Online Poker Report – On the day of the session deadline for the introduction of bills, two efforts to regulate online poker in California surfaced from the legislature. The first is effectively a re-introduction of SB 678, which was backed by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. The bill number is listed as SB 1366. No sponsor is identified on the bill but I assume it’s State Sen. Lou Correa (D-34), who authored SB 678. AB 2291 is supported by a wide-ranging consortium of tribes, including the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians,…

Cincinnati.com – Kentucky’s efforts to seize 132 internet gambling domain names is on hold after an appeals court ruled Friday that a trade association may represent the owners of the sites trying to fend off forfeiture proceedings. The decision by the Kentucky Court of Appeals allows the Interactive Gaming Council to step into the 6-year-old case and, at least temporarily, keep the identities of the owners of various internet gambling sites from being publicly revealed. Judge Allison Jones, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, noted that Kentucky has treated the domain names as a group for much of the litigation but…

iGaming Business – MPN, the online poker network of internet gaming software provider Microgaming, has announced the launch of its inaugural MPN Poker Tour (MPNPT). The MPNPT will debut in London this spring before moving on to visit a number of other locations around Europe. Each festival will feature a deep-stacked €550 ($756.7) Main Event as well as a number of lower-value Side Events. In addition, the MPN said it would also bring a number of exclusive online innovations to the live poker environment, such as giving players the chance to earn achievements for taking part in events and enabling…

iGaming Business – Mobile entertainment content provider PlayPhone has entered into a new partnership with mobile messenger application Tango in order to expand the international reach of its gaming network. Under the partnership, PlayPhone’s global gaming network will now be accessible within Tango’s messaging application. The deal will also enable Tango members to access the network through direct carrier billing and via one-tap access in PlayPhone’s carrier game stores. In addition, PlayPhone said its automatic server updates eliminate the need for Tango members to update their app. Future plans also include deeper integration of Tango’s social graph with PlayPhone’s recommendation…

Fox News – The digital currency bitcoin — once used to facilitate online drug deals — now appears to be enabling people to get around regulations banning online betting. Predictious.com, a new company from Ireland, offers a “prediction market” that allows people to bet on everything from the U.S. presidential election to the Olympics and the Oscars. And it’s all made possible by bitcoins. Betting of this sort is a legal gray area in the U.S., where the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) decided in a 2012 regulatory order not to allow prediction markets on the grounds that they…

Las Vegas Review-Journal – U.S. Sen. Dean Heller said Thursday he expects legislation to be introduced in the next month or so to outlaw all Internet gaming except online poker, putting a stop to what he called “the wild wild West” of gambling if every state were allowed to operate online games of chance that compete with Nevada casinos. Heller, R-Nev., also said he believes Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson, who is waging an all-out campaign to stop Internet gaming, makes some good points, including how widespread online gambling could cause social ills and how online competition could…