iGaming Business – Bitcoin gaming network BetCoin has announced a major redesign and game play improvements for a “reinvented” version of its BetCoin Dice online game. The updated title now allows players to begin with a starting bet of 0.001 Bitcoins. BetCoin also said that players can enjoy the game with “true zero confirmations in the Bitcoin blockchain,” meaning that bets and winning on the new version of BetCoin Dice are processed instantly. All bets are processed by the BetCoin proprietary provably fair technology. Players can also watch their lucky numbers being generated in real-time by the provably fair algorithm…

iGaming Business – German secondary research organisation yStats.com has reported that players are continuing to move away from traditional gaming methods towards online gaming on mobile and social networks. In a report entitled “EMEA Online Gaming Market 2014”, the organisation said that the move to mobile and social is most pronounced in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Turkish and Polish emerging markets were ahead of western European countries in terms of the share of online gamers on internet users in 2013. The Russian online gaming market grew by more than 20% in 2013…

Poker News – The Netherlands may be known for its liberal stance on soft drugs and prostitution, but it’s a whole different story when it comes to gambling and poker. There are no legal online poker sites, while state-owned Holland Casino is the only bricks-and-mortar operator available for card players to sharpen their skills in a live environment. However, legal and regulated online gambling is slowly coming to fruition in the country, although we’re still probably 18 months away from licensed operators opening their virtual doors to customers. iGaming legislation called the Dutch Remote Gambling Act was drawn up last…

iGaming Business – Online gaming systems and software provider GameAccount Network has moved to strengthen its position in the regulated Italian market by linking up with online casino games provider Net Entertainment. Under the agreement, GameAccount will offer Net Entertainment’s PC and mobile content to various Italian operators such as Sisal, Snai and Eurobet. “This partnership with Net Entertainment strengthens our offering and we look forward to continuing to grow our position in the regulated Italian gaming market,” GameAccount chief executive officer Dermot Smurfit said. Björn Krantz, managing director of Net Entertainment, added: “We are delighted to partner with GameAccount…

iGaming Business – The social-casino game market hit $2 billion in 2013, and a good chunk of that came from women. A new survey from International Game Technology shows that more than a third of social casino poker players are women. IGT is the largest maker of slot machines, and its DoubleDown Interactive division is one of the biggest makers of social casino games. The number of women playing online social casino poker games was up 22 percent in 2013 compared to the year before, the survey said. That should be informative for the designers of social casino games, which…

Calvin Ayre – A protest movement has been underway in Venezuela since early last week over economic destabilization caused by President Nicolas Maduro’s currency and price controls. The government issued a ban on all protests after they turned violent, killing three students and leaving dozens more injured – a turn of events the opposition leader, a Harvard-educated former mayor from the country’s east named Leopoldo Lopez, blames on pro-government militias. (No points for guessing who the government blames the violence on.) Despite the protest ban, the anti-government protests have continued. And despite a media blackout – all the local media…