PokerStars has joined forces with a number of California tribal casinos and cardrooms to launch an online poker coalition in an effort to promote an open and fair market for any future regulated internet poker market in the state. The new ‘Californians for Responsible iPoker’ group features five tribal-gaming groups as well as the Commerce, Bicycle and Hawaiian Gardens cardrooms. Each member of the group has already reached an agreement with PokerStars to use the online poker operator’s software should the state opt to regulate internet poker activities. PokerStars said the group will enable it to demonstrate in state-level hearings…

Bwin.party has reached an agreement to sell the World Poker Tour  to Chinese online game developer OurGame.com for $35mm. Details of the deal were made available via a filing from OurGame. The closing date for the deal is June 25. The deal appears to include all components of WPT, including the live tour, existing episode library, all intellectual property and the subscription-based poker site ClubWPT.com. Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Global Poker Index, called the sale “a tremendous opportunity for poker and for the World Poker Tour,” noting that OurGame has the “entrepreneurial spirit and the cash to help WPT achieve…

California’s chances at passing an online poker bill in 2015 may be all but dead and buried if secondhand statements attributed to State Senator and Governmental Organization (GO) Committee Chairman Isadore Hall III can be taken at face value. A recent column by John Howard that appeared in Capitol Weekly quotes two sources – one named and one unnamed – who claim to have spoken with Hall recently on the issue of online poker, and both indicated that despite the progress the issue has made in the Assembly, online poker is a dead issue in the Senate. “He said he…

While the world’s regulated online poker market has shrunk by 23% over the past two years, US-friendly sites have been experiencing some impressive growth over the same period of time and continue to outperform their licensed competitors. Bodog, for instance, has grown by 43%, the Winning Poker Network (WPN) by 77%, and the Chico Poker Network by an impressive 125%, raising the question whether it is these sites innovations or their virtual monopoly over the US market which is driving their traffic forward. Bodog was one of the first operators to recognize the damage done by online grinders relieving amateur…

The online poker debate in California is beginning to resemble the well-known scene from the Peanuts comics where Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown. The state of California (playing the role of Lucy in this production) continues to hold the football while the poker world runs up to kick out – with predictable results. It appeared that progress was being made when California’s online poker bill AB 431 cleared another important hurdle as it continues to navigate unchartered waters. But on the flip side, two California Gaming Control Commissioners left their positions, and the debate over bad actors went…

The rhetoric surrounding California online poker continues to intensify, dampening the state’s chances of passing a bill to regulate the industry in 2015. Latest to the fray: a radio ad campaign from the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians that paints an aggressively negative picture of both PokerStars and the brand’s new owner Amaya. The campaign comes on the heels of the California Gaming conference where a tribal coalition (including Viejas) that opposes the participation of horse tracks and PokerStars in regulated online poker was consistently branded as obstructionist by those who support inclusion of tracks, PokerStars, or both. The version…