Playing Bitcoin poker? Well, if poker wasn’t already enough of a gamble, players are increasingly placing bets with the most speculative currency of them all. Poker websites have started accepting bitcoin from U.S. players to skirt federal legislation that makes it illegal to transfer funds associated with illegal Internet gambling, at a time when bitcoin advocates are striving to distance the virtual currency from illegal activities. The move to bitcoin in online poker started after the Department of Justice seized three of the biggest poker websites in the U.S. on April 15, 2011, a day known as Black Friday in…

Poker News – The holidays are upon us! Lists are being made, checked twice, and people all over are asking each other the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” In hopes of spreading good cheer and giving our audience ready answers when they are asked this question, we’ve compiled a list of 10 potential gifts a poker player can ask for this Christmas. Without any further hesitation, let’s get started! 1. RunGood App — $17.99 The easiest way to describe the RunGood poker app is “PokerTracker for live games.” The app lets you keep track of your poker sessions…

Card Player – On Thursday, the World Series of Poker announced the dates for the 2014 summer festival. The 45th running of the WSOP will begin on Tuesday, May 27 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the 10th consecutive year the event has been held at the Rio. Action will run for 49 consecutive days, concluding with formation of the final table of the main event on July 14. The main event is slated to run over ten consecutive days starting July 5. In addition to the main event and other typical bracelet events, the…

iGaming Business – Bookmaker William Hill has confirmed it plans to maintain its online betting base in Gibraltar despite new tax laws that are expected to cost the firm tens of millions of pounds. The company is one of a number of bookmakers that have set up online operations in Gibraltar in order to sign British gamblers while benefiting from lower taxes. However, Great Britain is set to introduce a new 15% duty on bookmakers’ online winnings from British customers from December 2014 in a move that could bring in an additional £300 million (€359.2 million/$491.4 million) each year. Speculation…

Reason – The Wall Street Journal reports that if fully legalized, by 2020 online gambling will generate the same amount of revenue as Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined: $9.3 billion. While online gambling can be made legal at the state level, Congress is considering several bills to legalize it nationwide. The latest Reason-Rupe pollfinds that a solid majority (65 percent) of Americans favor legalizing online gambling, while 32 percent think government should prohibit people from gambling in online poker games. Majorities of all partisans favor allowing Americans to play online poker, but independents who lean Republican were even more likely to favor (75…

Poker News – Maybe we’ll finally learn if the million-dollar top prize at the World Series of Poker has Mike McDermott’s name on it. According to Deadline Hollywood, The Weinstein Company co-chairmen Harvey and Bob Weinstein are once again working with Miramax. The new venture will begin quickly with sequels to Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love and poker’s cult-classic Rounders. Harvey Weinstein told Deadline Hollywood the following: “I’ve discussed making a Rounders sequel with Matt Damon and I would say that’s going to be instantaneous.. .The guys [writers David Levien and Brian Koppelman] have a great idea, a way…

Poker Update – Last Tuesday’s subcommittee hearing at which U.S. lawmakers looked at Rep. Joe Barton’s Internet Poker Freedom Act of 2013 has allowed the federal proposal to gain a certain degree of newfound respect. It’s a respect that had perhaps been missing when the Texas Republican first introduced H.R. 2666 in July. Rep. Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) indicated as much when he stated near the end of the hearing that he and some of his colleagues were not enamored of the bill upon their first reading over the summer. Terry jokingly said that lawmakers were of the mind that Barton’s…

Poker News – As Bitcoin becomes more and more of an emerging currency market, it should be something that is on every poker player’s radar. In the PokerNews Guide To Bitcoin, Part 1: we discussed what Bitcoin is and how it can relate to poker. For Part 2, we will look at the advantages of Bitcoin on the online felt. To give PokerNews readers a better understanding of the pros and cons of Bitcoin poker sites, we reached out to Michael Hadjuk, owner and CEO of Infiniti Poker, which offered a soft launch of the site on Nov. 27, 2013….