Forbes – Already investing billions in the housing market down under, China’s real estate developers are preparing to go head to head with Australia’s home-grown gaming giants, including a company run by its richest man, to build casinos in the heart of one of the country’s largest cities. The winner of the bidding process will get the chance to develop a six-star multi-billion dollar casino project at Queen’s Wharf in Brisbane, the largest city in Queensland state, and the right to profit from the boom in Chinese visitors and their love for gambling. Shanghai government-backed developer Greenland Group, which already…

Reuters – South Korean casino operator Paradise Co has hired Jose Mourinho, the outspoken manager of English football giants Chelsea, as the face of its new advertising campaign to lure punters from China, where the sport is increasingly popular. Paradise is teaming up with Japan’s Sega Sammy Holdings Inc to build a $1.7 billion casino resort in the coastal city of Incheon, near the country’s main international airport, with construction to be completed in 2017. It faces steep competition from operators like Genting Singapore PLC and Caesars Entertainment Corp, which are moving to build their own tourist-focused resorts in South…

Card Player – A tribe located within Idaho is tangled up in a legal battle with that state over the former’s opening of a poker room at an already-existing gambling facility. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe opened its poker room on May 2 at its Coeur d’Alene Casino. Idaho said that poker is illegal within its borders and that federal laws pertaining to tribal casinos wouldn’t provide a carve out in this situation. The Tribe disagreed, filing a lengthy motion for the state’s lawsuit to be dismissed, The Spokesman-Review reported Tuesday. “As the statute provides, even if the game of poker…

Poker News – After a series of tweets were issued by poker professionals during the start of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, a potentially serious security situation at the Rio All-Suite Las Vegas Hotel and Casino has come to light. During the last 24 hours, no less than three poker pros took to Twitter alleging that personal property – including laptops and large sums of money – were stolen from their hotel rooms overnight. The first player to sound the alarm was Finnish pro Lauri Pesonen, who issued the following tweet at 8:52 p.m. local time Tuesday…

Reuters – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set to tour Singapore’s two lavish casino resorts on Friday as his home country toys with the idea of liberalizing casino gambling to boost tourism and attract investment. Japan, home to 128 million people and the world’s third largest economy, is widely seen as a prize market for casino operators due to its affluent population and close proximity to wealthy Asian gamblers in the region. Brokerage CLSA estimates Japan could be the world’s third biggest gambling market after Macau and the United States, raking in revenues of at least $40 billion annually…

Las Vegas Review Journal – Las Vegas continued its record pace for visitor volume in April as the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on Wednesday reported 3.5 million came to Southern Nevada, a 3.5 percent increase over April 2013. The city is now 4.8 percent ahead of 2013’s record clip with 13.7 million visitors in the first four months of the year. Nearly every measure of visitor activity except convention and convention attendance was higher in April than the previous year. Citywide occupancy was up for hotels and motels, weekend and midweek and Strip and downtown. The average daily…