buy-in poker tournament drawing players from as far away as South Africa and Korea has left Sin City for Atlantic City. The reason, organizers say, is the New Jersey’s budding online gambling market. The championship event of the World Poker Tour kicked off Monday at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. Running concurrently with it is the first New Jersey Championship of Online Poker, now the largest online tournament ever held in the U.S. since the legalization of online gambling. The World Poker Tour event is sponsored…

NJ.com – For those looking to play a hand of poker, pull down on a slot machine or roll the dice from the confines of their own homes, it seems Hudson County might just be the place to do it. During the first 100 days of legal online gambling in New Jersey, three Hudson County cities ranked among the top 20 municipalities in the state in terms of usage on websites operated by Caesars Interactive, according to a study done by the company. Jersey City ranked No. 2 on the list, while Hoboken (No. 4) and Bayonne (No. 14) were…

The Christian Institute – Gambling advertisements should be banned in sports, the Church of Scotland has said in a report published ahead of the Commonwealth Games. The report, titled Striving Together: Celebrating Competitiveness in Sport, also urges the Scottish and UK Governments to ban adverts for short-term loan companies who “charge exorbitant rates”. The Glasgow 2014 games, which involves athletes competing across 17 sports, will begin in July. Sponsors include a host of organisations such as John Lewis, Virgin Media and ScotRail. But Scottish football team Hearts is sponsored by payday loan company Wonga and Rangers are set to receive…

iGaming Business – Russian president Vladimir Putin has submitted a draft bill to parliament to designate the seceded Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea as a legal gambling zone. As reported by iGaming Business last month, Russian officials were reported to be considering a proposal to introduce a gambling zone with casinos and hotels to the region. According to the Wall Street Journal newspaper, Putin submitted the bill on Monday in the hope of pushing forward with these plans. Sergei Aksyonov, acting leader of Crimea, told the Itar-Tass news agency last week that if the bill does pass then the region plans…

Poker News – Right after the visit the European commissioner for competition and European Commission vice president Joakin Almunia paid to Athens, the Greek government decided to introduce significant amendments to its gaming law. This should finally put Greece’s legislation in line with European directives and calm fears of an upcoming monopoly. Greece’s reliance on the so-called “European trojka” — the unofficial group composed by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — pushed the country to change direction and remove from its gambling law some criticized bits that could have led to the creation of a…