Palm Beach Post – A Florida House committee took a first glance Thursday at a gambling plan that would create a gaming commission, do away with inactive pari-mutuel permits and rein in barrel racing and other types of horse racing that one Republican lawmaker called “sham” activities. The Florida Select Committee on Gaming debated the 411-page plan and a proposed constitutional amendment that would give voters the power to decide whether gambling should be expanded in the future. The proposed amendment would have no impact on whatever lawmakers approve this year, including whether to authorize Las Vegas-style casino resorts that…

Poker Fuse – The Delaware Lottery has published the revenue results from February which show a 16% fall in poker rake and fees. The four months of figures now available provide a picture of how each of the three licensees is doing in the market. The amount wagered on table games in February doubled from January’s $1.1m to $2.2m producing net proceeds of $65k. Adding in the $27k of video lottery revenues (slots) produced a total of $92k, which meant that poker’s proceeds of $74k now represent just 44% of the total. That compares with the 76% produced by poker…

Daily Finance – There may be pretty lights, free-flowing cocktails and a theatrical buzz at the casino, but don’t go thinking that the treat for the senses is cheap. Slot players collectively walk out with as little as 90 percent of their money, on average. The odds are slightly better at the table games — including blackjack, poker and roulette — but there is no diversion where gamblers have the edge over the establishment. The house always wins. The odds are more favorable at a casino than state lotteries that only return as little as half of what they take…

The Telegraph – With 43 varieties of pillow, 150-year-old bottles of cognac and breathtaking, neon-lit views, no expense is spared for high rollers at the Las Vegas of the East. At the entrance to the Galaxy casino, elegant Filipina glamour models usher gamblers past a giant model diamond into a world of palm-lined artificial beaches and £48-a-time cocktails. This is Macau, a former Portuguese colony on China’s southern coast that in just over a decade has become the undisputed global king of the casino. It is also a world of money laundering, corruption, human trafficking and over-indulgence that stands in…

Poker News – The UK Gambling Commission is targeting illegal poker clubs across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom in its latest campaign to curtail what is considered to be unlawful gambling. Under the terms of the Gambling Act 2005, members’ clubs can allow poker at them, but there are various restrictions in place depending on whether the venue has a gaming permit in place or not. There are also strict guidelines limiting stakes, fees and prizes, while the main purpose of the club cannot be gambling. Investigations by local authorities resulted in three members’ clubs having to…

Galaxy Entertainment Group and Melco Crown Entertainment look best placed to benefit from the next phase of Macau Casinos development as the world’s gambling capital adds eight more mega-casinos by 2017. The expansion will take place in the Chinese territory’s glitzy Cotai Strip and is expected to more than double Macau’s annual gaming revenues to $115 billion in four years, according to research from U.S. brokerage Wells Fargo. Cotai is an area of reclaimed land that is becoming a Las Vegas-style tourist hub with shopping centers, hotels and entertainment to complement the casinos. U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands…