Las Vegas Sun – Nevada and Delaware’s recent agreement to launch the nation’s first collaborative, interstate online poker zone appears to have drawn a backlash from gambling’s opponents in Congress, who are planning to drop a bill rolling back the legal opinion underlying the recent deal. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is planning on formally releasing legislation to roll back the 2011 Justice Department reading of the Wire Act next week, when Congress returns to Washington. Unlike many recent online gaming bills, the legislation would include no carve-out for online poker; it would simply undo the Justice Department opinion that determined…

Calvin Ayre – PokerStars’ parent company, Rational Entertainment Enterprises, Ltd. (REEL), or more commonly known as the  Rational Group, won itself a decision against a class action lawsuit in Illinois from a group of poker players who claim to have lost money from illegal gambling. Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ruled in favor of granting Rational’s motion to dismiss the complaint filed by Kelly Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg’s complaint against Rational centered on her attempt to recover damages incurred by Illinois poker players from playing online poker using the state’s…

iGaming Business – US oil giant Chevron has been given the go-ahead to sue PartyGaming founder Russell DeLeon as part of a 20-year legal battle between the oil company and Steven Donziger, a US lawyer representing Ecuadorian nationals in a pollution case against Chevron. Bloomberg Business Week reports that a judge in Gibraltar, where PartyGaming (as it was then known) is licensed and DeLeon relocated to from the US in the early 2000s to run the business with co-founders (and ex-wife) Ruth Parasol, Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava, has “ruled that Chevron can proceed with a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages…

iGaming Business – The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill is set to come into force in the UK after being given final approval by the House of Lords. Subject to Royal Assent, the new bill will see the Gambling Commission licensing system cover all UK remote gambling operators. Under the current Gambling Act 2005, remote gambling operators that locate their remote gambling equipment overseas do not need a remote operating licence from the Gambling Commission, whereas UK-based operators are required to have one. The new bill would require all remote gambling operators in the UK market to obtain a licence…

Card Player – The New Jersey online gaming industry has been steadily growing since its inception in late November of last year. Despite this, the state is revising some of its projections on tax revenue from the new games. To put it simply, some predicted that the games would be more lucrative right off the bat than they have proven to be. Early predictions were that more than $1 billion would be reaped by the casinos from online gambling during fiscal year one. That would have netted the state around $180 million in extra tax revenue. According to the most…

iGaming Business – Casino operator Crown Resorts is set to increase its stake in online betting exchange Betfair’s Australian operations from 50% to 100%, according to Fairfax Media. Betfair operates in Australia as a joint venture between Crown and Betfair, but the report said that the latter is keen to offload its Australian stake because the venture has been far less profitable than it had hoped. Crown chairman James Packer is reportedly keen to complete a buy-out as the deal would secure 100% control of the company’s Tasmanian bookmaking licence. Crown and Betfair declined to comment, but such an agreement…