Poker Update – It has been a great year for gaming company 888 Holdings, something that has been exemplified by a recent major milestone. According to PokerScout, 888 now has the third largest player traffic of online poker websites. For a long time, the company had competed with others like PartyPoker for fourth place, having beaten the bwin.party online poker offering for the fourth spot battle back in June. 888 has been able to defend that spot ever since, but it seemed impossible for the company to overtake Full Tilt Poker for third place. Well, 888 has accomplished the ‘mission…

iGaming Business – American Poker Network (AAPN), the joint venture between online gaming operator 888 and investment firm Avenue Capital Group, has entered into a partnership with Wynn Interactive, subsidiary of US casino resort operator Wynn Resorts, to develop Wynn’s online offering in regulated US states. Powered by the 888 platform, AAPN has already gone live with in Nevada with Caesars’ Interactive Entertainment’s WSOP brand and is going through the licensing process in New Jersey. Under the agreement, AAPN will now develop and deploy Wynn’s online offering in New Jersey and Nevada, as well as other US states as and…

Card Player – A European court has issued a preliminary ruling that Italy cannot legally block some gambling sites from accessing its 61 million person population. Critics for Italy’s practice reportedly think that the country was simply trying to protect its “€2 billion gambling monopoly, belonging to the Italian state and a few authorized private partners,” according to Malta Today. Some of the firms that were blacklisted are completely legal in Malta, but Italy still didn’t want them in. Italy legalized online poker cash games in 2011. “The CJEU ruled that EU Member States restricting national gambling markets in order…

For the first time since it’s inception in 2002 the WPT Championship $25,000 event will not be played at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The event will now be held at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey in May, 2014 with PartyPoker as the official sponsor. The move was announced during day 2 of the WPT Borgata Poker Open main event, a $3,500 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament that drew 1,189 entries to build a total prize pool of just over $3.8 million, surpassing the $3,540,500 prizepool of last year’s WPT Championship by more than a quarter million dollars. WPT President…

Poker News – It’s been an exciting week for poker players in Nevada. On Monday, the World Series of Poker announced that its real-money online poker operation will launch in the Silver State on Thursday, Sept. 19. More exciting news came on Tuesday when WSOP.com opened its doors early, inviting pre-registered players to participate in the real-money action ahead of the rest of the state. The brand power of the Caesars and WSOP in the gaming industry is immense, and making the online operation even more powerful is the partnership with Gibraltar-based 888 Holdings. 888, which owns and operates the…

NJ105.com – Ever since New Jersey legalized Internet gambling in February, poker was expected to be a big part of it. Now an Internet gambling company that runs a nationally known play-in-person poker tournament is bringing its championship to Atlantic City, creating one of the many hoped-for marriages between online gambling firms and brick-and-mortar casinos. The World Poker Tour’s season-ending championship will be held at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in April. The tour’s parent company, bwin.party, is the firm the Borgata is partnering with to offer Internet gambling once it starts, perhaps as soon as late November. Adam…